FCA Executive Committee Meeting

Teleconference         October 21, 2007

Present:

Roger Murray, President        Al Wills, International   Derek Hird, VP Administration & Marketing

Jude Hooey, VP 3D                Charlene Parlee, interim VP Committees & Projects           

 

Absent:            Alain Gravel, VP High Performance

 

Guest:             Kathleen Millar, FCA Executive Director

 

·         Call to Order

The meeting started at 18:03.  Roger Murray opened the meeting stating the purpose of communications and planning.  He welcomed the new Executive members.

 

·         Establishing Communication – overview of your vision for your portfolio

President

His own personal mission is to include able-body, AWAD, and as many aspect of archery as people are interested in.  The mission including funding, vision and participation, building upon the men’s Olympic spot in Beijing, one guaranteed spot on the Paralympic line and the performance successes at both world championships in A/B and AWAD.  He felt that FCA was ahead of what he had hoped for and now he wants to make sure that there is more to come.  He is pleased with progress so far.

 

Roger would like to see FCA 3D teams at both FITA & IBO championships.  HPC needs to keep compound archers into the Plan.  Derek’s portfolio was key to energise Marketing to reduce FCA’s reliance on government funding.  His long-term dream was to turn Canada into an archery powerhouse – a western version Korea’s success now.  The proposed calendar and other projects on the horizon need to communicate those goals.  The website was an important tool for future funding initiatives.

 

VP 3D             (Full plan listed in Appendix A)

Jude Hooey reported that in terms of short-term goals and Communication, she was picking up the portfolio responsibilities in conjunction with several volunteers.  She agreed to sit on the formal rules committee with Greg Durward and would review the rules and policy suggestions from the last 3D committee meeting.  She wanted to work closely with provincial 3D representatives. 

 

Other immediate plans included revisiting the hosting manual, over-hauling the 3Di criteria to HPC, and organising the next 3Di championship team.  She was working with the 3D committee and Tom Paukovic to adopt the new Grand Prix format.  Further, she was working with Tom regarding the status of the OAA crossbow motion and the follow-up motions from the FCA 3D committee and the FCA Board of Directors.  She reviewed negative feedback regarding the proposed change to non-shooting chaperones at FCA national championships. 

 

Kathy reported that Tom Paukovic’s new job responsibilities have limited his ability to volunteer but he has played an active role to date as technical delegate for the 2008 3D Outdoor championships in Dauphin, MB.

 

ACTION:        Al Wills will confirm whether or not FITA has received a formal bid yet from Spain to host the next FITA 3Di championship.

 

Charlene reported that she had started working with Ghislain Arsenault to make sure the all 3D events had enough judges.

 

ACTION:        Al Wills and Jude Hooey will work together to ensure that more 3D results appear on the FCA website.

 

3D teams to international event:  Fund-raising, refined criteria, and compulsory membership in Excellence were all part of the planning process.  Jude envisions criteria more in line with the existing Excellence squads, in percentages rather than actual scores.  Other long-term goals include hosting FITA’s 3Di world championship in Canada.  The one major drawback might be the Euro-centered nature of the event.  Participation was not large at this year’s event because most countries’ 3Di participants are self-funded like Canada and the expense would be quite large.  Kathy felt that a site in the Maritime Provinces or Montréal/Toronto would be necessary in order to keep travel costs down for foreign teams.  In the meantime, Al Wills felt that Canada should continue to participate, let the team members gain experience and then look at hosting.  This is a different skill set and even though, as Derek Hird stated, Canadian archers are well-known enough internationally to draw in other competitors, hosting and its costs are very different.  Kathy reminded the committee that all hosting events have to be submitted to Sport Canada before the bid is made and that can require up to 18 months in advance.  The committee therefore could not suggest hosting any sooner that 2011-2013.  Jude wanted to include this goal as something important for archers 10 years from now and it should be reflected in the LTAD.

 

ACTION:        Jude will be able to come to HPC meeting – KM will forward itinerary draft

 

VP High Performance

In the absence of the Vice-President, it was noted the HPC Plan to 2012 was in place.  Kathy produces an annual report card and the update will appear in the minutes after the December 2007 meeting.

 

VP Committees &Projects

Charlene reported that there are some things she feels comfortable with and others that she needs to learn. In the short-term, she has been working with the Judge committee to make sure that quality judges are available at all national championships.  In particular, she has been working to assist Jude with judges for the 2008 indoor 3D nationals. 

 

ACTION:        Charlene will work with Ghislain to ensure that judge positions are advertised in Info.E-mail as well as on the FCA website at least 6 months in advance of the event.

 

Charlene has been working with Greg Durward to formalise the Rules Committee as a standing FCA committee with membership criteria and guidelines.  A motion to create a permanent Rules Committee will be ready soon.

 

Long-term: - changing the Judges Committee’s perspective regarding judges at FCA 3D national championships.  Archers want FCA judge presence at national 3D championships.

