Southern Car Club Storms Its Brain!

On 13th July 1998, an unusual scene could be seen in the Reigate Manor Hotel. A group of Southern Car Club members (including some drivers!) were sitting in a room - thinking.

You may say that this is journalistic exaggeration brought on by the Silly Season and the traditional problem of filling up any publication during August, but it was indeed the case.

Following a particularly blank committee night during which the suggestions for social events were "darts...", "Scalex?...", "how about another Noggin and Natter?!...", the committee decided that drastic action was needed to find a new range of activities for our Monday nights. Catherine Phillipson rashly volunteered to lead a brianstorming session (sorry, BP) during a club night and the scene was set.

Everyone at car club that night assembled rather nervously round a pile of equipment. Two A1 flipcharts, coloured pens, some blue-tack and a spoon. Was Catherine going to lock the door until at least 200 ideas had been generated, beating us over the heads with a teaspoon until we were creative? Would she write "DUNCE" on everyone's forehead who couldn't come up with a brilliant idea?? Would she blue-tack us all to each other until we got religion and set up a commune??? Everyone's mind went blank - my only idea for a club night was notter and naggin. How would we ever have a single idea?

Catherine started by introducing us to the rules of brainstorming. Everyone was allowed to call out any ideas - there would be no discussion of how good or bad each idea was. We were encouraged to build on other ideas, and to call out our ideas however wacky they were.

She then waved the spoon at us and asked us to come up with different uses for a teaspoon. Weird. But suddenly we had lots and lots of ideas. The atmosphere relaxed a bit.

The next challenge was to decide what question we wanted to answer. We decided we were looking for ideas for social events, for Monday nights but also for weekends or special outings. We started by listing social events we had done in the past, and then we separated those out into different categories - training, competition, non-motorsport etc.

Then we used those categories to inspire us to suggest other events. Much to my surprise, every single person had several ideas (you can see the final list on the next page). Even people who were very dubious about the whole business earlier on found themselves drawn into the event and were coming up with great ideas.

The clamour finally died down and we were faced with pages of ideas - A1 pages were blue-tacked all round the room with the ideas listed on. How could we select the ones that we should actually organise?

Catherine had a way of doing this too. We each had 10 votes and could use them to vote for the ideas we liked most. We could blow all of our votes on one idea, or spread them round lots of different ideas. The numbers in brackets on the list show how many votes each idea got. While we were doing this, we also had the chance to volunteer to organise any session that particularly appealed to us - although we didn't have to do so. The names of people who did are shown next to the relevant item.

So now it's your turn. Would you like to have, or to organise, any of the ideas listed? Do you have your own ideas? No need to miss out just because you weren't there - talk to Vanessa or to Catherine at club night and get your idea on the list as well.