We should have a sponsorship program.

[Extremity]

My first car when I was 16 was a 2005 Accord Coupe and I was really into the forum for it. We started a really cool program, called the mentor or sponsorship program, where a new or just generally unexperienced forum member could post asking for a sponsor and a forum or just a riding veteran could sponsor them. You could add a stat to their details showing their sponsor (Or if you are a sponsor yourself, who you are sponsoring). It's really cool because you have somebody who has basically agreed to help you with any questions you've got. I loved it - sometimes it's hard to get an answer to a question, and it's nice to have a SPECIFIC person you can shoot a PM, an email or even a text message if you get close enough, and know that you will get an accurate reply.

A lot of the sponsor/sponsored pairs ended up becoming pretty good friends. Some met up and would go for drives together, some were close enough that they could shoot eachother a call in an urgent situation where they needed help (ie, "I'm stranded, oil light is on, what do I do?!"), etc. I think it would be really cool and it would strengthen the forum community a lot. You don't even need to integrate it into forum code to do it, you can just have a sub-board with a sticky thread explaining the process and a mod to help out, or I could even whip up a forum module (I do PHP dev) that would show the information on a user's info.

 

[Circle]

What a great idea Ex!
Drawing from the vibe from this board, I'm sure a lot of people would be interested.

 

[Nelly]

I think that your idea is a very good :thumbup:.
Personally I think that the forum fosters a really positive relationship amongst its members. We essentially sponsor each other.
For me this is one of the things that make the forum such a nice unique place to visit.
I am more than happy to answer questions from people without the formality of sponsorship.
I would be interested to see what other people think?

Nelly

 

[OZXJR]

+1 on what Nelly said.
Us S.A mob look out for each other just from being members here :thumbup:

Good idea all the same though mate.

 

[Extremity]

It's definitely not meant to be a replacement for people being helpful and contributing forum members, but we all know that there are questions or thoughts that don't always require a forum post, and it also allows for people to pick somebody based on what they're doing. Somebody who plans on turning their FZ6 into a streetfighter might want sponsor X, while somebody wants to do a lot of lighting/LED stuff might want sponsor Y. It lets you have somebody who you can relate to on a personal level in terms of your goals with the bike to supplement normal forum use. If I want to ask... I don't know, where I can find a good belly pan, it's a lot easier to see that my sponsor is on AIM/Skype/whatever and shoot them a message and get an instant reply than it is to search to see if it's already on the boards, look through results, post a new thread if not, wait for a decent reply, etc.