Hello Mowind members,

Now that the water is freezing over it is time to get ready for the
next year of windsurfing. The purpose of this discussion is to
determine what is important to Mowind for the next year. In a few
weeks in December (12-20-08, 8:00?), any interested members will have
a conference call and decide on the items discussed here.

Important topics that come to mind are:

Insurance
Classes and Fleets
Scoring
Web Page
Officers and Committees
Scheduling
Fundraising
Mowind Merchandise

Feel free to comment or introduce you own topic if you think it is
important.

I would like to summarize the past year and address some of the issues
from my personal experience as Mowind President.
Most importantly, we had a successful race season. The Mowind Race
series scored 15 races with an average attendance of 25,
and 75 racers attended more than one event. 29 racers attended more
than 4 events. I have listed 110 current Mowind members in the database.

In general, race directors were prompt in confirming event dates, and
submitting their insurance payments and scores. This reflects the
main purpose of Mowind, that is to provide regatta insurance for races
in our region. By doing so we can ensure that Mowind members and
directors are protected from liability and split the cost among the
events. If you would like to become more familiar with our coverage
please see this link
http://www.david-agency.com/signal/index.htm#Regatta%20Liability%20Insurance
We maintain both Regatta Liability and General Liability. For the
most part our organization is covered against anything, however there
are some exceptions. One major exception is the activity of
Kiteboarding, and that has led to some controversial decisions made by
me over the past year. Please take a moment to read this article as well:
http://www.scka.org/kitesuit.htm
Last year we entered new territory when Kiteboarding was included in
The Crossing. As incoming president I was presented with different
information regarding our insurance, some of which turned out to be
completely false. As a result I called our insurance agent to get my
questions answered. After that I decided to remove from the schedule
any events that included kiteboarding. During the year interested
people have been discussing the matter and many suggestions have been
proposed such as allowing some events to opt out of Mowind insurance
and attempting to obtain their own. This brings up other issues of
liability since Mowind would need some resources to review any
alternative insurance. Additionally, who wants to be responsible for
making these decisions? I consider this extremely important since
our insurance covers every Mowind member and volunteer, not just those
that make the decisions.

This issue also brought up the idea of a "sanctioned" event.
Currently all that is required to be a Mowind event is to pay dues for
insurance and choose a time and place.

There has been some discussion over the year of limiting the number of
events in order to encourage a larger attendance at fewer events.
This is based on the idea that participation was lower this year due
to higher gas prices. When comparing participation to last year
however, the numbers are approximately the same, with an event average
attendance of 22 for 2007. Two major points are that race directors
invest enough time and effort in their events that there shouldn't be
a limit on the number of events. We don't want to discourage new
events either and would like to keep the organization simple.

Over the past few years we have reorganized the classes at Mowind
events to reflect different participation. We combined some and
introduced others. Currently we have three levels:

A Fleet (advanced, usually completes two laps)
Open
Limited 8.5
Hybrid
Formula
Women

Sport Fleet (Intermediate, One lap)
Men
Women

Workshop Fleet (Short course, startline assistance)
Men
Women
Junior
Senior

Most race directors have used the Mowind classes, and that facilitated
adding the scores to the season totals. In addition to providing
insurance, a purpose of Mowind is to provide standard rules and
scoring for windsurfing events.

Our current scoring system is the Mowind Hi-point system. Hi-point
systems are prefferred for a series since they can simply be added
together. Lo-point systems need to be converted and the process is
not always simple. The Mowind system awards 1 point for starting, 1
for finishing, and 1 for each racer beaten. Traditionally, DNF has
been given only 1 point. There has been much discussion over the year
of what to award DNF or to differentiate reasons since there are many
reasons for DNF. In the Nationals this year, a time limit caused many
racers to receive a DNF and they voiced an objection to only getting 1
point since they actually did complete the course. No changes have
yet been made and this is still open for discussion. In order to
speed up the scoring process I have developed an Excel spreadsheet
that has worked well though it still has many limitations. Anyone
interested in making revisions is welcome to have a go at it.

This year in addition to the Yahoo discussion group, we added a Web
page at Mowind.org. Lots of work by Scott Haas and Ulf Jentler
resulted in a great place for posting schedules, scores, pictures, and
event summaries. Anyone involved in event planning should be able to
keep their events updated. Contact Scott to register with the site or
at least provide links your event site.

Also listed on the web page are the names of Mowind officers and
committee members. To my knowledge we have had little committee
activity this year. If we are going to have committees, then
committee members should be communicating throughout the year.
Many of us including myself falsely believe that we will have more
time later. Reflecting on the past year, however, I realize that at
many events I hardly had time to talk to people, and I felt like I was
constantly running around. This reinforces my belief that Mowind
should maintain the simplest structure it can, so we can be busy
having fun and visiting, rather than doing administrative activities.
For this year we have the following people and positions.

* President: Dr. Jack Wiley
* VP/Secretary: Ulf Jentler
* Treasurer: Craig Bergh
* Scorer: Jack Wiley, Jeff Koeberl
* News: Scott Haas

* Calendar: Jeff Adamski, Craig Bergh
* Scoring/Rules: Jeff Adamski, Arnie Cleveland, Larry Reed, Kevin
Gratton
* Awards: Larry Reed, Ulf Jentler, Woody, Don Altmeyer
* Sponsorships/Raffle: Rod Clevenger, Kevin Gratton, Mike, Ulf Jentler
* Forum and Web: Arden Anderson , Ulf Jentler, Scott Haas

We should discuss what committees we want for this year as well as
hear from those who want to be involved. At this time I would also
like to solicit nominations for officers, particularly President, and
Vice President. I myself (Jack) am not going to be president next
year and Ulf has left the country for a while. Perhaps it would be a
good time to determine what the president is actually supposed to do.

There have been several ideas this year regarding fundraising and we
should discuss what we think is appropriate, keeping in mind the
amount of time involved. There has been some discussion of printing
up Mowind shirts and stickers. I also tried out a project myself this
year with lanyards though it may have been too ambitious.
My idea was to provide all Mowind Members with Mowind Lanyards and an
ID card. I put together a template for ID cards, but the main hurdle
was getting individual pictures. I was hoping to be able to get those
at events but found I had little time to get it done. I posted on the
web page that people could email me their picture for a free ID card,
however I got no responses. I have since come to realize that the
Mowind web page is great for checking schedules and scores, but not
for engaging participants in new activities. We have a raffle going
as well though it got a late start this year. Tickets have been for
sale at some events as well as on the web page. Sales at the events
were good while those from the web page were low. We need to figure
out what fundraisers are worth doing and what is a good way of doing them.

Please Take some time to think about the issues important to you and
whether you think Mowind is headed in the right direction. Using this
format for a discussion will allow interested members to digest
information and reply on their own time. We will schedule a
conference call Mid December. A tentative date is Sat. Dec. 20th at
8:00 central time.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and contributing to Mowind.