Membership for MAAST

[OrionN]

What is the membership number for MAAST?
I wanted to put to general discussion regarding membership due. I think that we should all pay a reasonable yearly due. Elect officers. With some funding, we can do a few things as a club that maybe fun and benificial to the member as a group.
Any opinion?
Minh Nguyen

[DeletedAccount]

We cannot get many folks to participate in things now. If we had a membership fee then that would reduce interest even more, IMO. I think that in the future that may be great, but right now, just starting out, it wouldn't be to our advantage. We need a strong base and an obvious use for the money before we can start collecting it.

[DeletedAccount]

What kind of sponsored events? I am curious as to what y'all have in mind. I'd be all for it if it would expand the group or participation.

[OrionN]

I am not sure if we really wanted free riders. We all should give a little to our club in order to receive some back. I think we should all help each other, share experiences, corals, and just to have fun in general. We still need some fund to have a little fun.
I think the ideal of selling raffle tickets is really good. We all have extra corals in our tank. Bring them and donate them to the club. The club can sell raffle tickets to raise money. For me, I will always bring some coral if I am able to go to the meeting.
Membership due like 10-20 dollars a years for the benefits of attending the meeting and a chance to get cheap coral is great. I don't think any reefer will be in hardship by putting up 10 dollars for the club. I am not sure if we want members who would be so stingy as to not willing to put up 10-20 dollars a year for the club.
Believe me, we need the money if we wanted to do anything. Either that or rely only on the work and the money of a few active members.
Hopefully, we will be able to talk about this more this coming meeting.
Minh Nguyen

[captexas]

I think it is very important to separate MAAST the "club" from MAAST the "website".

This website started as a way for local aquarists to openly discuss their hobby, offer help to others, and provide a better source of information that was no longer available at LFS's after AqSS closed. I think it is very important to keep this website free and open to anyone that is interested in learning more about the hobby. Requiring someone to pay to join the website might prevent new or future hobbyists from checking out a great outlet of information, getting into the hobby with good experiences so they stay in the hobby, as well as learning about the club. This website can still be the home base of the Club.

Now, paying a small fee to be a member of the MAAST Club is not a problem. Right now, I think it is a little early though to be talking about it as there have only been two get-togethers. As with any club, some sort of order must be established as well as the purposes of the club and any goals the club seeks to achieve in the future. I think that working on this over the next couple of meetings and discussing it further here on the forums would be great. Once that is done, then we can discuss any club dues/fees based on what the club wants to do at future meetings and/or special events and what that money will be used for.

Chris

[OrionN]

I think MAAST the web site should be free. However, I think MAAST the club should help pay for MAAST the web site. I am sure it does cost, at least a little, to register the domain and maintain the web space. This is one of the thing MAAST need a little budget and a little funding. We will need to discuss about this over the next few meeting. We also need to have a secretary who will summarize the meeting and post it on this web site. I am sure not all members will be able to attend all meeting.
Minh Nguyen

[Chris]

Well, Chris is probably paid up for about 8 years or so now since he's handled the registration and hosting of MAAST.org thus far :-D Thanks Chris! ...I wonder how many years it would come to if we include labor...

Don't worry... i'll have you guys to help stock my tank :P

Hosting and domain fee's will be something we'll need to save for, especially as the site gets larger. We're currently using up over 250MBs(includes weekly logs which are big) of my alloted 400MB's of space too... once everyone has their image gallery up i'm sure it'll just continue to go up.

At any rate... no need to get too far ahead of ourselves. It's good to talk about it, and make plans... but no need to take action any time soon with member dues. I will however add a page to accept donations in a few weeks just to start saving... probably just into a PayPal acct.

8)

[OrionN]

Chris,
So far how many member do we have registered?
Minh

[Chris]

It's at the bottom of the front page Minh...


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[MikeP]

I basically started coming here since the austin reefkeepers all seemed to leave town/quit their hobby with the big crash in the Austin economy. I'd be willing to contribute a small bit of cash if we could find out where it's going to and maybe if you could give an idea of costs to maintain service. I'd love to participate in some frag swaps but between 15 credits at school and 40+ hours at work the only days off I have are tuesday. Also the austin group had a frag tank at one time it seemed like a neat idea if you ahve enough subscribers we could probably pool money to get one started - not to mention I'm sure a lot of people have spare equipment lying around that can be used.

