[Ethan Tapper]

I’ll be there too.

[Ethan Tapper]

I also think we should just go for it at this point, put the registration in the newsletter etc. My only change would be to suggest we give members a greater discount (right now it is just $5, maybe it could be $10 at least), if it isn’t too late for that.

[Ethan Tapper]

One way to get chips and not have to worry about paying for a chipper or using excess energy would be to find a road crew or someone else that is using a chipper and ask them what they’re doing with their chips. If you talk to these people they are often looking for a place to dump their chips. I worked for a guy who did large-scale composting with woodchips, and that’s what he would do, and get truckloads and truckloads for free.

Another thing that could be part of the mix is shredded paper. I have seen people using this more and more for bedding, and if you can find a source it could add up to some percentage of what you need.

[Ethan Tapper]

What is the number that we are calling? Same as last time?

[Ethan Tapper]

@Tim Harrigan 29804 wrote:

I am on the events committee and no, we have not met yet to the best of my knowledge. It would help if I had a list of event committee members and their contact information.I am not sure, thought, if this is an event committee responsibility. This seems like a broader policy issue that needs to be hashed out by the executive committee with input from other interested folks.

Ken Mulder, and Ed Thayer are the other board members on the committee, and I think we mentioned David Fisher being involved. I definitely think it should be the responsibility of that committee though…If it isn’t I guess I don’t know what the committee is for. Maybe we need to develop a process by which responsibility is passed off, when we decide this is an event we want to be involved with and then let the Event committee take it from there.

I think that liability insurance is something we need to consider (and research) for the future, but I’ll bet most of the guys that will be running a saw and driving horses have personal liability insurance (especially the professional loggers) that will cover them.

[Ethan Tapper]

Carl Russel has a Barden forecart that he uses with his team a bunch. I’ll bet he’d have some wise words to say about it.

[Ethan Tapper]

Those questions should probably be diverted to the Event committee. As far as the money raised goes, I don’t think that Brad is asking for any money. Have you been in touch with him, Jean? Someone from the event committee should be in contact with Brad.

I think we should make the price difference between members and non-members higher, maybe $10 instead of $5 (that is raise the price on nonmembers, not lower the price on members) to increase the incentive to become a member. Also, to make that more prominent we could have two price lists on the registration, instead of just asking non-members to add $5 on to their registration. An alternative to that would also be to ask (in BIG prominent letters) current DAPNet members to TAKE OFF an amount from the cost, and have the price list reflect non-member pricing. It’s a subtle thing but I think it makes a difference.

I also wonder if we could add a potluck element to the meals, to make it so it’s not SO expensive, especially if people are going to go out and buy memberships.

Are we presenting this event as a workshop (are people going to be demonstrating and instructing) or as a logging weekend? If the latter is the case I think we need to consider if members need to pay at all… The cost of this thing PLUS volunteering time and moving animals around to boot might get some grumbles from folks. If its not costing us anything, charging non-members and getting memberships (plus publicity) would be positive, and we’d get more of them because it wouldn’t be so expensive. If we do want it to be a fundraiser, maybe we should make it that, and publicize it as such.

Speaking of publicity, I think our outreach and communication committee (myself included) needs to start thinking about how we want to attract NON-MEMBERs to this event. I’m thinking local and regional press releases.

[Ethan Tapper]

I can’t think of anything, but I guess I don’t really understand what’s our responsibility (especially mine) versus the committees…Maybe that’s a discussion we need to have.

[Ethan Tapper]

You’re right, there are scarier things out there… I guess I don’t much like the idea of farming trees, though, particularly franken-trees. I think increasing the yield and efficiency of our forests will have more to do with responsible management than with figuring out how to get around nature in the long run. I look at what farming has become over the last thirty years or so and am thankful that growing wood hasn’t become as much like that (yet).

[Ethan Tapper]

Would it be worth calling I and J, White Horse, Pioneer at this point, or is it too late? If not I’ll call them up. I would probably need to know what our circulation is, though, so I could tell them that (mentioning, of course that we’ll hand it out to lots of folks as well).

[Ethan Tapper]

That sounds great!

[Ethan Tapper]

Well it’s not just up to me, I know, but I think we have a some redundancies, especially when viewing the board of directors subforums. There are maybe 20 of them, and a lot of them just display copies of the posts from other sub forums. Probably all we need is one forum for each committee, an executive committee forum, and maybe a general discussion forum. I think that would make navigating the forums easier. What do other people think? Maybe I’m the only one that it bothers.

[Ethan Tapper]

I think we could pass some effective ones. The problem is that the people in charge of passing these bills aren’t foresters or loggers and only understand what goes on in forest management from a spectator’s viewpoint. They need to hear more from the people that know what they’re doing, know what’s important and know what should be regulated and what wouldn’t make sense to regulate.

[Ethan Tapper]

I definitely think that it makes sense to do something with the SFJ… I was reading last months issue the other day and wondering why we weren’t in there. Another way to make that connection would be for someone to write an article about our organization, where we are, what we are doing, where we would like to be going, and have it published in there. Has anyone from DAPNet done that yet? I think that’s just about the best advertising we could do…

As far as making the newsletter more feasible, why don’t we do it by email? That format would allow us to cut down production costs, include links and things and still include ads. Are people really attached to the paper copy?

Are any of the equipment companies putting ads in the newsletter? I would be glad to send out some emails to try and get them interested if they are not along with other likely candidates. Probably something we should do is compile a database of all the people that have advertised with us and some that might be interested and send out an email every time we’re getting a newsletter together. That way they at least know what’s going on. We could also send out newsletters to these people, and perhaps they would become interested.

What’s the circulation of the newsletter?

Some thoughts/questions, E

[Ethan Tapper]

yeah, it looks awesome. Thanks for figuring all that out. It makes a big difference, I think.

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