Open letter from the President of the Association of Pipe Smoking Clubs of the Czech Republic to its members
Dear friends and members of the clubs of the ADK ČR,
I would like to use this letter to outline the main points of my vision for the development of the ADK in the short to medium term, and to ask for your support in putting them into practice.
The club presidents who attended this year’s General Assembly in Dalešice, where I was elected, already know that in my view the cornerstone of the Association is a working system of communication – both between the ADK bodies and the clubs, and among the clubs themselves. I consider it essential that the Association always has working contact details for all its member clubs, ideally a postal address, an email address and a telephone number. Keeping these details up to date must be primarily the task and responsibility of the clubs themselves.
Equally important is how the Association and its members present themselves to pipe smokers and to the general public. Today this calls above all for a good presence on the internet. That is why the dymkarskekluby.cz website is currently being reworked to become the full online home of our Association. Besides information about the Association itself, the website will mainly carry information about contests, both upcoming (calendar and invitations) and past (results, photos, reports…). A very important part will be the section where every pipe club can present itself. It is up to each club how much information about its activities it wishes to publish; however, members of the Association (who will have a prominent place on the website) will always list at least one contact person or other working contact for their club.
Directly related to this is the need of the Association, and of members who organise or would like to organise pipe events for others, to know how many genuinely active clubs (and pipe smokers) the ADK actually has. Among our members there are clubs we have not heard from since they were admitted. Some clubs ignore repeated appeals from the Board and the General Assembly to send a proper apology if they cannot attend the General Assembly. If the ADK is to carry real weight, it needs the support of its own members first and foremost – and so its members should only be clubs that care enough about their membership to send a representative to the General Assembly once a year, or at least to send a proper apology. I will therefore push for the membership conditions, which have been voted on several times, to actually be enforced – even, as a last resort, at the cost of expelling clubs that no longer exist or are completely inactive.
Building on a responsible membership and a working communication network, I would like to raise the prestige of the ADK, which is one of the key conditions for, among other things, securing good sponsorship for contests and other events held by our members under the auspices of the ADK. At the same time, we should become a representative of Czech pipe smoking to the outside world – to journalists, politicians and others…
I would also like to strengthen the unity and prestige of the ADK by organising events exclusively for pipe smokers from member clubs. My plans include, for example, membership badges or membership pipes.
Linked to the central theme of communication is my wish to increase members’ interest in the shape of the Association and what happens within it. I therefore plan to hold the next General Assembly as a “programme” meeting, where we can discuss the future direction of the ADK calmly and with enough time. I ask all presidents who have ideas for improving the Association or how it works to refine them with their club members and prepare them for discussion at the General Assembly, which will take place on 11 June 2011 during the 11th Klání zemí Koruny České in Kostelec nad Černými lesy. Please send them well in advance so that, once discussed by the Board, they can be included in the General Assembly agenda.
What does this mean in practice?
1. Any club that has not yet sent the Secretary of the Association its current details in response to his recent request, or did not complete them in Dalešice, is kindly asked to do so without delay. You can send them by email to jan.cet@seznam.cz or by post to Jan Cetkovský, Neumannova 1, 772 00 Olomouc 2. Please provide the club name, the name of the president (or another person authorised to represent the club), a postal address, a telephone number and an email address. We would also welcome the number of active members. If you would like further contacts to be recorded, please add them.
2. Each club is kindly asked to send Michal Hubacz, the administrator of dymkarskekluby.cz, the presentation it would like to have on the official ADK ČR website. The minimum is a working contact for a club representative: an email address or telephone number. The address to use is etrafika@etrafika.cz.
3. Please also send Michal Hubacz information about the contests and other events you plan to hold next year, so that they can be published on dymkarskekluby.cz. You can also send him your articles, reports, photos – in short, anything worth publishing about events you have organised or attended.
4. If you are looking for organisational or other support for your events, please send your requests to the Vice-President of the Association, Dr Josef Stanislav: stanislaw@mostex.cz
5. Please send your proposals for improving the Association or how it works to my email address, fenix@dymka.net – as well as any suggestions, comments and questions.
6. You already know the date and venue of the programme General Assembly. We would greatly appreciate it if every club could send one representative. If this is not possible, I strongly urge you to send an apology to the Secretary of the Association (see point 1 above). Please remember that a club that fails to attend the General Assembly without prior apology may have its membership suspended, and after a second consecutive unexcused absence it may be expelled from the Association.
7. If you really have no internet access, you can contact the Secretary of the Association in writing about all of the above (see point 1 above), who will pass the information on to the right person.
Friends and fellow pipe smokers, I believe that if we can stick to these few simple steps, which are no burden to any club, the ADK ČR will become a truly functioning organisation and may soon take its place as a leading representative of Czech pipe smoking.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation, and I wish you a cool smoke!
Mgr. Jakub Antoš
President of the ADK ČR