[Tim Marvin]

One persons junk is anothers gold. The frag tank didn't work here because people were dumping what they didn't want, and half dead or problematic stuff. I dropped off a few brains and some acropora once and every time I checked back to find something there was xenia or plain mushrooms or something half dead in there. I finally took an octopus coral (Turbinaria patula) that was white and dead in the middle because I felt sorry for it. I still have it today! After some TLC good light and flow is has recovered and almost doubled in size. It is now a greenish grey with turquoise in it. Anyway, my point is you need to have someone very serious about up keeping it and monitor what goes in. Don't leave it as a dumping spot for people to try to upgrade!

[OrionN]

I think frags tank prob doesn't work because, like Tim said, things that end up there are things people don't want. I think just bring good corals to trade at the meeting is the way to go.
Bring small frags of your good and beautiful coral is the way to go. If you bring problematic stuff then you just have to bring them home again. It cost to maintain a tank. It will be at one place only and we want meeting at various different places.
Minh Nguyen

[Tim Marvin]

I think what the club could invest in is a portable tank for doing these swaps. It could be kept at someones house that is active in the meetings and brought for everyone to place things in during the meetings then the swapping can take place, and empty the tank back out when we leave. Acrylic would probably work best for this application, or a small watering tank. Definitely under 50 gallons for easy set-up and takedown. Probably 30 gallons would do it. We would just need a couple powerheads and a smart light or something like that for good viewing.

[savoy6]

small kiddie pool, rubbermaid container is what 10 bucks use it empty throw it away. Not like we are going to have meetings every week.

[TexasState]

OR someone just bring a light hood and shine it over the bag, we don't need to cross contaminate the corals. Problem with the Austin Frag tanks is that it costed $60 per year for membership. Several peoples left after the membership fees was announced. There were good stuff in that frag tank (full sized color Acro from Mike Manis, clams, LPS.)

I paid for my membership, I have made my complaint that it's too high. There have been no change to the high membership fees. I do not plan on paying for my membership there again. I did have most of my membership fees pay back by using my membership card as a ( 10% off) discount card at some of the Austin Fish store. I'm not sure if I save money for loss money through that arrangement. :roll:

[Tim Marvin]

Really, I must have been there at the wrong times. That is part of the reason the swapping tank, shall we call it, was broke down. Too much trash being thrown in. It is a good idea, and it can work. It just needs a dedicated individual to monitor the tank and what goes in and out. Also people wanting a good tank to swap from.

[Jeff Post]

I agree with Chris in that we need to figure out what the objectives of the organization are and then the cost of those objectives prior to establishing a fee. The value I have received from being able to participate in the website easily justifies a fee of some nature to support it. However, the club meetings so far have primarily been social get to know you events. I expect the meeting on the 19th will change that and the cost will be covered by those who will benefit. As our meetings improve the members and potential members will see the fee as a bargain regardless of the cost because there will be clearly defined benefits. We are not there yet.

[Texreefer]

ok, its time for me to throw in my opinion,,,when i started this group on yahoo my intention was to get people together on a forum where they could share there knowledge and experience, and thanks to some key individuals (chris), we have done just that.. everyone here has some good pointsand i agree that this site should remain free so long as chris is up to the challenge. I do think we should definetly move towards a club in addition to the site but i think we are a ways away from there right now.. we need to develop a good strong base of active members and then start to move forward. i have been a fairly active member since the beginning and i still have not met very many of the members on here.... i like all the discussion,, but i think for right now the track we are on is a good one.

[Tim Marvin]

From what I remember I had to convince you to keep going. I remember you wanting to close it down, and I help persuade you to drive on. LOL aren't you glad you didn't let us go dead in the water? So to speak......

[Texreefer]

yes Tim,, it is also thanks to you that this site is where it is today... it was looking bad for a while there, and i was starting to get a little discouraged, but then Tim came galloping over the hill on a freshly cut coral frag and saved the day :rotf: ..

[Tim Marvin]

I don't know about that, but I am sure glad we didn't crash and burn. This is getting to be a really good group. Who knows maybe a reef central some day! I have a couple people coming down for this meeting from Austin also. We never had a turn out like this in Austin, people from Corpus, Houston, and Austin. That is stretching pretty far for a small club! I am glad we all keep together and gave it more time. To tell you the truth I didn't see it going really far either, but just wanted to give it a few months to find out what was going to happen! I am sure glad we all stayed in!

[Chris]

Yikes I didn't notice that part about charging for the forums. That's definately a bad idea.

The forums are and probably will always be the place where most of the group participation takes place. If people can't access that then they won't be likely to want to join.

There's another group out there who also have a "members only" forum that non-paying members can't view. The rest of the site is completely dead. I sure as hell wouldn't be interested in paying to have access to a site that I wouldn't be sure if anyone even posts. :?

Just my $0.02 on that subject 8)