Finally this Open Forum had occurred to get new ideas - what can we do better, what kind of events we want, how can we be more in contact - so it was like a kind of brainstorm... speaking together... actually we didn't have a real agenda.

. There were some friends from North America (like our big organizer John Kenda) ,who gave us more ideas and power, Also there were organizers from the last ECMC īs.. Kamaal from Amsterdam, Kai from Hamburg, Joaquin from Gijon, Sabine and me from Graz, Jasper from Rotterdam, where the next ECMC will be, Victor from Zurich, and friends from Denmark, Holland, Germany, Swiss ,Spain, Sweden, Austria, Hungary...

1st Meeting :

• ECMC 2001 :
  We had only one bidding this year...it was from Rotterdam in Netherlands. Next year the City of Rotterdam is organizing a big cultural event in Rotterdam. At the same Time as the ECMC are usually held, so the guys from De Versnelling talked to the City Municipality, who found it a pretty good idea to have the European Championship of Bicycle Messengers at the same time in the City, so they gave them a budget from 50.000 Gulden (nearly 25.000 US Dollar ) for now. Also they will have a professional event organizing Company who will work together with them to get all the Permits, Sponsoring, Media Contact and more So the Guys from Versnelling (which are a big Messenger Company , also working in Amsterdam) will have professional help and money. In the end, everybody voted for ECMC 2001 in Rotterdam!

• CMWC 2000 and CMWC 2001:
  John Kenda talked about the next CMWC 2000 which will held now inPhiladelphia, after the City of Boston didn't give them a permit. Heexplained the situation and facts behind the move to Philly. After the CMWC in Philly , the City of Boston will understand the big mistake they made.

  Also the guys from Budapest were there - they showed us their proposal for 2001 Budapest. Of course the decision will be in Philly, but we had the chance to see what they are planning. First of all, it would be the first time that a championship will taken to the eastern part of Europe. This is a big chance for all the other Messengers there, which do not have the ability to spend so much money to get to the championships - and there are a lot of messengers there! Also this is a totally different culture The messenger community has to get closer and bigger, so this is the best chance to expand and getcloser to the remaining part of Europe.

• Messenger Appreciation Day:
  We talked about to have a Appreciation Day like our friends in North America and Canada . There is a Car-Free day in all European Community countries now at the same time, so this could be the right possibility , we thought, but the Idea was not discussed to the end and so we will talk more about it in the mailing list.

At the last day we met again. We wanted to talk about the last 3 days, what happened, to give statements about the Championship, putting forward new ideas and so on.

The first thing we talked was about the communication between the messengers in Europe! We agreed that the communication between the messengers in Europe is bad - we have a international mailing list, which has given us the possibility todiscuss about every thing in the messenger community, but also we have seen for the last years that in more of 90 % of the issues and comments in the mailing list the European Messengers were not involved. So we had the Idea to create a new mailing list for the European Messengers. We have the lists of all competitors of the last ECMC's and of all companies in Europe, so we are going to have contact to all of them and to try to get them in the list. Till from Bremen is going to create the mailing list and to check out what kind of possibilities we have. Also we agreed that if we have to pay something for the list, that the Host City of the ECMC has to pay it. But its seamed that we don't have to pay anything. So me and Till are working on it, to start the mailing list and to make it a open forum. I'm also working on a Agenda for the whole next year. So we will have topics and will discuss all of them one by one in the list.

The next point was that we have to and want to get more involved in the organising phase of the championships. These championships are not professional race events, and we don't want them to get that way - it's an event made by messengers for messengers. So we all have to get involved in it. We need to be in contact from the beginning of the planning phase of the championships. The mailing list will be a big help here also - the organisers can show their ideas to everybody and everybody can give a statement, so new Ideas can be born, so we can create the event together. It's always the same, only a few people are working so hard, for such a long time for all of the rest. And all this work is a volunteer job, so we need to help each other, and this must be beginning from the first step.

A new Idea was : Why do not have every team have one volunteer helping during the championships? We can make a list and everybody who wants can put his/her name in before the championships, so the organizers will know how many people want to help. We agreed, that we can't say "every team must have one volunteer person", because there are bigger and smaller teams, one man teams, and we can't compel anybody, but we agreed that we have to find more ways to get people more involved and helping during the championships, sothis will be a topic for our discussion agenda.

Standards:

A big discussion was : Do we need standards for the races or the whole championships? What kind of races do we want? How many days must the championships last? What kind of parties? What kind of timekeeping system? How much should the registration fee be? And other questions like this.

We all agreed that we are not able or desiring to make standards for everything. It is up to the organizers and the situation they have, how muchmoney they have, what kind of possibilities they have, and things like this. We all know that is totally different in every state and city to get permits, to get sponsors, and so on, so a lot things will get clearer during the organisation phase. But there are some things we can decide now: The time keeping system must be professional! This is what we agreed.

Of course we will have the main messenger race, the sprints, bunny hops, cargo races and so on. Also there are a lot of messengers in Europe now who are riding fixed gears, so it seams like necessary to have all the trackbike races also.But the rest is up to the organizers. Ideas like lakejumping, bike wars, bike polo, goldsprints, and so on that makes every championship different then the other ones are what we want - we don't want boring championships!

But here is the point again: we need to be in contact during all the year, we need to discuss all this things, we need to be informed about theorganizing situation in the host city, and that's the reason we need to use the mailing list more!

Sprint Race:
The sprint race in Freiburg opened another discussion topic: What is a sprint race? How long must the distance be? In Freiburg thecourse was a round course about 700 m and with 2 very dangerous curves. it didn't seem dangerous but in nearly every heatsomebody crashed in these curves, so after the preliminary heats theorganizers decide to change the course and semi-finals and finals were on a straight course of about 200m. Some argument was that a sprint race is not a race where you have to use your brakes, and in Freiburg you had to use them in the first course. In the velodrome a normal sprint race distance is like 200 m, But there are also tactical sprint races on longer distances, but then you need a safe course, like in Gijon last year in an open air velodrome of about 400m. So this point is also not really clear but if we want to do a tactical race on a longer distance we need a safe course. We can also take this as a topic for the discussion forum.

Locks:
There is always the same question: Most of the Danish guys are using these locks, which are fixed at their bikes and are really easy to use, so that they are saving a lot of time during the races. Are these kind of locks allowed? The argument is: these guys are using these locks in real life also - in Copenhagen everybody uses these locks, so they must be allowed. Maybe this is a topic to discuss more is it fair or not? If there are some checkpoints where you have to lock your bike to a fence, then they would need different locks.

Second Chance Races:
Its not fun if you go to the championships and the preliminary race is like 20 minutes, so you race for 20 minutes, and maybe you have a bad day, andthen its over for you. The last few years the races got longer, and we had this second chanceon the second day, so everybody gets to race as long as possible, sothe second chance is a good idea we agreed.