First Exec Com meeting @ Mc Donalds

WIRD AGENDA EXECUTIVE COMITEE MEETING

1.Sort out ex comittee poistions - what they all mean, who is doing what, when.

2.Formalize training arrangements - times, days, can we set up one sess per month as 'open' where newbies, family, friends can come watch? This should prob not be advertised on web (unless it's a email for an invite thing) as we don't want to end up just putting on free entertainment.
2.1 Training guidelines – what is expected from trainers, what is expected from skaters etc
2.2 Payment each training session (regardless if it costs for a venue or not)
2.3 Bank account setup and suggested automatic deductions per week
2.4 Attendance book for training, who attends, times, what training contained, how long, any incidents etc

3.Newbies (fresh meat packages)just a suggestion – bag, shirt, rules, badges, patch -say $50.00.optional.
3.1 Decide when the cut off starts for new fresh meat skaters - and how 'experienced' a skater needs to be to join.

4.All financial members to provide contact numbers and addresses and a weekly schedule of availability for the next 6 mths if possible. This is to seize opportunities to get together for meetings or training.

5.Grant application Neena was talking about – where is it at.

6.Talk about sponsorship and setting up a sting campaign.
6.1 Talk about fundraising and try to get a committee set up for this. Should we tie merchandising and fundraising together at this stage?

7.Organise our Annual General Meeting - this is part of our legal obligations and has to be before the 30th June as our financial year ends on the 31st Dec. There is an outline of this stuff in the constitution. We need to give one months notice and an agenda. Shouldn't be too hard. If we have enough people to fill the exec committee without contesting then we should be okay - if it does need to go to a vote we will need to find a 'returning officer' whose not too tied up in who gets what spot.

Enter the Belmore/Victoria Sts carpark!

This is a brilliant skate, smooth, flat, lit at night. Myself and Donna hit the pavement and practiced 'the robot'!

Hopefully we'll get more skaters down here soon. Live in fear of no-one turning up. Get slighty hysterical before I leave the house. Alas.

Second WIRD skate

After missing WIRD's first skatey get together last Sunday (due to ridiculous work commitments) I was eager to get out there and have a go! Five of us turned up to the carpark out the back of ****. Took some sweeping and bits of it were down/up hill. Not too bad.

Apparently roller skating is not something that comes naturally, and the human body is not designed to move in these ways. I need a LOT of practice!

Second WIRD planning meeting

Thanks to those who made it to the meeting today! Despite the rain we had an amazing turnout of 15 potential skaters, managed to huddle out of the rain and nut out a whole chunk more of WIRD's foothold in the Illawarra.

We raised $161.35 bucks with our magic money making tin donated by Donna. Neil, the guy behind the Oxford, also donated a box of stuff (3 cocktails shakers, 2 sets of glasses, an umbrella & 3 tickets to a comedy gig in early march) and implied that he may be up to donating more things in the future. Cheers for Neil. I was given official-like permission to incorporate us - which I'll head down to Fair Trade to undertake on Monday. Hopefully the paperwork won't take too long to go through. Donna and I were tossed on as committee members, and Danni later volunteered as Treasurer. This is starting to look like the start of an executive committee/BoD kinda thing.

The show of hands when I asked who'd be ready to skate in the next week was pretty exciting - WIRD girls will be skating the streets in packs any day now! We decided to set two to three days per week to get together, either for outdoor fitness skates (at this stage), planning meetings or off-skates training. Donna's gonna make some enquiries re: off skate training - anyone else with ideas should look into them and fill us in. The three most popular days/times to get together were Sat arvo, Sun arvo, and Mon evening. That's about as far as we got on that. We also discussed a contacts list to help shift this along - I decided to make it a word file so we can all just update as more skaters join. Do whatever you like with your list as long as it doesn't involve letting it get into non-WIRD skater hands - I'll be making spy like notes on mine on everyone to assist my terrible memory.

