In 2017 I finally was able to fulfill a long childhood dream: my wife Sylvia and I bought our first Porsche, a 2011 911C4S triple black Cabriolet. A year later we joined PCA and ORPCA. Then in the fall of 2019, we replaced Sylvia’s aging BMW 5-Series Sports Wagon with a 2018 Macan S, and we still maintain our 1999 Miata, our first little sports car that is now my autocross ninja.

We both have a history in High Tech. Sylvia was a Marketing Executive and I was a Software Development Executive. We moved from Silicon Valley to Portland in 2009. After joining ORPCA in April 2018, our first encounter with the club was the 2018 Cabin Fever Tour and we got hooked. We joined several drive events throughout the year and enjoyed the drives and the camaraderie. I also went to several Autocross events to get a better feeling of the 911’s capabilities.

In late 2018, Peg Ryan and I started brainstorming about improvements to the club’s aged website, and after board approval we started the work on the new website in January 2019, leading to the launch in June 2019. The site since then has grown in capabilities and features and is now covering 95% of all club events and membership dues. It has won two PCA National Website Awards.

Another project I worked on was to offer turn-by-turn navigation capability for our drives through a Smartphone app. After testing several, we settled on Scenic, an iPhone app originally developed for motorcycle riders. The app has found a nice follow-ship, but it is not meant to replace the classic written driving directions. However, if you drive alone or with a navigator who’s prone to get car sick, it’s a big help. In 2024 we added a clubaccount for RidewithGPS. Today virtually all club drives are covered by digital navigation..

In 2020 I took on the coordination and planning of the SUV group events, as our long-term leader and group founder Jeremy Williams moved to Bend. In 2021 we offered for the first time SUV drives every month between March and October, in 2022 and 2023 we had 11 SUV drives each year. Jeff Gasparitsch has now taken the SUV group under his management.

In 2022 I became the Vice President of our club. Besides continuing my roles as Webmaster, I put my emphasis on our driving events, as they are the heartbeat of the club. As part of the recovery from the pandemic, we again increased group sizes and the number of groups of our drives, we added additional drives, and new driving events like the Drive, Wine and Dine, ladies only drives, air-cooled drives, EV drives, summer eve drives. Our club is very active. In 2022 and 2023 our club was head-to-head with one other PCA region offering the most driving events of any of the 147 regions.

In 2024 I stepped up to the President’s role. My emphasis was on continuing to address the ever growing demand of drives and tours, but also to setup the clubs organization for better scalability. We established a new drive team, transferred the Anzeiger into new Management, re-designed the weekly member email, opened our events and communication up to all PCA members in the region, and began moving club document, including all scanned Anzeigers, and tools into the cloud for improved document accessibility and collaboration. 

I am honored to be serving as ORPCA’s Past President and Webmaster. I am looking forward to seeing you at our drive and social events!