• Brainstorm ideas — from incremental Improvements to wishlists
• Gather racing club best practices — new ideas, tech, trends, and intel on what other club’s are doing to attract and retain members
• Volunteer — members can offer to pitch in to make ideas happen, and board members can reach out for help with new intiatives
• Open up a dialogue — Polls, interaction with the board. What’s working, what we can improve

You can also PM @GregHoge (our 2024 club pres)

It would be good to keep a list of Kissena "Alumni" if that's possible (or desired), either as they progress to new teams within NYC or out of state.

Or when their perhaps when they win Masters worlds in CX?

or masters nationals in cx...

Em...

Them too. Fire.

some great comments, some i agree quite strongly, some i disagree with, some are discussed often when the board meets. I look forward to discuss some of them in person on a ride or over beer. One huge takeaway, as it has been suggested before, Bruce, you should be in the board.

I am sure we will be discussing several of these when we meet next. Thanks for reminding us that the last board meeting notes were not posted yet 

@Bruce van-Schalkwyk thanks for taking the time to write out your thoughts. It's hugely helpful to the board to get feedback like this. 

i think the reasoning for the board's decision to post the minutes of every meeting is to be as transparent as possible about what the board discusses and the decisions that we make. Many of the items you list above have been touched on in the past. I think the idea of making meetings more available to members (while logistically complicated) is worth revisiting, even if the solution is to have separate, regular, occasions where members can get face-time with board members and have their questions and concerns answered. 

I will make sure that each of the issues you raise are addressed at the next meeting and the board's thoughts disseminated. As Eloy stated, there are some I agree with and others that I think can get a bit sticky. In any event, even the stickiest issue is well worth discussing. 

The problem with Bruce is, he's so damn charming it's easy to forget what a philosopher he is at heart.

Adding GrantSeltzer's thoughts from Jan 7:

Hey folks,

I wanted to share some ideas i've had to help grow the club. The size of the roster is pretty small, and from I understand at it's smallest size in quite some time. I've been riding with different clubs/groups since moving to Greenwich and there's some key things those clubs/stores have done that I think we should emulate.

- Our recruitment strategy is a bit dated and unapproachable. We could make our Strava group public, and have our weekly weekend rides pre-planned with a downloadable route. Write the time and meeting place. That way people could just show up for a ride without asking permission first via an email.

- Complementary to this idea, we could say that you have to join the club (i.e. pay membership dues) in order to buy Kissena kit.

- I'm not sure how our budget is laid out. It'd be great to have visibility into this. There's potentially ways we can improve the club experience and recruiting depending on what our current revenue stream is. If it's membership, perhaps we could get rid of that and instead add a small markup on kit to supplement it? or to races? This would incentive us to recruit more.

- If I understand correctly, the races in Prospect Park (both series) are technically put on by Kissena and Tom is contracted out in order to run them (please correct me if wrong). If that's the case could we name the races something like "Kissena Crit P/B Castelli"? This would be a great way to get better exposure.

- The best marketing aspect that Kissena has is that we're the longest running club in Brooklyn. We should lean into the appeal of being part of a great tradition. We should have history information on our website and maybe come up with a tagline for the club to have on website/jerseys playing into that.

- Open board meetings (I assume they're on zoom?)

Here is some context from the time machine. If I'm not mistaken, club membership has never been as high as it was when I was President. (bows) It would be absurd for me to take credit though. There was just way more racing a decade ago.

