I've spoken to many club members who didn't come back for a second year
of gliding. The main reason given was, indeed, the intrusion of "real
life". However drilling down it was more that they could not afford to
invest a whole day on the airfield, *especially* given that they only
got two or three flights out of it. (BTW, no-one told me they'd left
because it seemed too hard or there was too much to learn, although I
understand that could potentially be a factor.)

These scheduling/booking systems mentioned only amount to making sure
that there's x number of instructors on the field for a period of a few
hours, with y number of students to fly with. We're not talking slots
of 9.15, 9.30 etc.

I spent a weekend at Cambridge last summer and talked to, well,
everyone about their system. As Martin says they have less people on
the field, but no-one deemed it a problem, more something that just
needed to gotten used to.

This one simple system could have a dramatic effect on membership
progression and retention. The problem is getting it introduced. Anyone
in the UK who watched "Can Gerry Robinson Fix the NHS?" knows exactly
what I mean when I say that anyone I talk to tells me "but it's not the
way we do things". I understand Cambridge had this problem, and
conviced the large majority people before railroading the remaing
stubborn few :-).

Let me give an example. Last summer I organised flying on Friday
evenings. Via e-mail I'd arrange winch drivers and instructors. Then
I'd let three students come per each instructor, and everyone got to
fly three times in just three hours (instead of the usual six+).

Then I wrote a webpage (Zoho Creator) which basically did all this for
me. Every time an instructor signed up, the system allowed three more
students to book. It even has RSS feeds so students can be alerted as
soon as more slots are available.

Could I get this introduced? Could I heck! People couldn't grasp that
it wasn't any different from what I'd been doing manually. Luckily a
more forward-thinking instructor has "seen the light" and we're working
on getting it running this summer. My dream is that eventually the
whole club will use the system for all days...


Dan