Region VI Director

Being your ambassador to the NCRS National Board is one of my most important jobs as your Regional Director.  Communicating your concerns and questions to the board and getting answers back to the Chapter officers is a top priority.  What can National provide to help your chapter be successful?  I will be the conduit between you, your chapter and national to help your chapter be more successful.  Below are some of the ideas I would push to implement and improve if I am elected to be your Region VI director:

The worst thing someone can hear is:  "I'm from the government and I'm here to help".  I have hundreds of ideas on how to be a good Region VI Director and to promote NCRS, but my ideas may not be what you need.  For this to be a healthy relationship, I need to know where your chapter needs help, what your struggles are, how I can provide assistance.  I may be able to help with something as simple as a phone call, or I may need to go to the NCRS Board of Directors, no job is too small or too large that I won't dig in and help you.  But I can't help if I don't know what you need.  Communication is key to understanding your chapter and personal needs.  

I am here to help.

I believe the foundation of the NCRS Concours program was a step in the right direction to include thousands of Corvettes that do not fall under our traditional Flight Judging Program.  We can use this to expand our membership of younger and diverse owners but we need to refine it and promote it more efficiently. 

After being a NCRS member for 17 years, in 2019 I decided to live by the words my Dad told me a million times:  Lead, Follow or Get out of the way.  I decided to LEAD, and I volunteered to be the Nebraska Chapter Judging Chairman.  Was I qualified for the job?  Definitely not, but I dug in, started asking questions, went to every chapter judging meet within 800 miles, asked for help from other NCRS Judging Chairman, asked for support from my Regional Director and mentor Ralph Ridge, and I just charged full steam ahead.  Of course I made mistakes, but that's part of learning.  In the process, I started recruiting new NCRS members to fill chapter officer positions and get help and support for chapter events.  Since 2019, the Nebraska Chapter has grown from 19 members to 60 and we are now thriving.  I plan to use my experiences to help the other Region VI chapters grow and be successful for many years to come.

In 2021 at the NCRS Heartland Regional, a small group of us led by Region VI director Ralph Ridge sat down with National Judging Chairman David Brigham to discuss a "mentor program".  We discussed the viability of using senior Master Judges to work with junior judges at regionals and nationals in small groups instead of the larger Advanced Judging School (Terry's School).  We named this the "NCRS Mentoring Program" as a working title.  It seems that not many junior judges come to these events because they don't get or don't want judging spots at this level.  I think there needs to be a clearly defined program outline and promotion so that people know what it is and how it will be used.  I think this Mentor program has potential to give multi year master judges a new way to teach and help get newer members involved.

NCRS Members want knowledge to become better Corvette owners & judges.  I feel that we as an organization are not doing enough to train people in many aspects of NCRS judging.  Things as simple as CDCIF are not being explained and trained into our newer judges.  I cant tell you how many times I have judged with someone that thought one of the "C"'s in CDCIF was Condition.  We are expecting chapters to do all the training, and sometimes that training is incorrect, or not even presented and we have judges stumbling in the dark.  The national convention has many great judging and tech schools, but we are failing at the regional level by not providing multiple judging schools for people to attend and gain knowledge.  FORGET THE POINTS, just give people more opportunities for learning and they will fill the classroom.

The NCRS website is "adequate" for current NCRS members that have used it for the past 10+ years, but it really not much more than a glorified message board of the 1990's.  It is old and outdated, it doesn't "sing and dance" like people expect to see with a modern website.  I am not criticizing the website or the webmasters, they are doing what they can with the 20+ year old technology they have to work with.  But this outdated platform is our "First Contact" with potential new members, and it does nothing to create excitement or interest.  I know it is not easy or cheap, but to keep up with the times we live in, our online web presence needs to be brought into the 21st century asap.

If elected to be your NCRS Region VI Director, I would propose holding a monthly online "Zoom" meeting with chapter officers to talk about chapter events, national/regional events, recruitment ideas, questions for the national board of directors, or any other topic of discussion you may have.  I think a lot of great ideas can be shared amongst our chapters and this is a great opportunity to learn how to make each chapter stronger.  Learning what has worked in Bonneville or New Mexico may help Rocky Mountain or Nebraska.  When I took the Nebraska Chapter judging chair position, I realized I could learn a lot from attending other chapter meets and getting great ideas to implement at my own chapter.  Using an online meeting we can quickly and efficiently share ideas with each other to make each chapter stronger.

Every Corvette organization advertises their group to other Corvette publications and groups.  There are still some people that read print media and I believe there is potential for club crossover that we are not achieving.  Bloomington Gold advertises in the NCRS Driveline, why aren't we advertising to Bloomington Gold participants, and multiple other Corvette events/organizations?  We are the worldwide authority on Corvettes, yet millions of Corvette owners have ever heard of NCRS.  Using print, digital and online media sites we need to be promoting not only NCRS but our events, Chevy Muscle Docs, judging manuals and our local chapters to Corvette owners worldwide.

Chevy Muscle Docs is a NCRS service that is available to Chevrolet Nova, Chevelle and Camaro owners that provides original Chevrolet dealership shipping data.  This information is available for purchase to an owner that wants to know where their Chevrolet was shipped new.  Many owners want to do historical documentation of where their car was sold new, and sometimes this can also aid in an owners search for original documentation and possibly original owner of their car.  We need to be promoting and advertising this service to people online and in print media to other Chevrolet clubs and organizations.  We have a tremendous resource for income potential and we are not promoting it to maximize it for NCRS.  I will recommend to the Board that we spend advertising dollars to let people worldwide know of this valuable service to Chevrolet owners.