Page 36 - 2017 AMA Summer

The meets are also very relaxed. Yes we are all in the Army in one way or the other, but everyone that attends does so because of their shared love of the mountains and all they have to offer. The meets are not rank conscious in any way whatsoever. This is something that is very important to me as I originally joined the AMA in 1999, and left about three years later. Why did I leave? It was all to do with my perception of the AMA at the time. I believed that it was an Officer sport and not for the likes of myself at the time. I also thought that the AMA would be very ‘clicky’ and hard to break into. I left without ever choosing to find out the reality. I didn’t re-join until 2012, when I discovered that I loved climbing. I also realised when I re-joined that I had missed out on over 12 years of mountaineering opportunities all because I let perception get in the way of reality. So, just to be clear, it doesn’t matter what rank you are or which cap badge you wear. That is all left behind when you turn up for the weekend.
Why are there more meets than before?
There are many reasons why meets are becoming more popular and frequent than before. The frequency of meets is down to willing volunteers that step forward to arrange them. Without those willing people, meets just wouldn’t happen. Secondly, it is the instructors, who give up their time to provide valuable instruction, again without them meets would happen.
The most important reason is that you, the membership want them. As long as they keep filling up, we will keep arranging them. Another misconception is that the
AMA is all about 8000m peaks. Having chatted to as many members as I could over the last few years, it has become crystal clear in my mind that the vast majority of active members want to meet up at a weekend and climb, scramble or walk. This is something that many units struggle to arrange from within so people look to the AMA to provide it.
Social Media to the rescue!
When I first began running meets, the AMA did not have a way to email the entire membership (circa 2500) at once. Try using your Hotmail account to email 2500 people at once and see what happens. Most accounts including the AMA limit the amount of recipients per email, which means prior to Mailchimp, we had to send the same email approximately 50 times to ensure a full distribution! This was a very laborious task for the membership secretary. Mailchimp has significantly improved the speed at which we can email the membership about up and coming meets. Since the last journal we have
sent out over 16,500 emails of which 29% were opened. This resulted in 138 people attending the last 7 meets, which is just less than 6% of our membership. This may seem like a very small amount considering the amount of emails sent, but it is actually higher than the ecommerce average!
Once we had solved the email problem the next issue was how to sell the tickets for each meet. When I first started arranging meets, I was receiving cash, online payments and cheques through the post, which was a complete nightmare! We started using Eventbrite which is an online ticket selling site. This makes the whole process much simpler, as the ticket invites are now sent to the membership at the same time the application form is made live on the website. This allows people to purchase tickets instantly, and allows the rest of the membership to have visibility of the remaining tickets. Once the meet is complete, the money is automatically transferred into the AMA bank account.
34 ARMY MOUNTAINEER