GerryIf I may pose a question, why should someone join IPMS and what are the benefits for joining?
For someone who doesn’t enter contests and is a (lose) member of a club doesn’t require membership to attend meetings I see no reason to join.
So (this is directed to the IPMS/USA President), instead of why not joining IPMS, why should someone join?
IMO, Mr. Lockhart is a freaking idiot if he could not see that his editorial would not be taken as inflammatory and elitist. He has done more harm to the organization with that editorial, it really shows incompetence of the top echelon of IPMS/USA. IPMS is the “pinnacle of the modeling community”, non-members are “freeloaders” and “if you build models you should be a member just proves how out of touch the top echelon is with the main stream modeler. What they really should be thinking is “you’re not a member, well here’s the benefits of being a member” and building/improving/selling those benefits, not you simply need to be a member because you build models.
IPMS/USA needs to do a little bit of soul searching and house cleaning if they want to attract new members because their current thinking isn’t going to attract new members.
There’s an old saying, If an organization thinks like that, I don’t want to be part of it.
There’s an old saying “mediocracy is fueled by the thought of status-quo” and right now, IPMS/USA is following the status-quo line of thinking.