Ski Club of Manchester AGM, 8th October 2020

Reporter: Andrew Walker

Once again we held the AGM online, and it looks like this could become a permanent fixture. After last year’s event some, particularly those who live in remote and isolated parts of the country, such as London, asked if we could stream future AGMs. It’s likely that even if we were to hold real AGMs, almost nobody would be bothered to turn up if we did stream it, preferring to view it from their sofas. And the travelling, on a miserable wet Friday evening in October (not to mention the CO2 generated), seals the deal.

It also means that we have more attendees. This year we had a total of 44, compared to last year’s 49, although both numbers are subject to the limits of the ability to count Zoom participants, especially where members don’t use their real, or full, names for their usernames. The meeting followed the usual pattern. Rick Mayers was stepping down as Chair, after four years of service, with Ruth Bacci replacing him. Ian Mates stepped down from the Committee during the year, Julie Dean-Roberts did not seek re-election, and Phil Jones joined during the year. There was one nomination at the AGM, for Jen Bridgeland, who has a keen interest in sustainability and green issues. She was duly elected to the Committee so we now are now back to a full quota of 14 members.

I was also out for a personal record for AGM timing. The only rules are that you must not cut corners and you must not rush the meeting, so planning is everything. My PB is 16 minutes, from 2019, but that was a real meeting, and I can never hope to equal that, let alone beat it, in the virtual world. Last year was 34 minutes, and this year, having already done a Zoom AGM in 2020, I managed to get it into a compact 21 minutes.

Immediately after the AGM, Iain Macintosh (Tosh) presented a summary of the member survey. We hope to be able to publish some of this material in a future Newsletter.

After a short break, James Gambrill, SCGB General Manager, did a short presentation about SCGB, the prospects for the forthcoming European ski season, and sustainability issues. Summary: looking likely but anything could happen. The following pages in this Newsletter are a selection of his slides. The final item was the speaker, Squash Falconer, who talked about her life and some of her skiing and mountaineering feats, which somehow relegate my more adventurous off-piste exploits to the mundane. There is a separate report in this Newsletter on Squash’s talk.

So that was that. The end of one SCoM year and the start of another. Prospects for skiing look better than they did earlier in the year (well, they couldn’t look worse could they?), so fingers crossed. I look forward to seeing you at various events throughout the year, in particular on skiing holidays.

Bon Ski!