LITTLE SHIP CLUB (Qld) 2016-17 ANNUAL REPORT

Communications Member communications remains a topic under active consideration by your Board, with a range of options evaluated; all have their pros and cons but each always returns to the vexed matter of active membership engagement and support to maintain timely content of interest and relevance. A quarterly, rather than monthly, publication has been proposed but, although ostensibly freeing-up 75% of the editor’s year, it not only peaks the production effort higher (with 90 days of pre- and post- topics to cover), it also lacks ‘real-time newsworthiness’. A smaller page size (e.g. A5 rather than A4) would appear to lessen the workload but pieces would need to be shorter, smaller and more tightly edited and advertiser space would also reduce; a similar design effort is needed even if the page size is 50% smaller. More success has been had in 2017 with the periodic ‘Mailchimp’ email communications to Members; investigations into evolving the current ‘plain text’ template format into something more colourful remain ongoing. But, as the Commodore noted in the most recent such message, it’s not sustainable to always expect the same few pairs of hands to be doing the lion’s share of the work.

Material collated (e.g. QRBC updates supplied by Club representatives), r eported on (e.g. MSQ NOTAMs, etc) or original contributions (e.g. trip reports, recipe notes, etc) by myself appeared in all 13 editions and the item count (124 pieces) represented fully 59% of the total content output. Modest success was obtained with the monthly cover photo competition, with 10 Member images used across 61% of editions – but none at all received after the ninth. More tellingly, just eight original contributions were written by Members and, as 50% of these were from Board members, that means only four of 210 pieces (just 1.9%) came from the general membership. Taken with the cover images, the combined total edges up to 14/210 contributions ~ or 6.6%. Matthew Tesch Rear-Commodore Director (Communications)

Many Members continue to lament the lack of a regular monthly eNews. The responsibility for this is individual, circumstantial and shared by all: first, because I set the bar too high with its high-calibre design, second because I did so when I had much more time to tackle each month’s compilation and, third, because of the overwhelming lack of support and contributions from Members to filling its content. Everyone – by all accounts – enjoyed receiving and reading each edition, but scant indeed was the active input from the membership base, as this simple survey shows. Across 13 editions a total of 210 items (reports, articles, news topics or image collations) was counted. Board/Flag reports appeared in all 13, comprising 21.4% of the content total. Section or Club manager reports appeared in only three-quarters of the editions, for a total of 11% of the overall content.

Flag / Board reports 1

Manager reports

Section reports

Items collated by editor 2

Items reported by editor 2

Original items from editor 2

Members’ front cover photos

Member report contributions 3

eNEWS EDITION

1 (June 2015) 2 (July 2015) 3 (August 2015)

3 3 3 3 2 2 2 5 5 6 5 3 3

1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1

1 1 1 0 1 0 0 2 3 1 1 1 1

4 3 4 6 6 7 3 7 7 4 7 7

0 1 1 0 2 2 1 1 2 0 0 1 2

3 4 1 2 1 1 3 2 2 3 0 2 2

0 1 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 1 1 1 2 0

4 (September 2015) 5 (October 2015) 6 (November 2015) 7 (December 2015) 8 (February 2016)

9 (March 2016) 10 (April 2016) 11 (May 2016) 12 (June 2016) 13 (July 2016)

20

S/TOTALS 0

45 45

10 10

13 3 13 3

85 3

13

26 26

10 10

8 4 8 4

TOTALS 0

98

13/13 100%

9/13 69%

12/13 92%

8/13 61%

5/13 3 38% 3

PROPORTION of 13 editions represented 0

13/13 100%

10/13 77%

10/13 77%

13/13 100%

Average 50%

0 Total number of items / reports counted over 13 editions = 210 1 Including some by MT after appointment to Board (Feb.2016) 2 Plus MT reports as Board member after appointment (Feb. 2016) and later as Flag Officer (q.v. note 1) 3 Photo montage ‘corkboard’ counted as single item, collated by the editor 4 50% of these report contributions made by Board members; therefore, total Member report contributions = 4

NOTES

Little Ship Club (Queensland Squadron)

Annual Report 2016–2017

AR.11