1. USAC membership is the benchmark. Around 2012 the roster hit it's high water mark of 70k (ish). Around then the club roster was pretty close to 150. Since then USAC numbers have been way down. Tough to track down (in the quick searches I did before posting this) but I remember numbers like "down 30%" being not-uncommon.
2. Kissena is (or was) a racing club. That means we tried (in the old days) to have a reasonable distribution of Cat 3 riders to shepherd the new Cat 4's & 5's. I know the upgrade from 5 to 4 is more automatic now, but keep in mind recruitment is 90%+ Cat 5's or complete novices.
3. Recruiting. We got really lucky with an unusual and extremely charming recruiter - Kate. She could convince anyone with two wheels and a gleam in their eye to join the club and give racing a try. And she did so all the time. Like, daily. We also had more than a few high profile senior recruitments: former National Irish track Champ, former USA U23 star, etc. These helped tremendously with mentoring.
4. Training. When the roster got really big we saw a LOT of in race and training accidents. Too many. That's when we pulled the hand brake and started weekly skills & drillz sessions, and paid much closer attention to the distribution of mentors vs new riders. We had double (?) the number of Cat 3+ members to help with that.
5. Sponsors. We had a few unpleasant incidents of new club members with zero (or nearly) experience blasting around town in shiny new team kit running reds, intimidating pedestrians and acting like jerks in the peloton. Obviously not a look any club or sponsor is going for.

None of this is to say the club shouldn't try to grow (if that's needed) just a few extra thinking points for the discussion.

I'll go back to trying to fasten an onion to my saddle bag now.

All these are great points , secondly we should also consider member retention ,Why are guys like James Reader & Marc Bertucco not staying within the club ?

One of the things I wish we could see on our website and I guess FB and Insta are photos of Kissenas killing it in races.  For example, we did a great job of winning various categories in the L&C Cup races for years.  We have state championship medals, we have national championship medals.  We look good doing it, and we know how to have fun doing it.  

It seems to me that an issue is that the median age of club members is getting older.  This is a mixed bag.  on the one hand, it means we're not as present at the pointy end of races, which is, in itself, a kind of recruitment tool.  On the other, we have a ton of knowledge about riding, training, racing, and everything that goes into not only doing well on the bike, but having a great time doing it.

I wish there was a way we could highlight our institutional knowledge as something that should draw people to Kissena.  I think a bunch of years ago Bob Mullen might have tried to do this.  I know there is a gene many new racers possess that predisposes them to thinking they can do it all on their own or with a couple of equally inexperienced buddies.  It's the old 'reinventing the wheel' mindset.  However, in my experience, older hands/mentors can tremendously speed up the learning curve.  And there are a bunch of us who have been doing this a long time, have plenty of skills and knowledge to help.    

Someone mentioned crashing too much.  This is a problem that was getting worse when heart rate training started to take over, and has been exacerbated by power training, Strava, and Zwifting.  Riding skills are real and important, and I'm glad we try to address this--we could actually do more of this.  But, this example is also about noobs thinking that just because they hit some power numbers, they know all they need to know before they start racing.    

 I think we should evaluate what are strengths are and try to play to those strengths as a way to grow the club.  Way back in 2005 or thereabouts, some guy was thinking of joining Kissena.  He later told me he didn't join Kissena because we weren't serious enough.  I found this pretty infuriating.  I wasn't the only member with an elite national championship medal from the recent past, I had raced nationally and internationally and was routinely at the front in local and regional races, and scoring lots of top tens locally.  I took a deep breath and realized he was interested more in being around people who struck a serious pose rather than raced well. (he didn't race for long and I didn't find the sub-team he decided to go with particularly serious; they weren't at the front in races)  Shortly thereafter, and for several years, we did have a number of people join and stay and do well, and I felt we had decent momentum for the better part of a decade.   

I don't know how we do it.  I feel I'm too old and sufficiently distracted with other things not to know how to make this happen.  I'm willing to help.  

Mark Taylor said:

All these are great points , secondly we should also consider member retention ,Why are guys like James Reader & Marc Bertucco not staying within the club ?

Marc's a friend, so this is a bit of a sore spot with me.  I feel he couldn't decide whether or not he should help and how much.  He also was less and less keen on playing the bike racing game, and it seemsed that he didn't want to feel obliged to race locally.  

Yep ,its slow,old men like me ,that don't race anymore, that are putting off new members joining

I know we spoke about it in the meeting this week, but I think being more open to juniors (and all that comes with it) could help alleviate some of the "the club is getting older". To me, if we're open to juniors and developing them and mentoring, if the child joins Kissena and the parent also rides, it becomes an opportunity for the parent/child to have a thing together (for me, my dad and I always bowled together in our summer league growing up and it was always our thing). Marc B. happens to be an easy example- he rides with us most weekends, he's at cross races and is racing and his son is at cross races and is racing.

