News about GOC

At the AGM, members voted unanimously to incorporate as a Company Limited by Guarantee and apply for registration as a Charity. Since that date we have sought estimates of the cost from a number of solicitors and assessed their experience in that field – this is the most important change in the structure of the club since it was formed and we need to get it right.
Over the next few weeks we will be taking the first steps to incorporate the club, which will include defining the legal governance documents which will establish the way that the club is run. As agreed by the membership, those ways of working will be as close as legally possible to the way that the club is run at present.
Progress will be advised in Outdoors and in the forum we have created on the website – members can use that forum to discuss any of the developments. We are also forming a working party of members who wish to have a say in the details of the governance documents – that will all be done by e-mail with no actual meetings required and if you are interested in being involved in that way please contact me.
David White

Changes on the committee

Posted 1 November 2011

Following the AGM, some changes have been made to the committee. Peter Blackburn has come forward to take up the remaining committee post which was vacant after the AGM and we now have a full committee. Peter will take over the role of Secretary and Roger Orpin (whose work commitments are considerable) will revert to his preferred role of Minutes Secretary. Richard Dorling is now Events Officer, a new role which is there to offer advice and assistance to any member organising a GOC event. I will deal with publicity matters.

David White

Photography, The GOC Website and Outdoors

Posted 30 August 2011

The subject of members appearing in photographs (and videos) of GOC events has been raised recently and is something which can raise strong opinions. Most people are perfectly happy to be photographed on a GOC event, and some people look forward to appearing in Outdoors, whereas a few do not want their photograph published or even taken. We want to encourage photography on our events as it forms a great record of what we do and is useful to publicise the club, but we don't want to offend anyone's privacy.

The advent of compact digital cameras and phones with cameras means that there is much more scope for photography than in the past. It is also easier than ever for photographs to be distributed and made public on social networking or photo sharing websites - uses which are beyond the control of GOC. You should assume that photos taken on a GOC event will not remain private.

If you do not want your photograph to be published, the most reliable way to ensure that is to avoid being in photographs. Posed photographs of a group of people in particular are likely to be sent to others and can often end up published somewhere, so if you don't want that please arrange not to be in the photo - the easiest way to do that is to offer to take the photo. If you become aware that someone is taking photographs and you do not want to be in them, just tell the photographer.

Photographers should give people the opportunity to opt out of photos if they want and not take un-posed photographs of people unless they know that they will be happy with that.

We are always keen to have new photographs for Outdoors so ask people to send them in, any we receive may be published without notice and please note that any photographs published in Outdoors may be also used on our website or for other publicity purposes.

Forthcoming New Features on the GOC Website:

Online Booking

An online booking system, allowing members to book for events such as the AOG and weekend events, is expected to be online soon.

Exporting events to your calendar 

A facility to download selected events to calendars such as Outlook, Yahoo and Google is expected to be available soon.