US Hawks Hang Gliding Association

The US Hawks will be 3 years old this summer, and we just crossed the 100 member mark a few months ago(*). So I think it's time to start forming a founding Board of Directors to move the organization from being seen as "Bob's club" to being a real, independent, and hopefully growing organization.

To get the ball rolling, I've sent out the following email message to the members of the forum:

On April 21st, 2013, Bob wrote:
Hello Members of the US Hawks Forum,

I'm writing because I think it's time to start forming a Board of Directors to oversee the US Hawks. We now have over 100 real people who've signed up on the forum and that's a reasonable number to start moving from the current "dictatorship" to a more democratic governance.

So I'm writing to just get a sense of how many people would be interested in serving on the first US Hawks Board of Directors. If you think you might have any interest at all, please let me know. You can write back to this email address or please feel free to call me directly at 858-204-7499 if you want more details or just want to chat about the US Hawks or hang gliding in general.

Thanks for your membership in the US Hawks Forum!

Sincerely,
Bob Kuczewski
Founder - US Hawks Hang Gliding Association

I expect the Board to be relatively small (maybe 3 to 5 people), but that's all open for discussion. If you have any thoughts or suggestions on this process, please post them here.

__________________________________________________________
(*) That's 100 real people who've confirmed their interest in hang gliding.

I've been giving this some more thought, and I've had a few very productive discussions with several volunteers for the Board in the last few days. Thanks to each of you.

I think the best way to approach this is to initially form the Board in an advisory capacity and see how that works out. Once the Board gets itself up and functioning, then we can begin to gradually transfer more and more authority to the Board. I think this will eliminate many of the problems that plagued the HGAA's bootstrapping process.

Review of the HGAA ("Hang Gliding Association of America"):

I think it might be helpful for us to learn from the mistakes of the HGAA. For those who don't know the history, I started that organization on hanggliding.org back in the spring of 2010. People began signing up and in a short time we had nearly 100 people ready to go. So we created a "Transition Team" to help move us from being a loose group into an actual organization. That's when the problems arose. Different people had different ideas about how to work together, and there was no authority to turn to when those different ideas conflicted with each other (actually, there was an agreed-upon authority, but one person with physical control of the web site decided to ignore that authority). The situation was worsened by people who I believe wanted to see the HGAA fail because it conflicted with their own power and control. Those people eventually ended up seizing control, and sure enough, they quickly dove it into the ground. In fact, when I last checked, the domain name "hgaa.org" is now the "Hazel Grove Agricultural Association"!!

In retrospect, I think one of the problems with the founding of the HGAA was that I assumed that a group of loosely connected pilots with no experience working with each other (and quite likely very different agendas) could come quickly together to build an organization. That was obviously too optimistic, and the results are clear at hgaa.org (now the "Hazel Grove Agricultural Association").

So I'd like to take it a little slower this time. I'd like to get the team working together without any authority at all to start with, so we don't have desperate "power plays" and the related strife. Let's get the board started as a "discussion group" about how to really build the organization. As the discussions mature, we'll get a better sense of how well we can work together without the pressure that we had in the HGAA. Little by little, the Board can take on more and more authority until it is fully self-sufficient.

Does anyone disagree with this approach?

To make the BOD more tangible and accessible, it would be great to see a list of BOD candidates and brief bios.

Rodger wrote:To make the BOD more tangible and accessible, it would be great to see a list of BOD candidates and brief bios.

Hi Rodger!!!

Actually every member is a BOD candidate!!

Maybe you could set a good example and post your bio and ideas for the US Hawks!!   

Hgaa I was a member
I think Mrfoamkiller
Dose it even exist anymore

howie wrote:Hgaa I was a member
I think Mrfoamkiller
Dose it even exist anymore

Hi Howie,

We started the HGAA on hanggliding.org, and then Jack Axaopoulos (sg) created a forum at hangglidingassociationofamerica.org. He basically told us to hold our HGAA discussions on that new forum that he controlled. At the time, we trusted Jack and did as he requested. Another early HGAA member also registered the domain name hgaa.org, and linked it to Jack's site. So we used hgaa.org for the few months of its active existence.

After the HGAA fell apart, the "hgaa.org" domain name was sold to the "Hazel Grove Agricultural Association" which holds it to this day. You can still see some remnants of the original site (although Jack appears to have modified it) at hangglidingassociationofamerica.org.

Many of the people who founded the HGAA went on to become founding members of the US Hawks. In many ways, the US Hawks is the true continuation of the original effort that we started on hangglidng.org in the spring of 2010. Most of our Board members were also members and/or Board Members of the original HGAA.

Hey! That's me on the left - as a young pre-fledgling!

wingspan33 wrote:Hey! That's me on the left - as a young pre-fledgling!

Great sense of humor Scott!!