Plenty of stock here in the NAM Shop as well – hearing whispers that they’ve also started offering some of their Herpa Wings 1/500th scale civil aircraft items on a well-known Internet auction site!! :applause:

A quick clarification re social media!

I understand that an ‘unofficial’ Twitter account was established a while ago in NAM’s name, but has never been ‘adopted’ by the museum itself. Thanks to those forumites and supporters that have tweeted on the museum’s behalf.

A ‘semi-official’ Facebook account is running and is ‘managed’ by one of the staff. Looking at the web-traffic from that source, for the Lightning Event; Cockpit-Fest and Armed Forces Day (Week) – then that is something that the museum may have to consider investing more time and effort in.

Sadly time is the major factor that is so often lacking, none more so than this year as everyone at NAM tried (tries) to pick up the slack following the unexpected passing of the museum’s Financial Controller on May 17th.

The best way to describe the events to support Cockpit-Fest in the last month leading up to the weekend is reactive, rather than proactive! Fingers crossed for a better run-in to the event next year!

Footnote to other groups / museums: As has been posted elsewhere about these parts, do not let anyone tell you that ‘Succession Planning’ is a waste of time – it isn’t and I would personally recommend that you try to put in place a robust policy as quickly as you can. It will save you so much time in the event of an unexpected change of circumstances!

Nicely covered here http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?124998-New-Land-speed-record

Once again some interesting feedback, which I will also take to the ‘de-brief’, however I have a couple of points / thoughts to share.

Signage on the local roads is an issue with the various authorities (3 different jurisdictions if you look at the A17, A46 and A1133). We have lost event signage in the past, removed and never to be seen in that NSDC skip – I also believe that the Kit Car people may have lost signage this year and had to replace it – although that could be just a rumour.

Since January NAM has made huge effort to focus on attracting visitors from the local area, including a series of paid listings on a set of local paper websites: Please see here for an example!

On the Useful Information tab we had event newsletters running for Cockpit-Fest and the Lightning event, both of which have been taken down. This has helped change the visitor profile to the museum and the events. It’s worth remembering that over the two days of this year’s Cockpit-Fest event visitor numbers were up by around 10% as compared to 2012.

From the visitor voting forms we can get some basic visitor information, which is based on national economic impact metrics.

Local Visitors (less than 1 hour travel time) 2012 – 9.0%; 2013 – 18.4%

Day Visitors (1 to 3 hour travel time) 2012 – 55.6%; 2013 – 46.9%

Overnight Visitors (more than 3 hour travel time) 2012 – 36.4%; 2013 – 36.7%

So some change has been achieved at getting more local visitors; despite a lot of local events competing with Cockpit-Fest this year. But, as ever we can always improve and try to do better! 🙂

I find all of the displays at Cockpit-Fest thought provoking and I always marvel at the hours of effort that are put in to each one – for me personally the ‘1959’ display was rather poignant, especially as it was the year that I was born!

I’d reiterate what it says in #111 – “Each to their own I guess.”

Sorry that we struggle to assist re public transport! :apologetic:

A good move but oh not for the want of trying:

1988 – Lightning T5 lift not feasible due to the onerous time constraints of the British Grand Prix

2006 – Viggen lift eventually declined due to request for drop clause

Just for information 1994 – request to consider Draken landing on A17 bypass declined!! 😀