President’s Column March 2012

BMW – The Ultimate Driving Machine. Why did you purchase your BMW? There are many reasons, maybe for the design, maybe for the quality, maybe for the performance or maybe for the prestige.

Our Iowa BMW Car Club was organized over ten years ago for the sole purpose to establish high performance driving events for a few of the original organizers. And now, ten years down the road, we have established one of the premier High Performance Driving Schools in the country.

I can be positively assured, if you have never attended a High Performance Driving School, the thought that has often run through your mind while driving down the road is, “Man, I wish I could open this thing up to see what it can do.”

There is not a road in the world in which you can legally test the limits of your BMW’s performance or experience the limits of your driving skills. Our High Performance Driving School can improve your driving skills in many areas. In a fraction of a second, a good driver can process their car’s response to a number of adverse driving conditions and act accordingly to minimize the risk of an accident. We can teach you how to operate your car at its limits in a safe, controlled environment under the watchful eyes of our trained instructors.

Driving is the act of balancing the forces of nature; accelerating, turning and stopping your car; understanding these forces is fundamental to good driving skills.

Many people believe that you need a modified car to attend our driving school. The fact is a factory stock BMW is very sufficient for learning the skills we will teach at our school. A few years ago, we even had a showroom stock PT Cruiser attend, and the driver had a wonderful time.

We are looking forward to seeing you at our Longest Day Driving School on June 8-10 this summer. More details will be in the May issue of Newswerks.

President’s Column January 2012

In every special interest club, there are always the 10%ers. That is, in any organization that exists because of the single common interest in something, only about 10 % of its members are actually active in its clubs activities. This is also true of our club. With more than 500 members of the Iowa BMW CCA, only about 50-60 are regular attendees of our planned events and activities. Some members only attend one event a year. Why is that? We have just concluded our Annual Planning Meeting and had several members attended that had not attended any event before. These first timers gave us some input for our activity calendar for next year. So, what is holding you back?

When I was a new club member about 10 years ago, I was initially slow about attending my first event because I would not know anybody. But the members at my first event greeted me and were happy I was there. Therefore, I have been coming back ever since. So, what is holding you back?

In the fall of 2010, we had two brand new members attend Oktoberfest at Road America in Wisconsin as their first club event. They had a splendid time attending the many activities provided at O’fest, and since then, they have also attended the 2011 Fall Colors Drive and had the same wonderful time. So, what is holding the other 90% back? We have attempted to publicize our events via our newsletter Newswerks, via our Facebook and Twitter accounts and also through our email announcements. So, what is holding you back?

We are just a little over a month away from our signature event of the year, our Annual Dinner and Awards Banquet. For the first time in our history, the banquet will be held at one of our primary sponsors facilities on the showroom floor at BMW of Des Moines.

The site of 2012 Oktoberfest has just been announced which will be at Mid-Ohio Raceway from September 17-22.

So, what is holding you back?

If you have some direct insight as to what keeps you away from events, or what could attract others, let us know. Email me at president@bmwia.org.

President’s Column November 2011

Do you like the events and activities that are planned and hosted by our club? Do you have events that you would like to see happen, or wonder why we don’t do an activity that we used to do?

Now is your chance to voice your opinion! Last year, for the first time, our chapter held a “members annual planning session” to discuss and plan the 2011 activity calendar. We had a nice turn out for free pizza and discussion in Iowa City last year.

The Board of Directors felt the planning session was very successful and let us put together a comprehensive yearly plan to tie activities together and recruit activity chairman at the same time. We will once again be soliciting information and ideas for new and different activities that might be interesting to our members. We will discuss which club events were successful and would like to sponsor again and which ones should drift into our memories.

All ideas brought to the meeting will be discussed on their merit, interest to club members and feasibility. We hope to have a larger group than last year with more new and interesting ideas brought to the table.

You are all invited to attend our yearly “annual planning meeting” to discuss new and old activities. Please bring information for us to discuss and help plan next year’s calendar for your club. This meeting will feature free pizza and conversation beginning at noon on Sunday, Nov. 20 at Sam and Louis’s Pizza located at 86th and Hickman in Urbandale. Hope to see you there!

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