advancement classes

[dick benbow]

friends of mine who post here, are contemplating putting together some classes on our hobby for their club members. They could use your thoughts and ideas
as to what you think topics wise needs to be covered. If your club has done this or is doing this what ideas would you share? Or if you wish your club was....what would you like to see happen. Thinking inside and out of the box welcome...

[jnorth]

Normal ones
Intro to Koi Hobby 101
Koi Health 101
Koi Varieties 101
Pond Construction 101
Water Chem 101
Buying and selecting koi 101
Winterizing your pond

Not so normal
All about Filters!
Know when to show them, Know when to grow them!
Koi food: It does the body good...sometimes.
How to remove rocks from the bottom of your pond.
How to kill koi! The don'ts of koi keeping.
History of koi.
Round table discussion (pick a topic and take notes for newsletter)
Why do we have a 100 members and only 5 people show up for meetings?

[aquitori]

Well from what I have seen a club is broken up into different levels of knowledge. I think each club should have classes each month on the above mentioned topics JNorth wrote.

[Steve E]

All good topics for everyone at any level. It never hurts to review the basics and even the very experienced among us may re-learn an item they had forgotten.

Along with what to talk/teach at a club meeting goes "who presents the material?" What does your club do for someone to present a talk? Do individual members share the load? Does it wind up being one or two people who present all of the topics? How about dealers? (Both for hard goods and Koi or goldfish) Outside speakers...Do you bring them in for presentations? If so, how often?

These are some of the questions about meeting programs that I have dealt with along with our club officers. In our club there are two, maybe three, of us who are willing to give a talk on koi or ponds. Plus one dealer who has done a good job but always has a sales pitch mixed into her talk.

My thoughts about local members doing the programs include the danger of getting only one side of the issue. What ever that subject may be for the days presentation.

Steve

[aquitori]

This hobby is built on others opinions...The "So called experts", these classes will benefit the hobbyist so they can build their train of thought or the pick and choose method...

[MikeM]

A topic often overlooked is: "The Koi Hobby", giving an overview of development of the hobby in Japan, ZNA, BKKS, AKCA, showing koi, the role of the koi show in developing fish, the business-side of the breeder/dealer/hobbyist relationship & how it differs from Japan to other countries. ... I've found that once folks have heard the basics of how not to kill their fish, they become really interested in learning what they've become part of...without realizing they were.