Meeting notes, Alex's Return and the Week of Awesome!

On Wednesday 29th Jan, Nikolay, Alex and Harry had a long and only slightly rambling chat with regards to how stuff is going and our plans going forwards.
This was prompted by two things -

1. Alex is coming back to Oxford for a few weeks and have we got some plans for you guys!
2. The fact that we had a new committee and it's nice to channel the burst of enthusiasm into something worthwhile.

Here are the outcomes from the hour that we schemed for:

Alex's Visit

First of all, lets do the exciting bit: Alex will be in Oxford for the entire week between Sunday 16th - Sunday 23rd Feb (and then a week after that as well)!

Let excited flailing of arms commence!

For those that have not met him, Alex is the guy responsible for the creation of this group and has been on a year abroad in Germany, for his studies, and is and if it wasn't for his hard work and dedication last year, then many of us would not be training today.

16th - 23rd Feb = Week of Awesome!

Because of this, in part to welcome Alex back, in part because you guys asked for it and in part because we just can, we are planning to run training sessions near enough every day that week! Alex will be bringing his unique twist to the training sessions, where he will either be running or helping run the sessions. Because of this, variety will be the flavour of the week, and the goal will be to get everyone to experience as many new things as we can!

The event for this week is now up and running - Join in now!

Recap of how things have been going:

The state of the club itself is... pretty good I would say! We have ploughed on with between 2-3 sessions a week. Tuesdays are unstructured, "Old Scool" sessions, where we train the old fashioned way. Thursdays have been more structured, with much more focus on structure, perfectionism of the technique of the day and with more guidance. The turnout has been both consistent and filled with exactly the sort of spirit that we look for in a Traceur.

Yeah, you guys are awesome!

New Members Drive

Some of you may have seen an email drop into your inbox. Because we will have Alex down, we are taking advantage of the extra coaching muscle and running a push towards getting new-members to coincide with his arrival. We will be running some beginner-oriented sessions to help people get started (or re-started!) with parkour. If you have been wondering if now is the time to start, then wonder no more! If you have had had that friend saying “yeah that sounds cool, I’ll try it out one day”, now is that day!

If you are reading this and want to learn about dates of what is happening when and where, or just almost sort of kinda want to see what all the fuss is about, Join the community on our Facebook group and say hello!

Financial Situation and Thinking Ahead

Financially speaking, we aren't in an awful place, but we could certainly be doing better. Since our creation only a year and a half ago, the group has been run in a state of perpetual debt, with the guys running it funding things upfront and hoping to recoup costs later - that is some of the members have personally paid up front for things like Freshers Fair, Site Hosting and T-shirts, then recouped the expenses from the club fees, once we have enough.

The initial costs for for these expenses tend to be well into the triple figures, and it would be very nice if we could reach the start of the next academic year without the need for an individual to be out of pocket for however long it takes to recoup that money.

As was always the plan, any money that is made above and beyond the basic running of the group will be spent directly on you guys, be it through hiring a coach for a day, subsidising transport for trips to other communities, the funds will give straight back to the community.

As such, for 100% transparency of what is going on, we are switching to an open book format, which you are all able to view here. Now, everyone is aware of exactly where we stand, what our targets are and what we are spending the money on. It's probably a bit bare-bones at the moment, but we'll be working hard to get our targets/goals and expenses up to date.

To start the ball slowly rolling, I (Nikolay) will be donating some money to the pot every session (including the unstructured ones). Anything that anyone else could contribute during our sessions would help us out a hell of a lot!

Conclusion

Our plans for the coming weeks are:

• More Alex!
• More training!
• More people!
• More new experiences!
• More Awesomes!