In thinking through this idea, the flip side to this (aside from the issues of liability, parental consent, safe sport certification, etc.) is that it requires volunteers and mentors to be consistently active and engaged, which I know can be difficult at times due to life, family and work obligations being hectic. If this was something we had a critical mass of members behind and committed to (and there is obliviously tons of room to play with the details as far as how young a member must be, ambitions, etc.) it would be transformative to the club. However, it's not something that we could do half assed.

@Matt Budofsky 

I feel strongly about the Jr. argument, so I'll take a break from my onion patch. Developing juniors is not something the club can or should try and do "part time." First, @mugwump's point; there are extensive resources for Juniors (star track, crca) but much more importantly, it would require a huge dedication of resources that the club doesn't have:

• each ride is a field trip - parental consent, chaperones, and making sure the environment is appropriate (like when some random douche decides to join the paceline on 9w) and safe
• club, directors & officers insurance and training
• development plans that are age and skill appropriate
• race plans that are age & skill appropriate (picking specific events, series, etc) because it doesn't help develop jr's if they can't race against their peers - can't be drinking at cross races with somebody else's kids around. 
• parent relations: who is going to hold regular meetings with concerned parents, explain why billy didn't get the leadout he wanted, or was too tired/cold/hungry/demoralized on his group ride
• sponsors: not sure where the club sits today but I am pretty sure it isn't kosher to have juniors riding around with beer logos on their kit...

I'm not saying it's impossible, but I am saying it is a much, much bigger deal than "hey let's add some juniors in".

Lastly, and this is an issue the club has had for decades, is that Kissena is not an elite team. Developed juniors will be much more serious, and leave for high-performance teams. That is fine, Kissena has a fine (ahem, minus Hincapie) reputation for developing and launching fast men - but they don't add to the roster. Shooting stars keep shooting well past their time in Orange & Blue.

@Jules and @mugwump totally agree with your points generally in that it is a huge investment from the club, and as I said, it can't be half assed.

I wasn't looking or thinking about it so much from a developmental perspective, where our goal is create the best racers we can and watch as they move to greener pastures as their skills outgrow what we can offer, but more as Kissena being, I guess for lack of a better term, family friendly, so that if a parent rides bikes and has a child who is also riding, there's an opportunity to include their kids, whereas without that ability they may go to a different club. Alternatively, this could potentially be achieved by Kissena having a monthly family group ride or something like that instead.

I'm really just spitballing and throwing every idea out there, because as I see it, no idea is a bad idea (some will just be far better than others and some the club will decide that it's not something we want to pursue)

I think it's far more straightforward to have a "bring your kids" day, or encourage families to show up at cross races. It was always a big part of our family game plan...

Genuinely, one way I think to attract members (and at least something that attracted me) is that Kissena advertises itself as "come one come all". Cycling clubs (whether they race or not) are intimidating as hell for those on the outside; I was (and still am to a degree) one of them. Getting used to both the lifestyle, changes, new experiences, learning, etc. that comes with the dynamics of riding with a group of people who are taking the activity more seriously than weekend warriors. 

Whether Kissena is a final destination for some, or a lily pad onto other teams or clubs (whether people grow up/out/move/whatever), I think one way to bring new members would be to welcome people into Kissena as an approachable entry point to this world. 

For example, while my fitness is improving, I'm still not at the level of those who have been riding this regularly for 1+ year (which is the entirety of the club). My zone 2 is far lower than others, and everyone's different, but I think almost "dumbing down" (for lack of a better word), or making steps like dedicating a weekly group ride to a format like "slow but long" or not smashing tempo, would give a platform for people to feel like they can get in without the fear of being obliterated on climbs or in a paceline. Hell, even teaching noobs how to ride in a paceline. Watching GCN videos is one thing, but actually doing it is another (which I think is a mental hurdle for many). The burden of not knowing what you don't know is a big inhibitor for many hobby cyclists, and there's a fear/intimidation factor.

