I guess we can all speculate as to how much exposure is helpful, and how much tends to push the people you are promoting to away from the site just as we can argue about how effective campaign commercials are by Oct 31, even for the guy we might support. Fact is, since this site has been over saturated with OMA, there is a lot less visitation from racers whose racing does not revolve around OMA , myself included, after which you must ask who you are promoting to. The proverbial choir? But that was not even the point of my post, or in mentioning that this is basically now an OMA site. My point was that criticism of anything OMA, no matter how true or sincere, is not taken well here, as evidenced by the quick removal of all posts doing so earlier today. By the way, I am an OMA member. The card I purchased says that I am, anyways.
In spite of my early concerns I was asked by Briarcliff to give OMA a chance, and I did so with an open mind. In December or we scheduled OTC to race 4 OMA dates. We enjoyed racing at Briarcliff early this year. It was well organized, and quad friendly, and trike friendly. We were sorry our turnout was not better, and that was solely due to your location.
Our 2nd date was Medina Fair. The start time on this weeknight event was bumped up by one hour just days before the race which I stumbled across on here the day before the race. I had to make 9 phone calls that night. We lost two riders. I noticed nobody has mentioned the embarrassment that event was, so I'm guessing nobody really wants to acknowledge or discuss what went wrong, but after racing my 16th Medina Fair, I left heartbroken and sick. But that's another different subject so we'll move on.
Our 3rd date was Sept 5 at OIR since we had such a great time there at Mosher's first race there. What a disappointment.
Our last date was to be Sept 29 at Malvern. The guys arranged vacations, days off, whatever to be there. I check here today and SURPISE!
I'm a capitalist and am all for making a profit. I also believe that if you don't live up to your commitments, and lose your credibility, you won't make a very good capitalist. When you take your patrons for granted, in order to pursue the patrons you would rather have, the loyalty of the original patrons soon begins to waiver.
We at OTC make our schedule in December for the year. We make mistakes and bad decisions too, but we still live up to our commitments, even the ones we should not have made because our credibility means that much to us. One promoter knows we are coming the weekend of October 18-20 because we said we were last December. Does your word carry that weight?
Last minute schedule changes will not increase short term turnout, and will harm long term turnout. You are better off to weather the bad decisions, follow through, learn from them, and make better ones down the road, and not a few days before the next event.
Like many others, some of our riders have to make arrangements far in advance as we cover several states (or provinces). I know there was only going to be 8 of us, so I'm sure you can fill the void with all those extra Saturday racers that will come on short notice. We can't make Saturday, nor is that what we committed to.
Like I said in my other post before it was removed - its constructive criticism. You can shoot the messenger, or you can ponder the message.
