2005 AANR Convention at Caliente Resort

[w/pyn]

I'm just curious how many members are planning to attend the AANR convention at Caliente Resort in Florida on Aug 6-14. It sounds like fun. Any idea of what the schedule of events for the convention is?

[w/pyn]

I'm just curious how many members are planning to attend the AANR convention at Caliente Resort in Florida on Aug 6-14. It sounds like fun. Any idea of what the schedule of events for the convention is?

[usuallylurk]

One of the problems about going to an AANR convention is that it's, to a great degree, AANR politics.

Meetings, meetings, meetings. They have social events at night - but even then, politics invade that as well. There are various events that take place - recreational events, volleyball and tennis tournaments -- but if you want to have FUN, I recommend the TNS gatherings.

In the future, now that the legislative body of AANR (general assembly) is being dumped, the AANR conventions may become purely fun events for the attendees, much as the TNS gatherings/festivals are today.

I went to one AANR convention - as a delegate - it wasn't fun.

[Trailscout]

Meetings may be boring, but at least you have a sayso in how the club is run. How else would the club officers know the wishes of the rank and file? Father knows best?

[David77]

If you are not a delegate, your opinion does not register in the final analysis, because only delegates can vote on issues. The business meetings I sometimes attended, were at best, mildly interesting, but since I was not a delegate, I did not attend most meetings but did what I would do if I were there at any other time. It was nice to meet people from Canada and from all over the USA. The dances at night were very nice.

[Cheri]

quote:

Originally posted by David77:
If you are not a delegate, your opinion does not register in the final analysis, because only delegates can vote on issues. The business meetings I sometimes attended, were at best, mildly interesting, but since I was not a delegate, I did not attend most meetings but did what I would do if I were there at any other time. It was nice to meet people from Canada and from all over the USA. The dances at night were very nice.

Even those who are not delegates had a voice if they're AANR members. This was the last year for Delegates and a General Assembly as we have known it.
Regards, Cheri

quote:

Originally posted by Cheri:

Even those who are not delegates had a voice if they're AANR members. This was the last year for Delegates and a General Assembly as we have known it.
Regards, Cheri

And the new changes still won't allow AANR to reflect it's members' views.

[Cheri]

The members will be able to even be Trustees,
and each member will be able to vote. What do you mean they won't be able to express their views>+?!!

quote:

Originally posted by Cheri:
The members will be able to even be Trustees,
and each member will be able to vote. What do you mean they won't be able to express their views>+?!!

You know exactly what I mean. All of them won't be elected by the paying members. The clubs will be selecting some of them too. That means the members will still not be in control of AANR even though they are the ones paying for it.

Please, lets tell the whole story here instead of what you think looks good.

You know, I might as well spell it out now because I'm sure the AANRbots will be after me if I don't, and will probably be after me even if I do.

Ok, originally the people who were to represent the members at the AANR elections were supposed to be elected by the members, with an election at each club. IOW, the original intentions of AANR was to have people voting that reflected the desires of the members which makes sense since the members are the ones that foot the bills with membership money. The delegates would have represented us. When this started there were no direct members, we all belonged to a club somewhere.

What happened over time is that these elections didn't take place for various reasons, some totally innocent and some not. Sometimes it was the members' fault for not voting and sometimes the clubs wanted to have delegates in place that reflected their values and views and not that of the members. I personally got appointed as a delegate once this way. I was not elected.

I called Paradise once and asked them when their election was taking place and I talked to half a dozen people, including the "elected" delegate and none could tell me when these elections took place. This was far from an isolated case, it's the most common response. Oh, and that delegate just happened to work for the owner of Paradise so you know who's views she was representing don't you?

Anyway, Pat Brown wanted to change all that and came up with AANR Tomorrow which was a huge restructuring of AANR. It totally dumped the regional branches of AANR, cutting them off from their cut in the members' dues. It also gave the clubs the power to vote for delegates, which they already had anyway, it was just made "legal".

AANR Tomorrow was a washout, nobody liked it, so she came up with a second plan. It left the regionals in place and still gave the clubs half the vote for delegates, and it was put into place. The members still don't have control of AANR. Technically the members went from voting for all delegates to only voting in half. How many were truly elected by members before that? I don't know and if anyone does, it's being kept quiet, but it was almost certainly more than half and AANR had been doing absolutely nothing about it before this. It was ignored. This means in reality the clubs lost a little control but it also means that the members didn't gain all control back. We don't control AANR.

Oh, and BTW, Cheri knows all of this and has known it all along. It's annoying when people pretend they are clueless when you know they aren't. It's dishonest.