Chairman's Update: April 2003 2003 SAAB Owners Convention By Marc A. Fails, President Central Penn SAAB Club April was a very productive month for the SOC Committees, with plenty of results to report. We were successful in our beta test of the software we will use to tabulate the People's Choice votes. The software was designed by Dan Borisko and Ron Nichipor, who implemented it perfectly in a live test at SAABs @ Carlisle, with more than 175 people and 131 cars in attendance. They will be making the necessary revisions for the convention and the additional categories at our event. Congratulations to both Dan and Ron for a job well done. The SAABs @ Carlisle event proved to be a great training ground for many of our volunteers who will be on hand helping at the convention this year. We made note of many things that looked good on paper, but can be improved upon for the convention. Special thanks to the clubs who were on hand for the event including WASSAAB, New England SAAB Association, New Jersey SAAB Owners Club, New York SAAB Owners Club, New England Sonett Club, Swedish Underground and SAAB Club of North America and their members who will be helping with the convention. The Concour Committee, chaired by Larry West; has voted on the proposed changes to the Concour event this year. The new rule changes and categories will be posted on the website shortly for everyone to review. The Committee put forth a great effort and I think the event will be even better than in years past. I extend my thanks to the Committee for their valuable effort this year. The convention planning committees will convene at The Hershey Lodge at the end of May, (May 31st and June 1st) where we will perform our on-site visit and bring many of the volunteers and some of our sponsors together for planning sessions, and review the plans for the convention. We continued to work on sponsorships in April, and have finalized The People's Choice sponsorship, thanks to Bill Jacobson and Sports Car Service, Inc. in Wilmington, DE. The Long Distance Award will be sponsored by Brewer's SAAB, Maugansville, MD, who will also be a Patron Level sponsor. Additionally, we received a commitment from Motorsport Service, Jamestown, NY for Patron Level sponsorship, and in so doing, helped us reach 100% of the 2002 convention results, but there is still much work needed to reach our goals for 2003. These fine sponsors join our other convention sponsors including: Eisenhauer SAAB, Wernersville, PA (Platinum Level); Roberti Motorcars, Kingston, NY (Bronze Level); Swedish Connection, Bergenfield, NJ (Double Patron Level); Swedish Motors, Marietta, PA (Patron Level); and Don Fatzinger Automotive, Robesonia, PA (Patron Level); Lehman Motors SAAB, Harrisburg, PA (hole-in-one giveaway car), SAAB Cars USA, Mile Hi Body Shop, Denver, CO; The SAAB Network, Menlo Park, CA and Lititz Auto Service, Manheim, PA in support of SOC2003. We continue to work on our list of additional sponsors and look forward to reporting more commitments and sponsorships in May. The official convention posters continue to circulate and are proving quite popular. The sponsorship team continues to distribute them. If your favorite mechanic or dealer doesn't have one yet, pass along the contact information, and we'll get one out to them, provided they agree to display them. Posters are also available for sale, at $10 each, plus postage. The Hershey Lodge reports that we have sold 25% of the rooms in our group block, As we point out on the website, when calling 800-HERSHEY to reserve your room, please indicate that you are calling to reserve your room for the 2003 SAAB Owners Convention. This will ensure that we fill our room block per our contract with Hershey, and you get the group rate of $129 per night, plus (9%)tax. In April we added contact info on the website for the Autocross and 21 & Under committees. Chris Moberg still has quite a backlog of material that needs to be posted and he is working through it. On-line registration went LIVE on April 16th, and within a matter of minutes, Kimberly and Mark Gates were the first on-line registrations received. Thanks to Kimberly and Mark, as well as more than 40 others who have registered electronically thus far. We have also secured our featured speaker for the Saturday evening awards banquet. This author will be familiar to many, unknown to others, but humorous and entertaining for everyone, and we will announce his name once we have received a complete bio and topic information. There will also be a book signing session after dinner Saturday evening. We are also considering a featured speaker for Friday evening as well, and Dan Orzano continues to work on this possibility. Tom Nelson and team are assembling for The Club Participation Award. Tom is adding some folks to his team and reviewing changes and simplification to last year's rules. Once he has compiled some of the needed info, he can begin his process. If you have any suggestions for the contest, you can reach Tom, as well as the other committee leaders from the contacts tab on the website. We currently have 12 contacts and will be posting the 21 & Under committee and Autocross Committee contacts soon. Jim and Megan Hutchings have added their GT850 to the list of Vintage ride-along cars, joining Bruce Turk and Gary Stottle who have volunteered for this new activity. I introduced this in Nines #262. If anyone else would like to participate, please let me know. Thanks to Gary and Bruce, Jim and Megan for their support. And to close this month's report, the planning committee has spent some time reviewing the give-away car for 2003. We have been unsuccessful in finding a suitable car to-date, given our strict criteria, but that's why we developed the criteria in the first place. Discussions amongst committee members, as well as conferring with legal counsel, point to the fact that we really do not need the added liability. We have also received input from many attendees who would like us to provide more prizes and chance to win throughout the weekend, than have only one item that one person wins. I couldn't agree more and we are working on a suitable solution. Thus far, we haven't made a final decision, so if you have an opinion, now is the time to share it by contacting me at: mailto:neuswede@comcast.net. Again, I thank everyone for their continued suggestions, cooperative spirit and support over the past months. Please keep those ideas and suggestions coming. Until next time... Marc Fails, Chairman 2003 SAAB Owners Convention
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