Institutional Memory

It has been interesting to observe the way that University Sailing Clubs organise their events. Some you know will be good, others you wonder what is going to happen. Much depends on the "Institutional Memory".

Traditionally, Oxford and Cambridge had this sorted many years ago. Details of previous events were passed on to the next years event, lessons were learnt, and innovations introduced gradually. The result was smooth running well organised events.

Recently, we are noticing a some other University Clubs getting it together, Nottingham was a good example. However, I think that it takes at least five or more years to get the traditions established and everyone familiar with the programme. It also takes a powerful personality to establish it in the first place. (Evidenced in a recent facebook post)

It is also amazing how quickly the memory can be lost. It took a single year at one of the well organised university for things to go wrong. Luckily, not everything was lost but it has taken about three years to get back near to the well oiled machine that existed before.

No doubt there is paperwork behind the sucessful events but at the end of the day it comes down to people, and culture, as evidenced by the examples above.