Vespa Club World - News

[Roy]

The VCoC received a letter today from the Vespa World Club.

The Vespa World Club is the organization that was founded by Piaggio recently to coordinate the activities and interests of Vespa Clubs worldwide.

The new organization will "promote the activities of all the Vespa riders in the world. With the purpose to provide service to all of the members of Vespa Club, we aim at creating a web site where there will be the space fro all teh Vespa activities..."

(one paragraph from the letter we received).

I will be scanning the letter tomorrow if I have time and post it here.

The gist is that as a National Club we are invited to join the Organization as a member with voting rights at General Meetings.

There is a website already up for Vespa World Club, but I have the feeling that the site will still chang quite a bit.....In case you can't wait and want to have a look:

www.vespaworldclub.com/homepage/tabid/93/Default.aspx

More after I had a chance to scan the pages of the letter.

PS: listed as President of Vespa World Club is Roberto Leardi (Vespa Club of Italy) and two more National Vespa Club Presidents are listed as Councillors: Dieter Mertes (Vespa Club of Germany) and Jean Luis Cuivellier (Vespa Club of France)

[DD]

If I read the website correctly (under Membership), if you want to joint the world club, you can. It's free. An option is to also select a National Club (i.e., VCoC). It is free. So if VCoC signs on to Vespa World Club, it means free membership to the VCoC. Also, the Website says that if a club signs on as a Vespa World Club the club gets to use the Vespa trademarque. (This was a right confired under the FIV as well). What they do not say, is whether clubs that don't sign on (i.e., offer free memberships through Vespa World Club) are no longer allowed to use the marque. Is there any offer of anything coming to the national clubs themselves? In short , in giving up membership fees, what would the club get back in return (other then being able to use "Vespa" on merchandise)?

[Roy]

We can get into the details maybe after I posted what they send us?

I will follow up and we will clarify everything. Just wanted everybody to know that we received more info about the forming of the new organization. By the way, we have a Committee for a reason so I want to give them a chance as well to review the information.

So please be patient. I will provide you with more details soon...
We definitely won't do anything before everybody has access to all the information.

As I said, I picked up our mail last night and still have to scan in the docs. I am not in the office today so can't do this today. Decided to stay home so that I can do a few other Club related things.

[bluebeetle]

someone please make the website stop moving. That is my vote. ugh.

[Roy]

ok....so I got the letter that we received with all the attachments scanned into pdf-files. The problem I have is how to get the information accessible for everybody.

Any suggestions?

So for now, if anybody wants the files from me, please email president at vespaclubofcanada dot com and I respond to you and send you the files.

In the meantime If somebody could come up how to make this accessible via the forum, let me know.

I was thinking about attaching it as pictures, but somehow have an issue with the size of it.

[Roy]

One more thing though....the secretary of Vespa World Club responded to me today to my question regarding membership fees:

Dear Mr. Schatz
I'm very happy of your answer, good luck to new President !!!!.
I write you what our legal tell me about membership fees:

"Pease note that the since the Association's by laws provides for the opportunity to institute a membership fee it has been also provided that such fees contribute to the income of the Association.
However, please note that, beside such provision, the Association will not ask for any membership fee from its members. "

For any questions abuot Vespa World Club please, send me a mail, in my bad English I'll try to answer.

Your
Marco Manzoli


So the way I read this is that they don't have any intentions at this point to charge a membership fee, however the statutes give the association the right to charge a membership fee if they decide to do so.

Now that obviously would depend on the voting members of the association. As a National Club we would have voting rights as well.

I am sure there is more to talk about this subject, I would like to leave it at this for now until I figured out a better way to distribute the statutes of Vespa World Club to those interested.

[Roy]

ddaniels said:

If I read the website correctly (under Membership), if you want to joint the world club, you can. It's free. An option is to also select a National Club (i.e., VCoC). It is free. So if VCoC signs on to Vespa World Club, it means free membership to the VCoC. Also, the Website says that if a club signs on as a Vespa World Club the club gets to use the Vespa trademarque. (This was a right confired under the FIV as well). What they do not say, is whether clubs that don't sign on (i.e., offer free memberships through Vespa World Club) are no longer allowed to use the marque. Is there any offer of anything coming to the national clubs themselves? In short , in giving up membership fees, what would the club get back in return (other then being able to use "Vespa" on merchandise)?

First of all, nobody has asked us not to use the Vespa name anymore. Please don't make those guys the evil empire for no reason. I think we should at least give them the benefit of the doubt and measure them at the things they do and not what they might do. Who knows whether they ever have the intention. Should I ask them? Why should we? We continue to keep our name and do with it what we want unless the situation comes up and then we can deal with it. Honestly, I am not concerned about the use of the Vespa logo for the Club at this point.

I am more concerned that there is a VCoC tomorrow and to get the member what we promised to do. This includes getting the money together to publish the next Indicator, renewing memberships, etc....day to day business that we need volunteers for!

Also, we would not be giving up any membership fees to Vespa World Club. They are not asking for any membership fees in the moment and if the organization would ever do something we would not agree with, we could always leave.

BUT first we have to decide as a Club whether we want to join and I don't want you to make that decision before you had access to the details. So, I will continue to follow up on this issue and keep you informed (with facts...granted, facts are much more boring )

[bobskoot]

ROY:

in our password protected Main VCoC website there should be an option (or provision) to download PDF files that reside on our main server. that way, only (paid) members will have access, and you don't have to spend your time replying to numerous emails. (you could spend more time @ home with "and co" . n'est pas ?

b: