FIRST TURN

Peter Olliviere , President

Over the holidays I had the opportunity to speak with many Club members, both new and longtime, and what I learned from these conversations was very helpful in understanding the way you, the membership, truly feel about your Club. Before I discuss the feedback I got, I think it’s necessary that we establish who we are and what our goals and priorities are.

Who we are is self-evident: a car club built around driving and displaying Porsche cars. The Gold Coast Region of the Porsche Club of America covers South Florida, extending from Key West in the south to the southern part of the Palm Beaches in the north, extending for 130-plus miles. As for membership, we are one of the largest regions in the PCA with over 3,100 members. In addition, Gold Coast has been part of PCA for sixty years and is celebrating this fact throughout 2023.

OK; lets talk about our goals. The first and foremost goal is to have fun. You might think that would be selfevident, but you would be surprised at how many people forget that the purpose of owning a Porsche is to have fun, and it being transportation is secondary to the fun of driving the thing. As a result of our having fun, we do community and charitable work raising funds that are then donated to worthy causes across our region. We promote safe operation of your Porsche on both the street and track by inviting our members to learn and understand what their car can do and how to safely operate it while having fun in a controlled environment.

Best of all is that you get to be in the company of people with whom you share a common interest, and that’s fun.

There’s that word “fun” again. It keeps appearing because it’s the foundation on which the whole Club structure is built. But it would be impossible to deliver the great amount of fun if it was not for the army of volunteers who do the work that allows the Club to function.

Let’s talk a bit about how the Club is structured and how that structure helps us achieve that fun factor we’re looking for.

The Club has a Board of Directors that is elected every two years. That Board consists of four officers, including the President, the Vice President, the Treasurer, and the Secretary. In addition, six Directors are elected to fill out the ten positions on the Board. The Region President is also a member of the Porsche Club of America National Board. This Board has overall responsibility for how your Club is run and more importantly how you perceive it’s running. As I said earlier, this is about feedback: how you perceive your Club and its relevance and function to you.

My first issue is on which I have had feedback is that new members or visitors who have attended the First Saturday Porsches and Pancakes Breakfast at one of the several locations for the first time and were not acknowledged, spoken to, or greeted. If this is truly the case, I am disappointed in the host at that location. Each P&P location has a host that acts as the Club’s presence that morning and is a direct liaison to the Board of Directors. If a new attendee was not greeted and pulled into the fold, we apologize and promise to do better. But blame doesn’t stop there. I have never been to a P&P where a lot of Porsche gear was not on display, including hats, shirts, jackets, and name badges. Perhaps that member needed to make the group aware of their presence and then may have been greeted in a warm manner.

I also get feedback from the membership about communications. We are aware that you get a lot of communication from the Club, all of which is meant to keep you informed about what’s going on in the Club, both locally here in our Region and nationally within the PCA. The problem is that you as the member are at the end of a large funnel that is fed by several people and groups that are responsible for different committees within the Club, such as the Social Committee, Drivers Education Membership, Auto Cross, Charity, Concours, Zone Rep,48 Hours at Sebring, and several others. On top of all that are several reminders of monthly events.

Each of the people feeding this funnel have good intentions, but are fixated on their line of responsibility, and thus are not looking at the total amount of communication you get in the funnel. All of this communication generates the feedback that I get saying that we send too many emails. I cannot control it all but what I can do is take a month to analyze how much is really going out and if it really is a problem, we can address it. The goal is to keep you informed and at the same time not to be a nuisance, because when that happens you tend to ignore our communications, and that response defeats our intention.

As I start my second term as President my intention is to retain the fun and limit any disruption to that basic goal. Happy New Year! Peter