Following the departure of Caroline Stuart-Taylor at the end of March, a new chief executive has been appointed by the Ski Club of Great Britain.

Frank McCusker takes up the position on 2 July.

[www.planetski.eu]

The Club's news statement includes:

"Frank joins the Club after a successful career within marketing services in the travel and leisure sector, and as a Managing Director and subsequently Vice President of EMEA within the Carlson Marketing Group, with responsibilities for loyalty and direct and digital marketing. He has also held the role of Global General Manager for customer loyalty specialists ICLP Group.

More recently Frank’s role within a smaller entrepreneurial and venture capital-backed business, focused on using technology to measure and improve customer satisfaction and experience. He has also run his own consultancy business."

[www.skiclub.co.uk]







Edited 1 times. Last edit at 13.54hrs Wed 30 May 12 by David Goldsmith.

Let's hope this one has heard about Scottish Skiing!!!

In terms of understanding of Scottish skiing it should be stressed that the UK's national ski club is governed by an 11-member Council (board of directors) and the Chief Exec is answerable to that committee:

President: Frank Gardner OBE (BBC Security Correspondent since the 9/11 attacks in America)
Chairman: Neil Britten
Treasurer: Steven Brabbs
Other Council members: Gerry Aitken, Richard Bird, Chris Glynne, Martin Ashley, Alan Lyons, Sally Robson, Lally St Maur, Paul Whitehead

So, the broader question is how much knowledge and experience of Scottish skiing is demonstrated by that Council ...

[I'll try and find out, in due course]

Maybe if & when Mr Alex 'Braveheart' Salmond gets his way the Scottish Ski Club, or wh potentially, could take the role of Ski Club of Scotland and compete directly with what will be Ski Club of England, Northern Ireland & Wales.

PS dont take that thought too seriously



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 10.06hrs Wed 30 May 12 by cammyammy.

Aye - King Alex the first of Scotland !

Big yawn !!

He will want all the ski-areas dismantled and obscene wind farms put
in their place !

George

Using Google Images, the closest I could find to "Alex Salmond skiing" was this.



Attachments: Alex Salmond not skiing.jpg (54kB)  

Well that is summer skiing for some folk.

I think Donald Trump will quite happily wrap a club round our man's neck !!

George

Well, Frank McCusker's surname suggested a possible Scot ...

[www.mycustomer.com]

Other background info ...

[www.ecew.co.uk]



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 13.50hrs Wed 30 May 12 by David Goldsmith.

He seems as well qualified as some of the (luckily) now
departed heirarchy that CML have had over the last few years !

In working terms his "speak" certainly seems to err towards the
"gobshite" sector!

No dissrespect meant off course !

George

James Cove of Planetski (a recent director of the SCGB, but since resigned as a member) has expanded his report on Frank McCusker's arrival. He claims ...

"One [candidate] withdrew after he felt he could not make the necessary changes."

[www.planetski.eu]

There are varying views on the 'necessary changes'. McCusker aims to produce a club "relevant to all ages and types of snow sports enthusiast". If he's serious about this then the changes will have to be sweeping and radical and could put him in conflict with influential reactionary forces within the club. For some time now the SCGB has accounted for fewer than 3% of British skiers and (as discussed elsewhere) has very little involvement with Scottish skiing, which doesn't seem to have prompted many sleepness nights.

What percentage of the British ski population should a national ski club account for?

There has recently been an extensive re-branding exercise, and the SCGB is understood to have recently invested £100,000 p.a. in developing its website. The 2011-12 annual report (due in the autumn) will reveal the financial and membership results of this.

Meanwhile, thousands of British skiers and boarders are networking for nothing on ski sites such as winterhighland.info, snowHeads.com (which arose in 2004 directly as a result of the SCGB closing its public ski forum), snowboardclub.co.uk, j2ski.com and natives.co.uk

The concept of what people expect from a club, or whether they need a club at all (in traditional hierarchical form) is changing in the 21st century 'web 2.0' era.

It seems that all you need are level electronic communications and forums - skiers are well capable of informing each other (without formal 'information services'), helping each other and organising good days on the hills ... without being 'club members' as such.

Anyone got any membership trends of the Scottish Ski Club, for comparison?



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 08.37hrs Thu 31 May 12 by David Goldsmith.

Perhaps the SCGB copuld offer a membership/insurance package like the Austrian Alpine Club. That's the only reason I joined that, and if there was a similar UK offering, I'd change (or is that an opportunity for Winterhighland ?)

Hipennine the Mountaineering club has a very good insurance package available to members.

Which Mountaineering club ? Do you have link please ?

Personally, I think that clubs spend far too much of their various energies trying to find commercial roles for themselves - selling this and that, scoring commissions for representing this or that product/service, selling advertising, holidays, whatever.

Web 2.0 has proved that 'community' (rather than club) is what it's all about now. It's not really about a bunch of people having collective ownership of a clubhouse, an office, an employment opportunity, whatever.

It's about open, transparent, honest, relatively uncensored communication between people with common interests ... on a very stripped-down low-cost level. I.e. what we see on screens in front of our noses.

People can - after all - collectively buy whatever they like, if they want to achieve some sort of buying power, with minimal 'organisation from above'.

Skiing happens to be a very interesting model of how effective 'citizen journalism' can be, since so much information is required from people actually out there. Winterhighland and snowHeads (as examples) have therefore become indispensable for those who don't want to make expensive mistakes.

So, if a 21st-century 'club' has anything to offer at all, it is simply as a facilitator of communication.

David,

I suggest that you have a look at the austrian alpine club website [www.aacuk.org.uk] and see what a useful club actually does. The insurance isn't a commercial activity, but is part of the membership fee, and provides world-wide rescue and repatriation, and therefore fills in the gaps in for eg most wintersports policies.

In the UK, the AAC is run voluntarily from within the membership, and doesn't have the (unecessary) high cost overhead of a Central-London club house, and suitably central London remunerated staff.