 

VP International

Short term goals:  Al Wills, in his role as webmaster, was interested in updating the FCA website design and was anxious to work with Derek.  More discussion can be found under Vice-President Marketing and Administration.  In terms of international relationships, he continues to work with COPARCO to improve their ability to communicate with the Americas.

Long-term goals:  FITA wants less reliance on IOC funding, just as Roger’s mission was to make sure FCA did not rely on government and COC.  FITA wants IOC’s revenue to become a secondary funding; hopefully they will help us with FCA’s plans to do the same.

 

ACTION:        All Executive members will look on the FITA website home page and their link to FITA’s long-term goals.

 

Al needs guidance and input from the Executive and HPC before he heads off to COPARCO meetings and in order to help FCA with research or answering questions directly to members.

 

VP Administration & Marketing      (Click here for the Power Point presentation)

Derek Hird circulated his power point presentation to the committee in advance of the meeting.  Committee members reviewed the professionally-run sites, both in and out of sport, as well as those of potential FCA sponsors.  Derek led the committee through the presentation.

 

ACTION:        Kathy will bring Amanda Smith-Millar, the web designer student and Derek together.  Kathy’s first meeting with the web designer will be on Saturday, October 27.

 

ACTION:        All Executive committee members will review Derek’s presentation and provide feedback for a separate meeting during the November LTAD meeting.

 

Specific short-term goals:

FCA athlete calendar fund-raiser – Derek has been paying close attention to this project and worked with Kathy Millar.  There is a special calendar initiative for Info.E-mail and the FCA club renewal package.  If it does not attract enough support and it has to be cut loose, only those orders received will be filled

 

Specific long-term goals:

Ocean Waves sunglasses are coming into Canada in the future and would be interested in becoming the official sponsor for Canadian archery team.  Peter Turner’s problem is that testing has shown Canadians do not want to spend a lot of money on sunglasses.  Ocean Waves has developed archer-specific sunglasses already and may decide to use Cabelas for distribution.  They sponsor American Shooters and the response has been good and that’s why they are interested in archery in Canada.  They are not interested in financial sponsorship but products.  The will run a test pilot project through Derek for him to distribute and promote.  There are no guarantees that this will take place.  Peter Turner is talking to his counterparts in Jacksonville, FLA.

 

Alpen Optics is based in California and Derek has worked indirectly with them in the past through Bowzone.  He has not had the opportunity to broach sponsorship opportunities with their representative lately, but feels there is good potential.

 

FCA Website - Congratulations to Al Wills for all his work to date making the FCA website a place for archers to get current information.  But Derek wants to turn the website into a Marketing vehicle and for that to happen, web design is crucial. 

 

Examples that he pointed to were:

a)    Hockey Canada’s interactive features, scrolling team pictures and sponsors.  FCA has this already; it is just the look that needs to change. 

b)    Derek felt that Volleyball Canada’s website looked cleaner and required less down-loading time for dial-up users.

c)    Tennis Canada’s English/French buttons made the home page very clean – this is the biggest difference that he wants to see in FCA’s website and wants to find everything in English or French, but not together.  The problem for Al Wills is that it doubles the website to exact mirror and he knows that the French side would be a secondary website without the updates because he is not bilingual.

 

ACTION:        Kathy will ask the web designer about links and bilingualism.

 

d)    Chevorlet:  Home page is small, scaled-down and the banner is big to grab attention.

e)    Encana – clean lines and information

f)     Ocean waves – simple and clean home page

 

Derek felt that it will be difficult to get sponsors when FCA’s website does not mirror what they have on their own, and it doesn’t attract sponsors

 

Web Design

Derek had spoken with two firms to date.  One was Elite Design, which ABAM used with Jeff Hawley.  Jeff told this firm what he wanted to see on a website for Manitoba.  The price quote was explained.  The second firm was Pronk Graphics in California, one of the best in the business, but over-priced.  It is estimated that there are 300-400 pages of content on the existing FCA website and any design change will take time and money.

 

ACTION:        Derek will pursue Marketing firms and their fees.

ACTION:        Kathy will research Brock University’s marketing programme and student workplace opportunities.

 

·         Calendar Project

The Executive Committee agreed with the plan that Derek and Kathy had put together, with the price breakdown.  Excellence members would be allowed to re-sell the calendars to raise funding for themselves.  The maximum retail price offered on the website will be $19.99.  A limited offer of $16.99 will run in Info.E-mail until November 30.

 

·         Task List Update

Kathy outlined the importance of this tool in order to keep all Executive committee members on time and complete follow-up tasks from meetings.

 

ACTION:        All Executive committee members need to send any updated to Kathy by the LTAD meeting.

ACTION:        Crossbows – FCA must be proactive and receive definite opinions from the FCA’s insurance provider and make sure that the OAA provides preliminary rules.

 

·         Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 19:30.