We're also planning a working bee soon to rustle up TShirts to help spread the wird (ha ha). More details to follow. And a skate love and maintenance workshop with many people will help with and which Nora offered to organise. At least I think that's how it happened.

Clothes for the photo shoot on the 7th of March (we discovered a clash with Mardi Gras but decided against moving the shoot again) - green/purple/black - loud - fishnet.

Again, BRILLIANT to see so many excited people today! This is exactly what roller derby needs to get up off the ground. (Everything feels like a pun when you're writing about derby.) If we all tap into all our contacts and resources, and really bring out grunt to training sessions, WIRD will be packing out WIN stadium before we know it.

Visiting a SRDL scrimmage

Yesterday a bunch of us did the trek to Sydney to watch a scrimmage. It was in a gym at Sydney Uni, with the track laid out in grey plastic tape (plumber's, I think) and merch stalls set up behind the audience.

I'm a bit intimidated.

WIRD's first planning meeting

1st planning meeting for WIRD - Oxford Hotel

Slogan for today: Roller derby is a virus - infect everyone you touch!

In a brilliantly successful first planning meeting derby and its logistics were discussed in the beer garden of the Oxford. The conversation was so interesting that after the meeting broke up several people from the surrounding tables approached and asked for stickers and fliers. Spread the virus which is derby, ladies!

The need for outdoor equipment (the lower numbers in the gradings for wheels - around 88), protective pads and learning to fall properly all made an appearance in our chats.

Sue and Danielle J have kindly volunteered to tackle a logo for us - we're looking at something which will lend itself well to stencilling and which is hot. Hot.

Several ideas have been tossed around re: fundraising and sponsorship and hopefully some small activity will start with this stuff soon.

Purple, black and green were chosen as the base colours for the league, so start picking up those bits that scream, 'You NEED to wear me for DERBY!' There was also mention of a possible fundraiser involving stencilling and our future hot logo, so keep that in mind.

The documents we referred to during the meeting included the WFTDA official rules and its appendixes, 'Track Design and Specifications', 'Minimum Skill Requirements' and 'Officiating Handsignals' (www.wftda.com);Skate Australia's Roller Derby Individual Membership form (http://www.skateaustralia.org.au/web/files/pdf_repository/1226532021-Roller_Derby_Membership_Form_2009.pdf) And Wikipedia's info on the members of a board of directors.
We probably should have looked at this form from Skate Australia about sports insurance (http://www.skateaustralia.org.au/web/files/pdf_repository/1229492957-QBE_Personal_Accident_Insurance_Policy.pdf)

Another meeting will happen a month from today (around 21/2 February). Fundraising and forming a board of directors/executive committee will be on the agenda.

Happy Birthday to WIRD, Happy Birthday to WIRD

Situation to date:

• After the ABC's screening of 'Roller Derby Dolls' the topic of roller derby just wouldn't drop. After several months of complaining about the lack of RD in Wollongong I decided to make it happen.
• Researched RD on the net and started the Wollongong-Illawarra Roller Derby facebook group in late December, 2008. By 25 January we have 72 members, including regional derby girls, international derby girls and a strong core group of locals.
• A meat and greet is organised for January 25 and I started organising enough information to run a (hopefully) productive meeting.
• Posters (A4 - photoshop - printed at home) go up on January 3 in several venues around Wollongong. Have info for 1st meeting.
  
• I started collecting information from other derby groups including Sydney (SRDL), Ballarat (BRDL) and Newcastle (NRDL). All the women I approached were incredibly helpful and I received sample constitutions, dvds of training and great info sheets on everything from 'what to expect in your first year of derby' (NRDL) to 'how to deal with stinky pads' (SRDL).
  
• Before our group is even one month old we've been completely embraced by the NSW roller derby community. WIRD has been invited to an upcoming scrimmage in Sydney, offered help with training and info on the best local places to buy equipment.
• I rock up for our first meat and greet with a folder full of info, some dodgied up fliers and my happy loud voice on.