2008-07 - Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association of Canada

Editor: JAMES KELLER
air@hpac.ca
HPAC/ACVL OFFICERS
President: DOMAGOJ JURETIC
[domjuretic@videotron.ca]
Vice-president: CAS WOLAN [shga@hpac.ca]
Secretary: AMIR IZADI
[bluethermal@shaw.ca]
Treasurer: CHARLES MATHIESON
[Charles.Mathieson@telus.net]
Safety and Accident Review Officer:
QUINN CORNWELL [safety@hpac.ca]
HPAC/ACVL BOARD OF DIRECTORS
B.C. and Yukon: AMIR IZADI
Alta. and NWT: BRUCE BUSBY [buzword@telus.net]
Saskatchewan: CAS WOLAN [shga@hpac.ca]
Man. and Nunavut: QUINN CORNWELL
Ont.: STEVE YOUNGER
Que.: DOMAGOJ JURETIC [domjuretic@videotron.ca]
Atlantic Canada: MICHAEL FULLER
Business Manager: SAM JEYES
[bm@hpac.ca]
Éditeur du Survol: ANNE-SOPHIE GUENIER
[survol@hpac.ca]
Competition Commitee Chairman: MARK
DOWSETT
Observer: VINCENE MULLER
[fly@mullerwindsports.com]
FAI/CIVL Delegate: STEWART MIDWINTER
[stewartd@midwinter.ca]
Instructors Advisory Council Chair: MICHAEL
FULLER
Insurance Committee: GREGG HUMPHREYS
[insurance@hpac.ca]
Legal Advisor: MARK KOWALSKY
[lawyer@hpac.ca]
XC Records/Observer: VINCENE MULLER
Transport Canada Liaison: ANDRÉ NADEAU
[andre.nadeau@rogers.com]
Web Team: CHARLES MATHIESON, GERRY
GROSSNEGGER, QUINN CORNWEL, CHRISTIAN
BRITTON, SERGE LAMARCHE
AIR is published four times yearly by the Hang
Gliding and Paragliding Association of Canada/
L’Association Canadienne de Vol Libre, and is mailed
under Publication Agreement Number: 40735588.
Undeliverable copies should be returned to:
5 Millennium Dr.
Stratford, P.E.I.
C1B 2H2
To fly as fast as thought,
you must begin by knowing that
you have already arrived.
— Richard Bach
HTTP://HPAC.CA
Articles and photographs published in AIR remain the
property of their creators, and do not necessarily express
the viewpoints of AIR, the editor or HPAC/ACVL.
FROM THE PRESIDENT
ning. A place on website to check if you
want to volunteer.
■ Increase membership – bringing back
old members and limiting attrition, developing
a sense of community.
■ Safety.
■ Information-Communications.
■ Sites.
■ Sustainability.
■ Legal entity – but unanswered questions
remain.
Although this seems a bit theoretical,
we did bring this to the practical realm by
building our priority list and game plan
from this discussion. Let’s go down the list
of ideas and how they will concretely translate
into actions in this coming year.
The game plan:
■ We will redefine the role of your regional
representative. He or she will be more than
the local pilot voting on national issues. Our
membership needs directors they know by
name, who they can reach anytime (or most
of the time!) and who they can complain to.
Directors must be the bridge between the
provincial and national volunteers. They
have to be able to give a snapshot of what
is going on in their provinces to the other
HPAC directors (regular reports) and to
the rest of the country (by a regular piece in
AIR, possibly).
■ Standardizing instruction is an ongoing
goal that is best illustrated with the current
effort to review our rating system to bring
it up to more current standards that should
be pretty equal nationwide. Those standards
will still take into account the regional diversity
imposed by geography. This effort
is currently halfway through and won’t be
implemented until it can be done so simultaneously
and comprehensively.
■ Our new business manager, Sam
Jeyes, will be very keen on finding ways to
streamline business processes and services
to membership. A back-to-basics attitude
dominates at the board of directors level
right now. As an example, we stopped providing
Cross Country Magazine. This magazine
was provided at minimum savings to
our members and was causing big headaches
and eating lots of our BM’s time. Our
BM will also repatriate most of the day-today
bookkeeping of our organization. The
same is true with our recent difficult decision
to eliminate the family membership.
■ Regional differences in the way we fly,
what we fly with and what concerns us as
individual pilots and as part of a local community
have to be reflected in the regional
representation at the national level.
■ Our organization will always rely
mainly on volunteers. Since the life span of
a volunteer career is always limited, succession
is a part of life in this business. We have
to think of who comes next and make sure
that getting on board and up to speed isn’t
an insurmountable task. So we have to keep
the organization simple to run. We always
have to be on the lookout for new volunteers
and we will provide different places
where members can express their desire to
volunteer. Volunteer recognition is still a
current topic, so we are still on the lookout
for a formula by which we might modestly
compensate our volunteers.
■ On top of our regular marketing concerns,
we plan to concentrate our efforts on
enticing ex-members to rejoin while working
on the attrition side of the equation.
However, we have to recognize that there
are many reasons that explain attrition rates
in our sport — and we must concentrate on
those which we can influence. We believe
the main factor is the lack of a sense of community.
If you really feel part of the group
that goes on flying, you might just go on flying
yourself. The main tools to promote this
sense of community will be the focus of the
latter part of this text.
■ Safety is still an Achilles’ heal of our
sport. We still have a long ways to go even
if it’s just in getting a clear picture of how
dangerous or safe our sport is. So on top of
going after the promotion of safe practices,
we have to strive for better incident and accident
reporting. Our depleted safety committee
definitely needs help.
■ Even though we have a quarterly magazine
and a website, we realize there is a gap
to bridge in our communications with our
members. The revamped role of the directors
and the plans we have for the website
should go a long way in improving the connection
between your organization and
you. The first and most concrete example of
this is the addition of a 1-800 line to reach
our business manager. As far as in house
communication, the directors use SKYPE, a
free Internet voice-chat service. So we now
talk on a regular basis. It would be great
to continue to implement this at the local
level and really create a “communication
net” between national and local volunteers.
As far as the AIR Magazine is concerned,
we’ve started the experimentation by hav-
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AIR MAGAZINE | JULY 2008 5