And the finger-pointing continues. Nickeld!@#s? Sigh. While the world is giving up on us, we are moving forward. We will have a weekend event. We won't let this stop us. We won't have keychains or T-shirts, but we WILL have a good time. And I can say with confidence that more than 27 people will show. To all those turning their backs on us...you are missing out on the opportunity to meet a lot of great people. It's too bad. We would have loved to show you around our humble little neck of the woods. The death of S2KDays is a bummer, but it's just a hurdle we'll have to jump. "Sac2kDays" won't be as big, but it is a guaranteed good time. We will post more info as it becomes available.

 

To the S2KCA BOD's: I'm truly sorry that this event had to be cancelled. That really breaks my heart that the turnout wasn't even close to 1/2 (or 1/4 for that matter) of the number of cars expected. I really hope you're not taking a huge financial loss on this so that you may continue your efforts. Best of luck to all of you!

 

Well I will say that is really sad that the turnout sucked to the point of cancellation. This is a real setback for S2KCA and hopefully you will not be too damages by it.

As a displaced east coaster of sorts, I have learned that organizing events out here can be a tiresome endeavor. Even the Laguna day was a bitch to get people to sign up to. Perhaps there is a general fear of commitment out here. People wont commit until the very last minute for some reason.

I think too that the demographics for the west coast S2K owners is quite different than back east. Much younger on the whole and you will likely get a bigger turnout if the event was held at Hooters rather than the Sheraton.

But more importantly the lack of a 4-6 winter layover makes people a little less enthusiastic. When I lived in Toronto, summer activities were a big deal because you had to spend so much time indoors and doing little over the winter. Where I'm living now, there is hardly any change in the weather from season to season so not much of any downtime during the year. A date in November is much the same as in June.

I'm saddened by the passing of S2KDays this year, hopefully you can organize something for the east coast next year.

 

I too like many others am shocked. Keep your chin up.

 

I'll echo Bob Moss's statements as to what it is like to participate in a vintage car meet. I've been to several national meets for Triumphs and some of the differences I see between those events and the '02 S2kDays are as follows (note these are not criticisms, but merely observations that might be helpful in setting up a future event):

Usually, when registration for the event starts, there is a full agenda and schedule of activities posted. I looked on the S2kCA website and I could find the registration form, but I had no idea what activities had been planned.

Activities at the event include a wide range of interests. Have a TSD rallye, a fun rallye/site seeing tour, an autox and/or some track time, shade tree mechanics work shop (how do you adjust the valves, etc), waxers work shop (here is how you clay, etc.), dyno day, 1/4 mile drag night, local site tours for spouses/kids. Many of the activities can be held at the same time so that participants choose which they wish to attend. Then of course the standard group activities such as the banquet and group pic, pool-side happy hour.

Have regional clubs vie for the honor of sponsoring the event. This gives some "instant" participants. They can also select the exact location where the event will be based so that it can be near as many diverse interesting things to do as possible. For example, the Atlanta Club may want to hold the event in Savannah to take advantage of the interesting non-car related attractions in the area while still being close to Roebling Road Raceway.

Timing is important. As I think someone mentioned, June is not a good month. Usually, late July or August is best for families.

Just as a suggestion for S2kCA, it might be a good idea to carve the US up into divisions (Southeast Division, Northwest Division, etc) and encourage regional clubs to host annual divisional meets that can be smaller in scale, but still provide the comradery at a lower cost than a national event. This would provide newbies with a taste of what a national event is like and motivate them to attend a future one.

To all those who worked on setting up the California event...I hope it all works out for the best.

 

negcamber -

I believe the s2kca is already split into regional groups. A few months back there was a big to-do over electing people to fill these slots. I'm baffled by the fact that since the election we've hardly heard from those elected. Instead the main point people (the only ones communicating about s2kdays) seem to be those in place pre-election (i.e. Greg, meat and now sondra). I may be wrong (and if I am, I hope they will correct me) but they seem to be the only ones promoting the event. If most of the work has fallen on those few people, I can see why they may have had some problems organizing the event. If s2kca survives this, I hope your entire board (from silent executive board members on down) will take the hint and pitch in.

I think a strong national organization is a good thing. Only in can't depend on only a few people to organize and run it - everyone has to pitch in on the board has to pitch in and help. If wasn't too long ago that some of those in place were clamoring to get on board and in some cases freely criticize those already running the group. Where are you now?

 

What/Where is dragonball run???

 

Hey Greg, Sondra, Meat, anybody- there's a lot of chatter going on over in the "Meets and Events" forum that maybe not all the Saturday/Sunday events have been cancelled. Just to clear things up, is everything at the Sheraton now OFF? And are we safe to cancel our reservations there? Please give a definative answer. Thank you.
And while I am typing, I will add my thank you to all of you for the attempts to put on a really great event. It will be rehashed for weeks about what went wrong, but the fact remains you did your best and it just didn't come together. Pats on the back to all of you.

 

Morris

We will hopefully announce the fate of the weekend today.

 

I hope you will all follow the post in Meets & Events entitled, "S2K Days Cancelled, SpeedVentures ....".

You will see that we are going to run Thurs and Fri. at Thunderhill and have dinners and rallies and lots of fun stuff, regardless. The Californians have been enjoying event to event turnouts in the 30's at the S2000 Challenge (drivers and hanger-outers) and we hope to see others from around the country at this event. Especially those who had already planned to come out.

If everyone who already signed up for Thunderhill shows up we should have upwards of 50 S2000's running for fun at Thunderhill, and possibly another 20 or so cars just hanging out in the paddock. Not to mention some beautiful rallies (organized by SpeedVentures, S2000 International, and other local S2K clubs, if not S2KCA) on the weekend.

While it is disappointing that the turnout won't be in the 200's, we will still have one of the biggest track turnouts yet. I hope D Duty, and all the others in this thread will still maintain their plans and come out. If people only want to show up if the count is really high, then I suppose that's a good reason not to come out. But I'm sure we can get close to 100 cars if we work at it. If not, it's still a bunch of S2000's, new faces, and lots of fun.

My hope is S2kCA will run the event (maybe a little watered down?), but still push forward. Obviously they would have to reduce their financial risks some, but they've already done that with the track, now maybe they could do it with hotels and stuff also? Is this a possibility?

If not, the local s2kca clubs and the other evil Californians (joking) will do their best to make this happen.

dt