Comment

Comment by Marvin Shavers on March 20, 2013 at 9:10pm

I have noticed a lot more Smarts rolling around Jacksonville. I sure hope we can get them in the club. 

Comment by Marvin Shavers on January 12, 2013 at 9:46am

I sure will. Thanks.

Comment by George Oller on January 11, 2013 at 7:26pm

Marvin, can you update the Meet Up site?  We have a new local member that may want to get active.  I tried, but it won't let me update anything.  George

Comment by George Oller on December 6, 2012 at 4:00pm

It's kinda hard to step up to the plate when no one knows your plans......My post yesterday was the first on this site in over six weeks.....We need better communication within this group.....

Comment by Marvin Shavers on December 5, 2012 at 10:00pm

I have nothing planned through the end of the year, other than the typical cruise-ins that we talked about. I won't be in town until the first part of January, so I need someone to step up to the plate.

Comment by George Oller on December 5, 2012 at 7:59pm

Any activities planned before the year's end?

Comment by Marvin Shavers on October 12, 2012 at 10:01pm

Thank you Chris! It has really been exciting.

Comment by Marvin Shavers on October 12, 2012 at 10:00pm

Thank you George. I value your input and opinion, as it was you that pushed me in the direction of creating a new club for Jacksonville. You and I have been through this from the beginning.

I understand your concern about me leaving the group without direction while I was gone for the summer. Believe me, it bothered me to leave. However, I did send out a message to everyone letting them know that I was leaving and telling them that now was the time for someone to step up if there was any interest in doing something while I was gone. Honestly, they didn't even have to plan anything. Vicky and I had the year planned out. All they had to do was step up. No one did. 

The entire trip was posted on this site and every Smart Center I stopped at, Smart Madness and Mercedes Headquarters knew that we were advertising the Smart brand under the First Coast Smarties banner.

Nothing would please me more than to have a (as Spicejax used to call it) "core group" of people that could take over, fill in, add to in my absence or presence. 

The reason why our events started all happening out of town is, on any given event in Jacksonville, we had more people from out of town than we had in town. I'm not talking people from Saint Augustine. I'm talking people coming from South and North Carolina, Tampa, Orlando. It was actually embarrassing to be invited to a local parade and have 6 cars show up, 5 from out of town and myself. When Mike left Jacksonville, my guaranteed 2 cars was no more.

George, as soon as we got back from our vacation I set up an event to celebrate our homecoming, share our trip with everyone and meet to see what everyone wanted to do for the rest of the year. I always try to put any and all events that we are doing on all available media. The only one I never seem to make it on is SCOA. Not one person showed up. Vicky and I had a meeting at our house. We spent over $100 from our own pockets to make it a nice event, bought food for people to eat and drinks. We had two people show up that actually came for other reasons than to be sociable. 

We have had every kind of event one can imagine and it's still the same thing over and over. Locally, we have a cruise in just about every weekend. We get minimum participation. We have gone bowling, parades, castles, the beach, bud brewery, various restaurants, car shows, charity events, air shows, just to name a few of the local things that we have done.

I still, and always be interested in any and all suggestions from members that want to be active and participate in what the club is doing. I will set up a meeting/dinner before I leave for South Africa on the 26th of October. I will be gone for a week. 

The club is only as good as the participating members. If there is a lot of interest in the club here in Jacksonville, I would like to see them all show up to the next meeting with notes in hand and tell me what they would like to see. I'm totally open to any and all suggestions.

Thank you once again for the concerns and lets get First Coast Smarties back on the front page!

Comment by George Oller on October 12, 2012 at 8:16pm

Marvin, I am glad to hear you plan to keep the group active.  It was a fairly dull summer with no smart related activities.

My concern is that you left for vacation with no one left to co ordinate the group activities while you were away.  You certainly deserve a nice vacation after teaching all year and I am glad you had a nice trip.

Not everyone is on Facebook or wants to be.  I still think the main avenues to dispense club info is through this site or the Meet Up site you started.

If you plan to remain president, you, in my opinion, should appoint someone to act in your behalf to plan activities for those in town.  I know the summer can be hard to plan for with people travelling, the heat, etc.  But still, we need to have a few things to plan for.

I have been active in car clubs since I was 19 and I am now 66.  I have seen it all and heard it all over the years.  This smart group is the first one marque club I have ever participated in.  I have never joined a Corvette club, a Porsche club, or a Mercedes club and have owned all of them.  I have mostly been in sports car clubs and street rod clubs where pretty much every brand was represented.

I hope we as a group can soon have a sit down business meting at a restaurant or someplace like that to decide the direction of this group, see what the members really want to do, and plan accordingly.

Also, remember club activities are like going to a buffett restaurant, not everyone wants to do everything.  If there are many events to pick from, there will be something for everyone.

Thanks for listening.  I hope this will show you that there is a lot of interest in Jacksonville and there should be more events for the locals.  Not everyone wants to go out of town on a regular basis.  Once is a while is fine, but there is still plenty of things to do locally.

George Oller

Comment by Chris Powers on October 11, 2012 at 12:35am

Congrats on your win! Well done!

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