Hey all! Hope you had a merry weekend and your calves aren't as achy as mine after too many Taranaki staircases!! If you're keen for the hills, I'm organising a Kapakapanui tramp this weekend and we've got our leadership weekend next weekend which is going to be mean!! Anyway come have a chat to me tomorrow night to find out more.... Speaking of which, it's our last proper meeting of the year (except for the AGM of course) and am planning on doing a quiz night so think bringing along a few drinks wouldn't go amiss...

Anyway here's a massive spiel about the AGM...

Right well the Tramping Club AGM is going down next Tuesday night where we elect the 2008 committee. Being involved with the committee is an awesome way of getting involved with the club more, looks great on your CV and can be pretty rewarding. There are 14 positions, with large variation in time/enthusiasm commitments so if you’re around next year, we’re always very keen for new energy and ideas!!

I’ve asked all the current committee to email me in a description of what their role involves, so have a read through and check out the stuff you might be interested in (and think of any other people you could nominate for each role!!) And think outside the square- you may end up doing something entirely different from what you had envisaged!! If you want to know anymore about a position, drop me or the person an email or have a chat to them tomorrow night.

And just a note, I didn’t provide any guidance to people as to what to write, so it’s all pretty different formats. A few people sent me in ideas as well as to how the role could work better next year which I’ll forward onto the elected person. And some people didn’t send me in anything so some of it is a bit Annabel-ised!!

President

Being President has been a lot of work but also a lot of fun this year! Your big duties are basically to oversee everything going on and organise the Tuesday night meetings. The amount of stuff you actually do depends on how much energy you’re willing to put into it and how good you are at delegating!!

I guess some of the other stuff I’ve had a lot to do with this year (I forget heaps of it but there’s tonnes of other stuff!!) is doing grant applications, updating the website, ordering t-shirts and liaising with lots of people emailing you everything from what sleeping bag to buy to advertising free alpine courses. There’s heaps of potential to get involved in way more things or to delegate it all out and not let it take over your life quite so much!
I guess the key thing with being President is you need to be really keen about everything and friendly as everyone knows who you are and new people want to talk to you even when you’re frantically trying to sort out mountains of things! But it’s an awesome chance to get really involved in tonnes of tramping-related stuff!

Chief Guide and Assistant Chief Guide

Craig didn’t send me in anything, but Andrea’s description of Assistant Chief Guide sums up quite a bit of it. I guess being Chief Guide means you need to be prepared to be responsible for what goes on during club trips and ensure there’s heaps of stuff going on. It’s a huge time/energy commitment but means you’re involved in a lot of cool stuff!! Anyway…

So what I actually do is help out the Chief Guide with all the things they have to do. This allows the load to be shared between 2 people, as there is quite a lot that the Chief Guide is responsible for, and it tends to get shared out evenly or unevenly depending on the time each person can/wants to put in...
Things like the Calendar have to be worked out proir to uni starting again, and there is always lots of organisation involved in running the big trips, like Freshers, AIC, and Midwinter. Helping out with those trips mainly involves making sure transport and accommodation is booked, and that group routes get worked out (with enough bail out options), making sure people sign up, working out groups, and anything else that comes up about the trip. We also have to assign leaders to trips and make sure they know when they are meant to be organising something. We basically just make sure as many trips as possible get going, and that people know what to expect from them.

Secretary

The position of Secretary is a constitutional position along with the President, Chief Guide and Treasurer. The role of the Secretary is to collate and administer the Club membership with the Club Treasurer. The secretary also assists the Club President with Club management matters and general communication with the public and Club members as necessary. The secretary is also responsible for:

• Making room bookings for Club meetings and liaising with university administration on this,
• Preparing and maintaining a spreadsheet with Club members and their contact details
• Clearing and distributing Club mail
• Keeping minutes of Committee meetings as well as the Club's Annual General meeting.
• Assisting with the Club's affiliation to VUWSA
• Assisting with Club grant applications for Club equipment, and
• Liaising with Federated Mountain Clubs of New Zealand on the Club's affiliation

Treasurer and Co-Treasurer

Role: Deals with club finances
- Requires coming to each meeting with the cash box and being ambushed by people wanting to part with their money! Each payment is recorded by receipt for future reference. Each new member must fill out a membership slip (which is kept by the secretary) and is given an event calandar/club info sheet, membership and FMC card.
- The role also involves regular banking and writing cheques to pay for invoices or reimburse people for petrol (requires a receipt as proof of payment amount). At the end of the year a tally is done to determine the financial health of the club and a budget is made.

