Hi BF,
In response to your q's, here's what I'm thinking at the moment:
1. Affiliation - necessary? no. we've established that we can "cruise" quite comforatbly with Convoy Rules. Our size isn't enough to warrant affiliation for any other reason. I'm more than happy to put this issue to the back of the list.. People who want to do motorsport should join a local motorsport club and be part of the fun/competition a larger motorsport club can provide.
2. Cost of Affiliating on our Own 'taint cheap. Around $440 per annum gets you your CAMS fee, add in any insurances etc. Previous posts have indicated this may be a good solution "down the track" but is not appropriate for us at this stage.
3. Website - do we need one? - i tend to think yes. The club has it's SOLE base here on this forum. It would be good to have a "site" for us to call our own. Perhaps with some tweaking
www.beyondsoftware.com.au/mx6club would do the trick. We could also (as part of the setup) register a name such as
www.mx6-aus.com for a couple of hundred dollars.
4. Name - it would appear that "MX-6 Club of Australia" has scored the most points.
5. Flyers - PK sent me an excellent example of a flyer. I was going to do some work on it but ended up not doing anything unfortunately.
we need someone to volunteer to coordinate the development of the flyer. Anyone????
6. Derivatives - Part of the "vision" of the club needs to talk about our openess to MX6 derivatives - like the telstar, 626, probe etc. In my opinion - it's the MX6 that brings all these cars together therefore is appropriate that the club uses the name. However there should be NO limitations on non MX-6 members - eg - they can hold office, contribute etc. etc.
7. Structure - as we are geographically spread out, I think each state needs an elected official. Each cruises should each have a coordinator that is NOT necessarily the official. A national president would also be good, someone who is elected for say 12 months and would be responsible for things like ensuring the newsletter goes out every 3 months, liaison with Mazda/dealers etc, liaison with AUSPOC etc. Each official should probably also be a "moderator" of our main forum. Anyway these thoughts are still pretty "loose" and need fleshing out.
Other Stuff
Our Presence
We are limited at the moment to dealing with people who are by and large, online and able to check forums every day. This is proabably about 20% of the population. Our club needs a presence in the "real" world as well as the cyberworld and needs a PO Box or Address for people to write to, a phone number, etc. These are the things a normal club has and we need to get to. I would expect that the "president" would clean the PO Box, make available their phone number etc for contact other than the net.
* Club President
* PO Box
* Phone Number
Publicity
By getting ourselves into things like Unique Cars, Drive sections of the paper and local paper our profile will be lifted and the club will grow. We need someone who can focus on publicity... Does anyone have any experience in publicity?
Newsletters
These can be "difficult" to organise yet provide a real benefit. A good newsletter needs
a) multiple contributors
b) to be informative and interesting
c) an editor IN CHIEF - ie don't complain if your article gets chopped!!

d) to be printed, enveloped and sent.
This isn't a big job for someone with a bit of verve and talent. Same person as publicity officer??
Money!
All of the above will take a few bucks to get started. Some of us have better access to money than others. New members or potential members won't take kindly to being asked to pay to join.
The clubs needs some form of "club kitty", that is regularly topped up with donations. Donations would be optional, but "STATUS" accorded to those that have donated - ie in the newsletter or forum.
One of us who's good with numbers needs to come up with a little summary of the costs and expected size and a corresponding donation amount.
this person should also become "THE CLUB TREASURER"
I hope I'm making sense here...if I've offended anyone let me know!
RE the probers.... basically it came down to the fact that there is enough of them as a unique "marque" to have their own independant club. This was already around long before any of us came on the scene - our entry to their club was viewed by some as an "intrusion" - so we're going to let them alone. They appear to have gotten over the personality issues and I suspect that a good few of them will also join up with us as well anyway!
Thanks for reading and I look forward to everyones response.