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Topic: BKSTS Membership drive

Dominic Case
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 131
From: Sydney NSW Australia
Registered: Aug 2003

posted 03-15-2007 10:14 PM

I'm a member of both. I've been active in SMPTE (a while ago now) as section chair, and governor representing the Australasian region on the Board.

Two points:-

Firstly, in the past few years almost every organisation that I've known has been struggling for members. The truth is that we don't rely -as we did once - on a printed journal with NEW information arriving once a month, and on cosy social/technical evenings with other engineers (or whoever) to find like-minded people to talk to and to keep up to date. There's less time, the internet keeps the information coming much more rapidly, and so on.

In Australia, I get my BKSTS journals (Image Technology & Cinema Technology) about 3 months late. SMPTE's Motion Imaging is usually about 2 months late. Not sure why they bother. I'd rather read them up-to-the minute on line.

Secondly, almost anyone who does a calculation based on "what you get out of it" will either not join, or quit. That's true for many organisations. But it's not the point. If you take the JFK approach ("ask not what your country does for you but rather what you can do for your country") you will find it is much more worthwhile to join. The industry (whether it's the traditional film projection side of it, or the satellite broadcasters, or anyone inbetween) does benefit from these pooled effots of communication and collaboration in ways that the individual probably can't measure. (of course if you feel that either society no longer has any interest in your field, that's another matter).

So it's up to BKSTS and SMPTE to move with the times: they need to recognise that they can't deliver the same type of benefits they were delivering in the last century, and they need to find new ways of delivering AND GETTING AND DEMONSTRATING value FROM their members.

And by the way, I personally don't believe that includes merging the two. They cover quite different areas.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 03-16-2007 05:17 AM

quote: Dominic Case
Secondly, almost anyone who does a calculation based on "what you get out of it" will either not join, or quit. That's true for many organisations. But it's not the point. If you take the JFK approach ("ask not what your country does for you but rather what you can do for your country") you will find it is much more worthwhile to join.

It's not the whole point, but it is part of the point.

I agree completely that taking an active part in what your profession does and how it does it is something that all professionals should do, as much as their personal circumstances allow. Professional bodies can play a very important role in this, and they have to be paid for somehow. But putting a prohibitive membership fee as a barrier to being able to take part benefits neither the individual nor the organisation: it discourages the individual from joining and taking part, and it denies the organisation revenue.

There are three possible ways forward: (i) reduce the cost base for providing existing membership services, (ii) change the membership services so that they cost less - e.g. providing the journal as an online PDF rather than posted, or (iii) diversify income sources.

I don't know what the answer is for the BKSTS: I can only speak from the experience of having done voluntary work for the one professional organisation I do belong to. In that case, keeping the individual membership fee as low as possible (significantly lower than the average for a professional body) has proven a success. There are around 450 permanent members (as in, who renew regularly), and probably around another 100-150 who come and go, or just join for a one-off year as a result of attending the conference. Of the permanent membership, about 100 are active - in that they actually participate in the work of committees etc. That's a pretty high proportion. Of those who are surveyed when they decide not to renew their membership, hardly any cite cost as being the main reason. A higher number of members makes it easier to bring in sponsorship (because the sponsors know they're reaching more people) and easier to organise a wider range of events in a wider range of places.

For example, AMIA is organising its first symposium in Europe, at the Amsterdam Film Festival, next month. This is because the number of European members has now reached the critical mass needed for it to happen, which probably wouldn't have been the case if the membership fees had been higher. This in turn meant that the main office in Los Angeles had enough confidence in the event being well attended to back it. The fact that we can now show that we're doing stuff on this side of the Atlantic will hopefully make us a more attractive membership proposition for potential European members. Who knows - maybe in 5 to 10 years time we'll be in a position whereby we're able to put on a full-scale annual conference alongside the North American one? We might not, but I don't think the organisation would have grown in the way that it has if the membership fees were so high that potential members, most of whom earn around their national average salaries or slightly below them, were deterred from becoming involved.

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