Last weekend several people castigated me for suggesting that Quanta should be wound up.
Now it's time to see if you are prepared to put your money where your mouths are. I am not asking you to to do anything drastic like joining the committee, but something more simple to show your support for Quanta and the Quanta committee. Unlike most of you I have frequent unofficial contact with members of the Quanta committee. In public they are frequently criticising the members for their apathy. In private their language and emotions are much stronger. I think it is fair to say they are bitter and disillusioned by the lack of support from the members. They are having to double or triple up committee duties to keep Quanta alive and feel a lack of concern and interest from the members. Over the last year they have continually warned that the future of Quanta was in jeopardy, but apparently no one was listening. At the moment committee morale is at a low ebb and has been made worse by two factors. For the first time a Quanta committee has had to be prepared for the real possibility of advising the closure of the organisation at the next AGM. They have also had to cope with a serious problem, the details of which I cannot go into, that has proved more difficult to solve than first thought. Some advanced plans for Quanta on which the committee have done hours of preparation have had to be put on hold. Inevitably this has led to some tension between members of the committee. So I am asking you all now to give the committee a good morale boost. Below is a list of the problems that face the committee. It is a little frightening in its length. Let's now give the committee some detailed help and feedback on these issues. 1: QUANTA MAGAZINE Quanta has been unable to find a permanent editor for its magazine for about 6 years. There is now an acute crisis with no editor or acting editor. Producing a magazine is a highly skilled task and the people on the committee with those skills are already overworked with other duties. I doubt if the committee now has the resources to produce a magazine. What should they do in these circumstances? 2: WEBSITE The Quanta website has not been updated for 6 months. Although Quanta has had websites for about 10 years it has never mastered the art of keeping a website up to date. How should they tackle this problem? 3: SHOWS Quanta can now manage only one show per year and the attendance is usually low. Quanta is legally obliged to hold an AGM each year. Although in recent years attendance has improved, three or four years ago attendance levels were dangerously near the quorum. How should Quanta organise its AGMs in future? 4: SOUTH EAST Apart from a small, and, in my opinion, somewhat secretive subgroup, Quanta has had no presence in the South East for almost 4 years. How do we re-establish contact with the South East? 5: FINANCE Some years ago I wrote a piece in QL Today about the falling membership and was accused of being anti-Quanta. When I wrote that item subscription income covered more than 80% of expenditure. Today that figure is more like 60%. Quanta has survived financially in recent years because Rich Mellor has traded in second hand hardware on their behalf, but this is a diminishing source of income. What would you do about the gap between subscription income and expenditure? Would you be prepared to accept increasing the subscription to a maximum of £25? (And just a warning for those people who suggest structurally using the capital. You would be condemning Quanta to a short term future. In the worst case scenario you could count the years left on the fingers of one hand.) 6: CONSTITUTION Several people suggested amending Quanta's constitution to save the organisation. What specific amendments are you proposing? There is no need for detailed proposals - that could be a job for the experts. Bear in mind that constitutional amendments are not a quick fix. The earliest that constitutional amendments affecting the committee could be implemented would be 2013. 7: SUBGROUPS This still seems to be a fairly successful area for Quanta. However they have great autonomy and, with the exception of London, all the subgroups could continue if Quanta closed down. Is there a need for more structured links between the sub groups and the central organisation? There must be a lot of things happening in subgroups that could be of interest to all members. They are also in a position to provide valuable feedback to the committee. 8: KEYBOARD MEMBRANES Not really a problem, but something for Quanta to boast about. Without Quanta there would have been no new keyboard membranes. Any ideas for other good uses for the capital? But don't forget you can't use the capital for both projects and to make up shortfalls in the subscription income/expenditure balance. I want to add some personal comments about the South East situation. Five years ago it was the life blood of Quanta, and Manchester and the north were the poor relations. There was always at least one show, and often two a year, whereas the north had just one show every two years. The last South East show was held in 2007 and the decline in interest in Quanta (and perhaps the QL) was frighteningly rapid. How often do you now see the former stalwarts of Portslade and Byfleet contributing to this list? Almost never. At one time a quarter of Quanta members lived in London or the South East. I expected to see some old friends at Quanta's centenary, but only one person from the region attended. It appears that Quanta now means nothing to them. That is a warning for us all, Best Wishes, Geoff _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
