The Fiat Club America is holding their elections. Below are candidates running for President and the Board, plus details on how to vote:
Dear Fiat Club America Member,
The online election of Club Officers and Directors will begin on Friday September 1st when around noon you will be sent a link to a Survey Monkey Ballot in an email to the address in your club member profile from Fiatclubamerica.elections@gmail.com. If you do not see the email in your inbox, please check your spam folder.
You access the Electronic Ballot by this unique link to Survey Monkey. The election survey link may only be used once, so no member may vote twice. The Election will conclude at 7:59 PM EDT on Friday September 15th. The election results will be announced that evening.
Only one nomination for Club Secretary was received as of the deadline on August 14th, Tim Beeble was seated in accordance with Robert’s Rules
There are 2 members running for President of the Club and 7 members running for 4 seats on the Board of Directors. Please read their Candidate Statements.
In addition, there is a question on the ballot regarding Fiat FreakOut 2024 in Greenville SC. We are seeking advice from members who plan to attend FreakOut 2024 about possibly making a change to the normal schedule for the Concorso. The details about this follow the Candidate Statements below.
ADVISORY QUESTIONS ON FREAKOUT 2024
Do you plan to attend Fiat FreakOut in Greenville, SC in June 2024? (If Yes, then moves to question 2)
Would a Friday Concorso (instead of traditional Saturday) change your attendance decision?
Instead of the typical time of early Saturday morning for our FIAT FreakOut Concorso, we are considering a late Friday morning Concorso at the beautiful Furman University. The goal is to better balance the pace of our Saturday activities yet retain the traditional Saturday night banquet. This change permits our group to be the honored marque at the "Upstate Cars & Coffee" event (see Facebook page) at Michelin North American Headquarters on Saturday morning as part of the FreakOut agenda.
Below are the benefits of a Friday Concorso:
Doug Von Koenig for President.jpg
Arman Labrada for FCA Pres.jpg
John Montgomery for board.jpg
Anthony licausi for board.jpg
Michael Brenner for board.jpg
jason tackett for board.jpg
Michael Sharpe for board.jpg
Sherman Barton for board.jpg
Mike Bouse for board.jpg
Dear Fiat Club America Member,
The online election of Club Officers and Directors will begin on Friday September 1st when around noon you will be sent a link to a Survey Monkey Ballot in an email to the address in your club member profile from Fiatclubamerica.elections@gmail.com. If you do not see the email in your inbox, please check your spam folder.
You access the Electronic Ballot by this unique link to Survey Monkey. The election survey link may only be used once, so no member may vote twice. The Election will conclude at 7:59 PM EDT on Friday September 15th. The election results will be announced that evening.
Only one nomination for Club Secretary was received as of the deadline on August 14th, Tim Beeble was seated in accordance with Robert’s Rules
There are 2 members running for President of the Club and 7 members running for 4 seats on the Board of Directors. Please read their Candidate Statements.
In addition, there is a question on the ballot regarding Fiat FreakOut 2024 in Greenville SC. We are seeking advice from members who plan to attend FreakOut 2024 about possibly making a change to the normal schedule for the Concorso. The details about this follow the Candidate Statements below.
ADVISORY QUESTIONS ON FREAKOUT 2024
Do you plan to attend Fiat FreakOut in Greenville, SC in June 2024? (If Yes, then moves to question 2)
Would a Friday Concorso (instead of traditional Saturday) change your attendance decision?
Instead of the typical time of early Saturday morning for our FIAT FreakOut Concorso, we are considering a late Friday morning Concorso at the beautiful Furman University. The goal is to better balance the pace of our Saturday activities yet retain the traditional Saturday night banquet. This change permits our group to be the honored marque at the "Upstate Cars & Coffee" event (see Facebook page) at Michelin North American Headquarters on Saturday morning as part of the FreakOut agenda.
Below are the benefits of a Friday Concorso:
- A Friday mid-morning show field arrival time loading gives show car owners more time for the hotel breakfast and to prepare their cars prior to departure for the show field.
- Members in the region who cannot, or choose not to, stay at Embassy Hotel on Thursday night can still make the show field by mid-morning Friday.
- Once the voting and concours show is over on Friday at approximately 3:30 PM, it’s a perfect time for a post-show afternoon drive and return to the hotel.
- There is no pressure to get on a FFO show field just after sunrise on Saturday then attend the late night banquet the same day.
- Owners can drive their cars "con brio" after Friday afternoon through Saturday & Sunday without worry or detailed cleaning after the show. Anyone who chooses not to attend "Cars and Coffee" can sleep in on Saturday morning and enjoy the free buffet breakfast at the Embassy Hotel.
- A well-balanced timeline for Saturday activities leads to a relaxing social hour and awards banquet.
- More parking lot time on all days but especially after the Saturday banquet.
- If it rains heavily on Friday, we still have a Saturday as a rain-date and hold the Concorso at Furman with better weather.
- Our concern is that some members normally do not show up to FreakOut until later on Friday. We need to gauge to what extent moving the concorso from Saturday to Friday would reduce member participation in FreakOut 2024.
Doug Von Koenig for President.jpg
Arman Labrada for FCA Pres.jpg
John Montgomery for board.jpg
Anthony licausi for board.jpg
Michael Brenner for board.jpg
jason tackett for board.jpg
Michael Sharpe for board.jpg
Sherman Barton for board.jpg
Mike Bouse for board.jpg
I'm happy to announce I've expanded the Fiat Club America Forums. The Club Forum has over 2,000 posts that have received well over 1 million views.
To make it easier to navigate, I've created separate forum categories:
- Fiat Club America General Discussions
- FreakOut
- Fiat Club America Events
- Fiat Club Chapters (where each Chapter can have their own Forum. Please let the chapter presidents know.)
And as a FYI, so far this year, this forum has seen half a million unique visitors and over 10 million pageviews, all trending up from last year. We have 30K+ members.
So good news all around.
You may ask why the Club needs a forum as it "has" Facebook? There are some important reasons. A big one is, FB has been randomly removing posts and even whole pages without a valid reason. It may be that the word "Fiat" gets flagged by their cybersecurity AI. Nobody knows because they won't tell you. Once that happens, it is nearly impossible to contact anyone or to get your content back. Read more:
Facebook Randomly Removes Another Fiat Page
And of course, there are the privacy issues, the tracking issue, the nearly impossible to search for posts issues, etc. Plus, there are a lot of people that just don't do Facebook or social media.
Having a presence off of big corporate media platforms you don't control is important.
Also, on a related note, I want to mention you may have heard some talk about creating a new club forum, but that seems like reinventing the wheel. Why start from scratch when you have a functioning platform delivering millions of potential views to your content? A new, tiny club forum will never get the amount of traffic the Club already enjoys now. You'll go from millions of views to hundreds or maybe a few thousand. And you'll lose 13 years' worth of technical content.
And remember, all those millions of views contain new potential club members looking to have fun. Tell the Club's Board of Directors not to throw them away!
The kicker is all this is free for the club and you've got a willing partner.
It seems a lot of people in the Club, including some of those in charge, are not familiar with the Club Forum. So when you hear talk of a new forum give 'em the facts above.
Let me know if you have any questions or ideas.
See you on the forum!
Chris