When clubs can hold board votes and vote long time members out of the club, it’s pretty clear that it may be time to create a new Checker fan based club and expand this Facebook Checker Group, so much for the club motto about being alone.
One of our Facebook Checker Cab group members, Connie Ann recently put up a post on her Facebook wall regarding her church, “the Bible talks more about the unity of the church than heaven or hell. It’s that important. Unity is not uniformity”.
That statement is very powerful and more importantly can be applied not only to church communities but to our everyday lives. It can even be expanded to the Facebook Checker Cab Group.
Moving forward, the intent of the Checker Cab Group will be to create unity not uniformity or conformity for that matter. As the old club desired to control and force conformity of voice on their Facebook page, or even claim copyrights to blogs written by club members, this Checker Cab Group will never desire to force uniformity or infringe on other people’s property rights.
Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll post the progress being made regarding the development of a new Checker fan/owner based experience. We’ll promote unity and harmony, not conformity and business.
You will never hear terms like “Intellectual ‘Property” coming from this group. The experience will be free and fun, no club boards, no politics and more importantly no pan handling for money. The goal will be to have fun with our Checkers.
Driving a free experience will allow for younger new Checker owners. $25.00 dues may not seem like a lot to some, but for younger folks trying to start out in our hobby, every dime counts.
The free Facebook experience is a great way to expand the Checker fan and ownership experience. Case in point, meet Alex Hale
Alex lives in Atlanta and will be a freshman at Elon University in Greensboro next year, he is perhaps one to the youngest Checker owners in the collector car world today. We need more young members in this group and Alex is the type of collector that will carry the Checker tradition on for years to come.
Alex found our group via Facebook, this is a perfect example of how clubs of the future will grow via social media. The challenge of the future will be: how do you keep young members participating yet expand the dialog beyond snail mail based newsletters?
Quite frankly, quarterly paper based newsletters are not the solution. The solution will be active Facebook dialog on a daily basis that spurs the imagination of new young Checker owners.
Constant feedback from other members, support, advice, sharing show experiences and documented progress on restoration projects are easy ways of generating interest in Checkers. The paper based newsletter just can’t provide that level of constant interaction.
This group will continue to produce a Newsletter, but it will be distributed via the file sharing functions in Facebook or the new website currently under development. If you wanted a printed copy, just download and print on your home printer. The major benefit of not printing electronically means that costs can be kept down.
In the end this means that clubs of the future will be free. With that in mind, this Checker Cab Facebook group will operate under that premise. We’re already the largest Checker fan based group in the world, let’s continue to build it and become the premier Checker experience.
More about Alex
Alex is second owner of this blue 78 Checker A11 taxicab, a car he has idolized since he was 5 or 6. As a young boy he drove past it almost every day and fell in love with the Checker he would later own some fifteen years later.
Over the years Alex would introduce himself to the owners and learned much about his future Checker. Apparently the woman he purchased the 1978 Checker A11 was the original owner. The original owners purchase the A11 directly from CMC and drove to Kalamazoo to pick the Checker up from the factory brand new.
Over time Alex shared his desire to buy the Checker, according to Alex “after much negotiation and maybe a little schmoozing” he bought it from the original owner and named it after her, Miss Ida.
The Checker sat for 10 years, so to get it running was a challenge. Once started and running Alex has started take on new challenges such as adding side mirrors.
According to Alex, the Checker is cleaning up really nicely and he’s excited to be the second owner, its already been a lot of fun! Well it’s safe to say we’re all happy to have Alex in our Facebook Checker Cab Group. Please welcome Alex and Miss Ida.
Joining the Checker Cab Group Club is easy, just like us on Facebook
