I know this has been asked before,but...............

[Vette Guy]

Originally Posted by Reichert

What I hear from this and related discussions is a concern that participation and engagement in the Registry is on the decline, and strategies like broadening the user base with a wider range of Corvette owners can be used to counteract that trend.

From my perspective, inviting more people in to the current system would not scale at all, and would exacerbate problems that are only manageable due to the relatively low volume of activity currently on the site. I think it's fair to say that we love this site primarily because of the people involved - their love of their cars, and the experience, wisdom, and practical help and advice everyone is so generous to share with each other. We don't love it because of the technology that is in use and the information management systems in place. More to the point, the "Registry" aspect of this site is hidden behind a members login and is for all intents and purposes unusable.

I see a huge opportunity currently missed in the namesake of the site. Where we employ technology to provide a rich set of tools to curate the story of our cars, while continuing to foster the spirit of community that is at the heart of the organization.

Imagine if we had a Registry where as a ZR-1 owner, I could:

• Claim my car(s), and curate a home page for each of them (think Zillow or Redfin for real estate)
• Add service record logs and photos
• See a timeline of services that span across ownership, with highlights on common and important services for our cars, e.g. replaced injectors for early models.
• Earn badges for "achievements" or high value modifications specific to the ZR-1. e.g. the "Haibeck 510" badge

That should all be public and available without a membership, so we can gather as much data as possible on every car, while driving more traffic to the site and hopefully enticing more owners toward membership.

Further, as a registry member, I could:

• Submit help requests that are linked to an issue tracking system, where other members can help troubleshoot in a structured way that maintains a history of help provided for each car.
• Offer the car for sale, with facilities to help broker the transaction. Buying a car through the registry includes a built-in 1-year Registry membership.

Those are just some examples of possible features off the top of my head - I'm sure you all can think of many more.

As Kenny said earlier, there are only about 7000 possible records for this Registry. Each of them has a unique history, and many of them have been carefully maintained for over 25 years. Let's make the ownership experience special. Now you have something to build on where you can invite in more generations of ZRs and their owners.

There are a lot of great ideas, and the focus on a robust Registry is of much interest to me. Working to improve the limitations of what our software currently provides was discussed at tonight's Board of Directors meeting as a result of this post. Thank you for the great ideas.

As for expanding the registry, this has also been discussed by the current board at length over the past year or so. We decided not to pursue expanding at this time, which would directly work to pull members from the C6 and C7 ZR1 Registries on the Corvette Action Center. We want to be the best at what we do for the ZR-1 that we love. We are flattered that others want to emulate us, and I believe that evolution of this Registry will be due to existing members stepping up to create the tons of support information that we and past ZR-1ers have contributed to our website, thus creating a resource that ZR1s will seek out, vs. adding C6/7 members and trying to accommodate them from scratch. From my perspective (1 of 9 Board members), whatever we do going forward can not diminish the focus on the C4 ZR-1. I've explained a way-forward in my candidate response to JThomas's very well thought out question that would achieve this.... if the Board was persuaded to go forward. As it stands, I've received many comments back that did not support expanding. Additionally, please understand that everything that the registry accomplishes is done on the backs of the 9 Board members, and the organization is only as good as these people and the time and effort they devote to it. We'd need a lot of expertise in these new platforms to create a registry that serves them - otherwise they'd be disappointed that we don't offer the same level of support as we do for the ZR-1.

As to dispel any rumors about our Registry - our membership continues to grow - we ended 2018 with 605 members - up from 441 at the end of 2013. Attendance at the Gathering also continues to grow - from under 100 during non-anniversary years to ~140 the past 2 years. Our anniversary years are the biggest, with 2015 bringing almost 200. Financially, we've about doubled our reserves in the past 4 years, and are doing many more events across the country than we've ever done. We know there are areas that we need to improve, and that goes back to prioritizing our time and efforts. We want to be good at "Keeping the Legend Alive".

As for Forum participation, we've researched this twice over the past few years, and I recall that less than 1/3 of our membership participates on the forum. Also, our typical member doesn't regularly log into the website unless looking for specific information - robusting our registry would certainly increase participation and engagement possibly on both the main website and the forum.

In meeting some ZR-1 owners who are not members, I've concluded this: car collectors who own a ZR-1 among many are not not as interested in joining the group as those who may only own a few cars or just a ZR-1. To them, the ZR-1 is special but may not be their main focus of the collection. I also believe that the ZR-1 Net Registry is the reason that values for our cars has not dropped lower. I've not seen values drop in the last few years....in general. Click this link and see what some of the experts have said about the ZR-1 in their statements: http://showyourcorvette.com/Corvette_Market.pdf We've gained quite a few owners based upon their desire to join the Registry and be a part of this special group. I believe our Board member, John Glyder, is one of them.

Lastly, I believe the Registry is a stable organization. The first 2 organizations were proprietorships. When the owners were done, so were their registries. We are the longest running registry, started in 2004 by Dave Bright, who recognized the shortcomings of the prior two. He created a Board of Directors with elections to ensure this Registry would endure. After 14 years, we're still here and growing stronger and still uncovering history regarding the ZR-1 and LT5. It's an amazing story to me, as are all of the great people involved who contributed to produce such an amazing performance sports car, and one that was developed and perfected on the race track. (yes, we have another history to document regarding how the Corvette Challenge series was used as a test-bed by Chevrolet for the ZR-1 - it was disguised as a Corvette Challenge Car and run at speed on some of the best track across the country!)

So please don't let the debate end here - I wanted to acknowledge that the Board does read with your messages on the forum - and wanted to convey a bit more information about the health of the Registry and why we chose not to pursue expanding the Registry at this time. As stated, I've proposed a way forward that may be considered when its time - but it will require a massive amount of work to prevent it from being half-fast, and will need members with expertise, time and dedication. Much more than just their own forum on this site.

Regards,
Mark