Location of meets question
 

I have just been looking and over the past 1 1/2 year there have been 3 South NJ meets ( South of 195/Trenton).. April 2011 Chickies and petes, Aug 2011 Texas Roadhouse, and April 2012 Chickies and Petes.. Just wonderring why that is?? I know your doing the East/West thing but there are plenty of spots along the shore thats more southern for us to go to as well. To me it just seems that 10 out of the 12 months of the year we have meets above Trenton. I for one would like to see more meets off the AC exspressway or more south in the future. Just seems fair..

Because the amount of people who turn out to deep south meets is not very much, cold hard truth on that one.

Disclaimer: I am only assuming this, as I have never been to a south meet but have only heard these things.

Looking at the pictures from the last meet last month it doesnt look all that packed with cars either!! I was reading posts in the meet thread about another low turnout..

I would be okay with a central location every month or do a N,C,S NE,NEC,NES,NW,NWC,NWS rotation istead of what seems to be a N,C,S,NE,NC,NW,NC,S, rotation.. Having 2 meets in the South a year is really not what I would call a fair rotation especially when the meets happen in March and Nov 2 typically cool-cold months when people dont like to BS outside.. Just my .02.. Not trying to start any crap or what not..

Well don't assume I like far north meets either ;)

I would love to see the meet schedule just rotate around the 195 area, cause it seems as if the majority of members are from there. The meets in central also surprisingly have the largest turnouts.

But, since the club is a NJ one, they must cater somewhat to the outliers and thats why there are a couple of deep south or deep north meets.

Remember, assuming here.

:nod:

We rotate north, central, south, central, north, central, south......As Matt said, we are a state club and encompass the two extreme tips but people will always complain about distance. Not picking on you specifically here, but many people have voiced complaints that, say, live in central complain about how meets aren't close to them. Many times they are 20 minutes away from a meet, but say it's too far. We did, however, incorporate more central meets into the calendar for 2012 to make it easier for everyone and since they are the best attended meets.

March meet was in Howell, in central. April meet was in South. August meet is in South. August and April are pretty good weather months aren't they? :-?

Besides, I don't know what south jersey has to offer, but at least in the north we had amazing driving roads for this past meet :lol:

Nick, there is nice scenery down south too.^^^

We break the state in to 4 areas, North, East Central, West Central and South. Each areas gets 3 meets. Geographically central areas are closest for all members. We get going from south jersey to north jersey is tough. So more in the middle caters to a far larger slice of the membership.

South gets April and August last year and this year. So 2 out of 3 are in good weather, just like the other areas. So IMO it is distributed on relatively fair basis. Hell, the only one within 20 minutes of my house is January. So it sure isn’t setup to make my life easy.
http://www.njfboa.org/events/

I make the hour+ drive to the south meets. Others do too. How about you come up to some of the central meets? Rare is it when southern member comes to anything central, forget the north meets. We had few if any when we ran the big event at Island for years. The April south meet did not draw heavy by the way, maybe weakest of the year so far. Last December in Flemington blew it away. As did January, March and May, and it looks like June as well.

Participation drives things. That is part of how the east central thing came to be. The guys out there go to meets, and not just their own area. And I for one tend to listed to people physically in front of me a lot.

Did you fill out your member survey?
http://www.njfboa.org/forums/survey.php?&do=take&sid=28

I don't have too much to say that hasn't been said, but the #1 complaint according to the member survey is that meets are too far. North guys don't want to go south, south guys don't want to go north, and both groups ask why we favor central.

As Scott said, North->Central and South ->Central is a much more tolerable drive than driving the entire state in a day.

On top of that, my personal view is that I don't mind driving far but it should be for something cool, like a trip to Velocity 17 or to NJMP down south. I am not going to drive 4 hours round trip to go to Chili's or whatever.

I am fine with driving to central meets if I get time off one of these weekends to attend. I am cool with a Central meet every month that goes from Trenton-the shore. Yes I did fill out a survey but if your not going to listen to us unless we are in person then whats the point??

The primary point of the survey was to aggregate data and find trends so we can make utilitarian decisions about the club. Where to go, what to do, etc. That's not to say we did not look at individual responses- in fact I have looked at every response myself.

It is a catch-22. Members do not want to be active if stuff is not close to them, and then meets are picked in order to satisfy the most active members as they get the best turnout.

This is gonna be one of those "put up or shut up" type deals, as in, if a ton of south people start showing up to meets then perhaps the meet sched would be changed to accommodate it. Not saying come to north meets, but central meets its usually extremely rare to see a south person.

Until then, majority rules I would think. Can't argue with cold hard facts, the south always has little turnout.

Kind of an argumentative answer. What are we not listening too? Does not instantly agreeing with you = not listening? I thought I answered the question pretty plainly, hitting on all your points.

What I heard here is we only have one south meet in good weather, which was wrong. I heard you want more south meets, but we feel it is fairly spread around the state and offered reasons why, plus south meet participation is lacking now. Are members more likely to come to the meets if there are suddenly more? We publish the schedule way in advance, like in January. They are mentioned in the newsletter all the time. If a member chooses to not make time nothing more I can do. But I’m not one to reward no-shows.

The survey is still open BTW so I have not looked at it yet. Open IIRC to 7/7.

From looking at the past meets looks like we got around 24 people @ Circus, 28 people at Chappterhouse and 20 people last year @ Texas Roadhouse in Millville.. Tell me if I am wrong but those 3 meets are North,Central, and South correct?? Looks pretty even between them.. We get around 14 people @ the other south meet of the year in Egg harbor..


Would I like more South meets?? Sure but like said before I would be happy for a central meet location for every month..

Wasnt trying to be argumentive just thought your statement that you listen to people in front of you alot (as oppose to online) and then your next sentance was did I fill out the online survey was kinda silly..

Seems like the Roadhouse always gets over 20 people to show. even when we did the Nifty fifties in Turnersville we got 28 people to sign up for that one.. Maybe Chickies and petes isnt the right spot?

Jeff,

If you have suggestions for meets, please let us know as we are always looking to find great spots that lead to a good time and good turnout. Hearing from guys who live/work in the area is always better than just picking a spot that looks good on paper. If you can, try to make it unique in some way.

That's how we ended up with Circus, Duke Island, and a few of the other "flagship" meets.

Circus is Central FYI, not North. And 28 cars is a very small meet compared to the past years for there.

We are always looking to improve the club and this survey was one of the ways of doing so. Things have been changing in the past few years and will continue to as time passes. We plan to change it up again for 2013, and would love local suggestions.

What Scott meant was that the survey is a great tool, but is weighed - as they say, actions speak louder than words.

edit: Bill beat me to the local suggestions idea.

I didn't know if you even knew about the survey, thus my question, that’s all. And I got to buy you a map lol. Circus is quite east central. It's less than an hour straight up the GSP from the C&P meet. Which came about because of complaints the south meets were too far west – Fudruckers, something up on rt 73, etc..

I’m all for new places. Suggest away, most of us don't know the area. I picked C&P because I knw it was there. They have been good to us.
Nifty Fifties was ok, but a lot of guys walked out unhappy about the food or something. We purposely didn’t go back for some reason.

Your right circus is the central.. My mistake on that one.. I do need to get a map of NJ... My point was that circus is always a good turnout and this year they got 28 people to sign up, texas Roadhouse in the Deep South is a good turnout and we get 24 people there.. Your other point that nobody goes to the south meets only really applies to Chickies and petes.. Just about Every other South meet I have looked @ in the past 2 yrs got a good turnout just like some of the central meets.. Chickies and Petes doest get a good showing for some reason.. Maybe because its a bar and real dark inside and for 11am some people might not like that?? My suggestion would be to replace the Chickies and Petes meet and replace it with Philly Dinner in Runnemede or some other suggestion Maybe a Atco meet or even stewarts or webers rootbeer stand..

Atco seems like a possibility and is unique enough to draw people from further north.

damn if thats Deep South wtf am I?! :bertstare:

Anyway, I have been rooting for the Atco location meet for awhile, we don't have to make it a rental, and it gives a lot of people that may have never been to the track exposure to what goes on and such without the pressures of racing if they didn't want to.

JW :D

umm i have no say in this at all because im new, but i would like north west meets and of course central because i live here, the cost of gas sucks but i would go to meets anyway... if i knew how to get to them ... some are far, but its more about not knowing how to get to them for me...

I agree with more North West meets too.......Do you own a GPS or have access to mapquest???

i hate my gps it never work and yea i got mapquest i could always use that i guess.??

i think i like north and west because its better scenery..

+1 for south!

+1 finally someone from out of the area...plus a few guys who were at Saturday's meet who loved driving out to God's country :nod:

of course I'm completely kidding!In the future, I'd like all meet dates run by me to make sure they work with my schedule. I work every other weekend and guess when most of the meets are scheduled!