If Kissena lowers that bar as an educational space for those who want to dip their toe in further and feel welcomed somewhere where they can make mistakes, learn, and make friends, I think that could create a lane for growth. I do think we do that to some degree already (it's what attracted me in the first place), but I think we could take it a step further and be more proactive about it. 

Just my two cents. I know others have done marketing in their careers, I have as well, would be happy to have a call/meeting about small/medium/large scale marketing ideas we can do as a starting point. 

I made a Figma Jam for us to all to brainstorm ideas here

Figma is super intuitive and easy to learn—spacebar brings up the hand tool, command + - to zoom etc. 5 mins! 

I'll check out the Jam. @BlakeFoster the club considered where to set the bar for entry level the last time we tried to pump enrollment. The conclusion we came to at the time was that Kissena is first and foremost a racing club, and people who have never ridden fifty miles (metaphorically) would probably be better suited doing NYCC for a year beforehand.

#ymmv

Except , now NYCC has a race team 

I was thinking about the notion of Kissena as a racing team while we were riding yesterday.

Actually, to me the club has a nice balance between being very enthusiastic about racing, be it road, gravel or CX. But at the same time, I've experienced the club as also being very enthusiastic about having weekend group rides where we have a coffee stop halfway and not (completely) kill each other on climbs - at least not all the time.

As far as I know, we're the only team that really combines these two things, although there must be many riders that are interested in exactly this combination: a little bit of racing, a little bit of group riding, some camaraderie because it's not a completely different group of people each week and learning about pacelining/fueling/racing/anything else from super experienced riders 

Realistically, most riders that try racing after getting acquainted to it through Kissena and really want to pursue winning races in 3/4 or 1-2-3 will move to a team that's purely focussed on that. But we do provide a good base for people that want to play bikes in the park races from time to time, or to try their hand (leg?) at it - there's always a fun group of Kissenista's showing up to race and/or support.

I think we could do more to advertise this combination. Yes, we could make our weekend group rides a little bit more accessible by being a little bit more mindful about riders that can't (yet!) keep up on all the climbs. Communication about expectations (Having experience with >50 miles rides before joining is a good rule of thumb I think!) is a factor too.

Having a larger group out more regularly, like we did at the Super Bowl Century yesterday, would be best. With larger groups it's easier to have a faster, paceline-focussed group doing a slightly longer route and a more chill group with less experienced and more fatigued riders doing a shorter loop - ideally ending up at the same coffee place halfway at around the same time. It's also nice if people don't have to peel off alone once they've had enough - or if some riders decide they want to go all-out while others want to keep taking it easier.

There's also a flywheel effect in being out with a larger group frequently. The best way to get people to join is by them seeing us having a good time, so let's ride bikes!

TLDR: Positioning ourselves as being slightly less intimidating than race teams, and more of a coherent (and fun) club than NYCC could really be our sweet spot in terms of recruiting and marketing ourselves, I think. At least it was exactly what I was looking for - and found! 

A bit to that end, have we instagrammed, Facebooked, and twittered the Super Bowl Ride?

Completely agree with Lennart ,

I really feel  best way to advertise the club is to show up! 

I want to go back to something Lennart brought up.

I ahve long believed that a single club can, and should, have the ability to host and help people at virtually all points in their cycling journey.  I think the CRCA racing league (it's not really a club) has made it possible for small groups of people to form little teams that come and go and, in my opinion, ultimately do very little to help either their members or the sport.  

To that end, I think we should consider how to get to being an organization that can be helpful and useful to people who are new and those who are experienced.  We have, in the past, been able to have members new to the sport as well as active in the V's, IV's, III's, II's, and even I's.  And those people were racing road, track, cross, and even a little MTB.  Gravel wasn't a thing yet.

The difficulty for us at this moment is rebuilding such a pipeline.  But I think it can be done.  

I think there are lots of reasons to do it.  I'd like to think it can ultimately be somewhat self-sustaining.