Feedback to members and minutes of AGM 2014

The following message has been individually sent to members:

Dear member,
I am enclosing a copy of the AMS AGM minutes for you with details of some significant changes in the AMS which will be mostly good news for members.
We let you know before the AGM, that the committee had to offer their resignations because of very long service, ill-health or both.  Unfortunately you will see from the attached minutes that we were unable to find a new committee.  We are pleased to say that, to help out, some of the members at the meeting agreed to be Temporary Officers.
However these are unusual circumstances and we felt that to ensure the long term future of the AMS we had to make the following changes to the way we run the AMS:
- Drop the production of the magazine and continue the AMS as an internet based organisation with a structure to match.
- Use the existing financial assets to support the Forum and Website.
- To become a free organisation with no membership fee and with AMS registration via the Forum.
We think that this will offer a modernised member’s association that will provide the best opportunity to move on and grow in a new internet age.
As a member, I am sure that you will appreciate not having to pay a subscription in future but it does involve some responsibilities:
- Please register on the AMS Forum and use it to communicate with your fellow members as often as possible. Please don’t rely on AMS Officers to provide all the postings!
- If you feel reasonably “computerate” (it is not difficult- about an afternoon to get the basics) please volunteer to help administer the Forum as an AMS Officer. We need about 4 to 5 Officers to act as Administrators or Forum Moderators. You have no need to travel - you can do it all from home!
You will find that Face Book is very good for day to day questions and contact. The Forum provides a long term storage and search system. You will be able to find postings and build-logs etc.  made many years before. It is already a fantastic archive and source of information.
I am sure you will join in thanking the outgoing Committee for many years of dedicated service. My best wishes for the future of the AMS and see you all on the web:
https://www.theassociationofmodelsubmariners.com/

David Forrest
Former Treasurer and Membership Secretary


Minutes of AMS AGM held at Norwich on 27th July 2014
Apologies: Fred Ellis, Dave Austin, Brian Alps.
Present: Ian Oldham, Nigel Edmonds, John & Sue Wrennall, Paul Brassington, David Forrest
Last year’s minutes:  read by David Forrest.
Chairman’ s report: The Chairman said that he felt that the AMS was at a crossroads and would have to either continue with its existing structure and publication of a magazine at a substantial cost to members or embrace internet communication at virtually no cost to members.
He did not think that the first option was possible even for the next few years because magazine publication was expensive and could only give “stale” news. He recommended the second option to members because it met the original aim of the AMS “allowing like minded people to communicate” with even more effectiveness than the AMS founders could have foreseen back in the 1970’s.
He felt that the original communication aim was “Still the primary function of the AMS.  I think it still doing that and probably better than it has ever been done, but now the job is done via the Forum and the Facebook site, in my view this must be the way forward.”
He then moved on to how we could support the Forum and Website in terms of finance and management. He stressed that without people stepping forward to help run it and also post on the Forum that “we might as well pull the plug now and save the bother.”
Treasurer/Membership Secretary’s report: The Treasurer reported that the finances were healthy with a current bank balance of £790.35 but warned that this was largely because only one magazine had been published during the year. Membership had fallen very slightly from 50 to 48 over the year.
Election of Officers: The current committee all resigned but nobody was nominated to replace them.
Any other Business: In these unusual circumstances, the following members agreed to act as Temporary Officers: David Forrest, Ian Oldham, Paul Brassington, John Wrennall.
The meeting agreed that the best option for the future of the AMS was to embrace internet communication and that we would do the following as soon as possible:
- Write to members to advise them of this and to request them to use the Forum and Face book . (Nigel will replace Richard Huggett as the Forum Owner/Founder on behalf of the AMS.)
- We will not ask members for subscriptions starting this year 2014/15.
- Use the existing financial assets to support the Forum and Website for the foreseeable future.

Vote of thanks: John Wrennall proposed a vote of thanks to the retiring committee and expressed our best wishes for the health of Nigel Edmonds, Brian Alps and Richard Huggett.

David Forrest