Saturday, September 20, 2008

First official meeting of the Take the Lake Society!

Well, what an exciting evening we had at the Lake Waccamaw Depot on Tuesday, Sept. 16!

There were about a dozen people there, and everyone had excellent ideas for the future of this event.

First, Mark (that's me) showed a slide show of photographs he took during the four events over Labor Day weekend. Then he gave a presentation all about his motivation for this event and some ideas.

Here's the video (on YouTube) shown below.


Major topics of discussion:
- Most everyone agreed that a vital element of this event is that we either circumnavigate or cross the lake, and that, in the bicycle event, pushing the bikes through the park is a feasible idea.

- Walter Palmer suggested we host a similar and smaller event on Memorial Day weekend, all in one day, with a 1-mile swim, for example, as a warm-up, or tryout, or whatever, to motivate, inspire and encourage people to try the Labor Day event.

- It was informally decided that this, like any large event these days, will need an official t-shirt.

- We will look into event insurance.

- Eric Brandt noted that the URL Takethelake.com is already taken.

- On entry fees:
- Will charging a fee increase our insurance premium?
- Charging a fee helps participants commit to the event
- Fees would help pay for t-shirts, insurance and operations expenses.

- Discussion led to medals (Colliers Jewelers has donated medals for swimmers for decades). John McNeill announced that his family has decided to donate medals for all participants for as long as possible. A brief discussion entertained various medal concepts.

- Julie Stocks suggested forming committees. A few suggestions:
- Each of the four events
- Overall marketing and promotion
- Volunteers
- Medal design
- Safety

- To announce this event we could, in the spring, hold a Saturday morning walk through the park trail, beginning at the park and shuttling people back from the dam in vans. We could stop at the beach for a catered (ostentatiously?) lunch, with tables, chairs and a small band brought in by boat. Invitees would be business, health, government and education leaders in the county.

- Mark asked about the name Take the Lake and everyone seemed to like it. No one had suggestions for anything else.

- Mark announced a $500 grant from Healthy Carolinians and about $1,300 in the Dropaton account that could be used on this project.

- Forgive me if I left anyone or anything out - I'm doing this from memory. Please feel free to leave a comment. (I don't believe you have to register.) Let's make this a public forum!

UPDATE  ---- Since the meeting...
 - I have purchased the domain name: Takethelake.org, so we can move forward with that. I will keep this blog, but the .org URL will be easier to direct people to.

 - I have looked into two insurance companies and have received one quote (from Western Heritage). There are many factors that I may not have right, but the quote was under $300 for 100 participants over three days. 


Next meeting: 
Tues., Oct. 14, 7 p.m. 
at the Depot

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