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Is there enough discussion on shows and events here that we should have a separate "Shows and Events" Forum?

Of course, such topics may be of a fleeting nature and will naturally get pushed down the list as events come and go. However, my concern is that some of these topics get displaced, prematurely, by other threads in the General Forum - out of sight before the day of the event.

Any opinions?

Great idea! This could help us keep upcoming (short and long term) events in mind. Heck, might even bring members of the forum together more often. We could post local and national events as the dates and locations become available. Yet another way PackardInfo can serve the Packard community.

Thanks, I think that open discussion is better than a dedicated calendar, but we do need to help promote attendance at these events - general, as well as marque-specific.

These events seem to generate plenty of good discussion, even afterward, that I'm also thinking a collection of such threads in their own forum could also serve as a memory book of events past.

As such, I'd like to see all the existing threads on shows and events moved to that forum. That might take some time on the part of BigKev, but I don't want to bother him with that unless it is something that would be valued by many.

Anyone else have thoughts?

I think the suggestion for a Packard Shows and Events is a good one. This is a common feature on many sites, and could serve us well too. Would there be a way to incorporate photos taken at these events to this menu item? This would give us one place to go to learn about shows and events and to look at what was exhibited at them. Again, as pointed-out earlier, this would entail more work for Kevin. We need to treat this guy nicely, after all look at all he has done for us and the site. Thanks Kev!

JW -

Thanks for your thoughts.

I was thinking of this not as a new feature or menu item on the homepage, but simply as an additional forum - listed right after the General Forum, perhaps. While the features like Packard Model Info, Packard Service Index, and Packard Bookshelf are user-driven, they are not as interactive (if at all) and dynamic as an open discussion forum.

Now, one of the problems with threads is that many people rely solely on the Recent Forum Topics list on the main page, but there's so much activity on this site that topics get pushed off the short list rather quickly. A "Shows & Events" Forum might get more people to dig a little deeper, but perhaps it will require a link on the site's homepage as well.

Thinking back to my passing mention of a memory book, you bring up an interesting point about photos from the events. Some of those pix naturally get attached to a thread, but many more are usually uploaded to the Photo Gallery.

After photos from various meets have been uploaded to the Gallery and identified, it's been my understanding that they are sorted into folder by year of vehicle as they are identified. If captioned with the event title as well as vehicle identification, it might be possible to resort them. However, I wonder if it might be possible to somehow flag them such that they could be indexed dynamically and link to a thread on that event. That sounds like an awfully tall order that BigKev will have to explore at his leisure.

In the meantime, perhaps we'll hear from other members.

The photos link would be nice and already is a valuable resource. I think though there should be also be another way to search or maybe view -- but don't know how or what to suggest--maybe someone else does.

Case in point: some references were made in a forum post re picts of fact AC cars that had been posted in the car shows gallery. Since the search options currently are title, date, rating and popularity (none of which was mentioned or I knew) only option to find those was going thru 250+ photos one at a time. The thumbnails were a big help in weeding out the obvious but otherwise not large enough to get a good idea in the possibles of what was shown so lots of slow downloading was necessary.

...and, whoomp! (there it is):

packardinfo.com/xoops/html/modules/newbb/viewforum.php?forum=15

...another good forum is born.

Yet, is there a way, Kev, to move entire, pre-existing threads on shwas and event over to the new forum, while preserving their chronological order?

If so, I'd be willing to try and track them all down (as my time permits).

I "believe" that they should maintain there original dates. But to be safe I would recommend moving the oldest ones first.

All the various event and show related topics have been moved to the new Show and Events forum for easier viewing.

Thanks to Brian for locating them all in the Archive back to the beginning.