In case you missed the Z-Mail, the big announcement this month is that our new website https://bmw-club-psr.org/ is now up and running! While it is a little late in coming online, your club now has a much more responsive and modern website to make news, articles, and event information available to you. There is also a significant improvement in how the backend works so that it is more flexible and usable.

I would like to express my thanks to everyone who supported this effort, but I would especially like to single out Evan Kohout, our Technology Coordinator. I cannot overemphasize how important his efforts and leadership were, to getting this herculean effort accomplished. So please, go to the website and poke around. I think you will be very pleased.

Also, if you were wondering about the somewhat cryptic new address, well, that was mandated by BMW AG in their regular review of policies with BMW CCA national. Of course, the Germans need everything to look alike, so all chapters worldwide had to change their addresses to a similar format. Gotta love it. The old website will now redirect to the new one, but that will soon go away later this year as well, so update your bookmarks!

For those who wonder where the classifieds section went, well, it was underutilized and exploited sometimes by spammers, so rather than recreate it, we will shift to using our Facebook page for that. Check it out at https://www.facebook.com/bmwpugetsound. And don’t worry if you're not on Facebook: we’ll still be sending out Z-Mails about events and such as well, to ensure as many members as possible get the word.

Now that the new website is up, it will be the main place to check out events and plan what you want to participate in. This year, like most years, our Driving Education events and Tour Events are our headliner offerings. Be sure to sign up early as they tend to fill up fast! We will be leveraging MotorsportReg (MSR) more for events as well. It provides many customizable features for event planners for event management and registration, and helps us avoid duplication of data. So if you see links from the website event pages to MSR, don’t be alarmed. It’s how we are doing business to make things efficient for our team and you.

Expect more event postings soon as we finalize details for M Car Day, Burgers and BMW’s at XXX Drive In, and our 52nd year celebration (since we had to cancel the 50th), just to name a few that are in the final planning stages. I hope to see your smiling faces at as many events as possible as we are (hopefully) looking at COVID restrictions in the rear-view mirror.

mit besten grüßen!,

Andy Wiest