Gear Custodian (there are two of these)

From Kieran:

Key duties and responsibilities:
 - help organise, issue and return gear for club trips
 - maintain the club gear and keep the gear shed tidy!
 - advise on gear purchases for grant applications, get quotes, etc
So good if you live/work close to uni, have an interest in gear, etc.
Probably also good if at least one knows a bit about climbing/alpine
stuff.

From Craig:

Gear Custodian: fondles gear

Publicity Officer (there are two of these too)

Duties:

1)     To advertise the first meeting at the beginning of each term

2)     To be present at clubs days and as many meetings as possible in order to encourage new members.

3)     To keep a low level of advertising going throughout the year

a.     Salient

b.     Posters of events, such as bush-ball

c.      Online weekly update

4)     To encourage trip report writing and collate them into a yearly publication; Heels.

Social Convenor

This role doesn't require a huge time commitment but you need to be enthusiastic about tramping, climbing, the mountains, drinking, Double Brown and anything else that comes along! Your key events to organise are the tramping club party early in the year and Bushball around May, other than that its great (if you don't have a thesis) to try and organise other random social events during the year to keep people’s livers in line and generally just be willing to go that extra mile on club trips by always having a substantial amount of your select beverage on hand (Double Brown is strongly recommended). Also helps if you’re willing to run a few of the meeting nights with some crazy events to inspire people too. Basically for this role, whether you climb or tramp or just indulge in drinking, you need to be cheerful, enthusiastic, willing to rally people for events and help people have a good time. This may result in you also getting horribly intoxicated but unfortunately this is one of the risks the gallant individual who takes this role on will have to deal with.....very brave!

Note: There is a distinct possibility you could take on this role without having touched an alcoholic drink in your life, maybe? I can offer no opinion as to how taxing it would be to do this though, or whether you would survive the year.

Conservation Officer

The Conservation Officer is responsible for organising the conservation side of the club.  This usually includes day trips to Kapiti Island, Mana Island, Matiu/Somes Island and Karori Wildlife Sancturary.  There is also the opportunity to develop the conservation side of the club further.  It could be useful to get in touch with the campus conservation group Gecko, who have some interesting trips going too. 

Kapiti Island is a nature reserve, where all predators, such as rats, mice and possums have been removed.  This means it is a place where many native birds and plants can thrive.  It’s really worth a trip, the bird life is amazing, we even had Kaka landing on peoples’ shoulders.  There are Takahe there also. 

Mana Island is also free from predators, but has not been for that long.  Much of the island is still covered in grass.  They run tree planting weekends to help re-establish the native bush on the island.  There are also Takehe on this island, and stone Fluttering Shearwaters, built to try and attract a colony.

Somes/Matiu Island is another island reserve, with a lot of work going. 

Huts Maintenance Officer

My role on the committee is the Huts Officer, and this entails attending two meetings one in August the other on March I think. The meeting is the TARHC -Tararua Aorangi Ruahine Huts Committee, who are made up of DoC reps and reps from other tramping clubs in the areas adjacent to the above ranges. The main function is to maintain and coordinate the management on the Hut network in the areas above. Not a great amount of work, but could be combined with conservation officer duties, as together, both roles involve a bit of work with DoC.

Climbing Officer

Climbing officer
-to drag others out climbing!
-teach basic rock skills – anchor set up, lead climbing/belaying,
climbing technique, ethics
-inspect club climbing gear (especially ropes)
-advise on what climbing gear the club needs to purchase next
-all other silly activities involving ropes!