Some of us are wondering about a recent change on the web site. Activity rosters are no longer visible unless we're registered for that activity. Instead of displaying the roster, the web site now displays this text: " You must be registered for this activity to see the participants".

This obviously enhances privacy for those members who wish it, but it also reduces visibility for those members who use the visibility to hang out together on Mountaineers activities.

As you know, members already have the ability to mark their own profiles as private.

I'm wondering if this privacy setting could be factored into this policy change, i.e. Mountaineers members who have chosen to make their profile public could be visible on the rosters, and those who choose to have private profiles could show up as anonymous.

For most people, when they're deciding what they'll do on the weekend, the people they're doing it with is an important part of the decision.

Skill Badges: Documents skills (not courses) Mountaineers members have gained through Mountaineers courses OR that have been demonstrated to and vetted by Mountaineers Leaders.

How do skills interact with courses?

• Students can see what skills a course teaches
• Instructors can see what skills students have, and allow them to miss certain field trips if students already have those skills (at the instructor’s discretion)
• Skill badges help expedite equivalency, or negate the need for equivalency.

How do skills interact with trips?
• Trips can add more detail to prerequisites. Students will be able to participate in Alpine Rock Climbs before completing the basic climbing course or the crevasse rescue portion of the basic climbing course because they will have met the rock prerequisites
• Skill conditioners can add detail to prerequisites

What will skill badges NOT do?
• Skill badges will not automatically graduate a student from a course

The idea behind skill badges is this
• Prerequisites for both courses and activities will be able to use the “and/or” function. So, for example, a climb of The Tooth could have as prerequisites “(Basic Climbing Course) OR (Belay Skill AND Belay Escape Skill AND Snow Travel Skill AND Rappel Skill)”. A climb of Baker could have as prerequisites “(Basic Climbing Course) OR (Glacier Travel Course)”. This both
o Reduces the risk of someone not qualified signing up for a trip
o Increases the ability of qualified people to sign up for trips without extra work on the leader’s behalf
o Allows specialty programs like the popular skill conditioners to ensure safe leadership because they require a unique combination of skills. More people would be able to list skill conditioners because they would not need to be hand-vetted by the leader
• Skill badges can be set up to automate when someone finishes a field trip. This increases transparency and helps all instructors ensure student safety. For example, the Belay Escape Field Trip leader will go in and assign field trip results to participants. Those who are successful will receive the Belay Escape Badge. Those who aren’t will not receive the badge, and the instructor can put a note next to their name on the roster. This again, reduces the risk of students signing up for trips they aren’t qualified for, and it helps instructors track a student’s progress without relying on paper records. It also means that “Rescue Methods Skill” could be listed as a prerequisite for Rock 1 and 2 in intermediate, since it is a prereq. Leaders would no longer have to manually ensure that those who did not complete rescue methods aren’t signed up for Rock 1 & 2. Note: because course templates live in committees, this can be managed branch by branch.
• As we look for innovative ways to connect our community to The Mountaineers, especially in light of the Seattle and Tacoma Climbing Committees’ recent investments in advanced training, external audits and new types of programs to meet the needs of gym climbers, it gives us new ways of tracking both student and leader skills. We can add advanced training badges from professional organizations (ie AMGA SPI)
• Badges help people feel valued and valuable. When people feel valued and valuable, they are inspired to volunteer. Adding skill badges gives us an opportunity to increase levels of leadership, broaden the leadership funnel, develop new leaders, and offer professional development opportunities to existing leaders.
• Skill badges will not take the place of a course. I think everyone recognizes that in many situations, the sum of the parts does not equal the whole. Skill badges will not automate equivalency. One of the things that maintains the quality of our programs is the personalization of them – the opportunity for instructors to personally evaluate students, and for peers and leaders to evaluate future leader candidates. The idea is not to turn our organization into a list of skills. It is simply to create better, more reliable and more versatile tracking systems. We will still need course leaders to go in and graduate each of their students. There will still be plenty of opportunity for branches to personalize their courses – much like what currently happens with first aid.

Need a way for donors who donate without logging in but do have an account to be linked to their other profile so we don't create unnecessary duplicate accounts. Ideally when you type in your email it would have a flag that says, this email is already in the system, do you want to log in and then make your donation" or something like that. There is also a nuance of donations not being lumped together by household when we would want one $500 donation by one member to be lumped with the $500 donation made by the spouse so the household would have Peak Society status.

Also would like a flag when someone tries to create a new member record for an account that already has an email in our system with perhaps same last name.

Add specific date/time in offer email for the five-day cut-off. It currently says "5 days" but participants often want a specific time as to when they will be moved off.

This will help us better justify when a person is moved from the offered status and create more transparency in the process.

>>>>

Current Email:

Congratulations! You were on the waitlist for ACTIVITY to take place on DATE, and a spot has just opened up! You have five days from now to accept this offer.

If you would like to accept this offer, login to your account<http://www.mountaineers.org/profile>, and click on My Courses & Programs. Then select ACTIVITY. Once you are on the listing, click the green "Complete Registration" button - this will allow you to pay the course fee and secure your spot.

To accept this offer for your child please login to your account. Click on the round profile icon in the top right corner of your screen and scroll down to "Switch Account" to your child's name. Then if you are on a desktop device find the blue My Activities tab on the left hand side of their profile page. If navigating from a mobile device click on the blue bar with their name at the top of their profile and click My Courses & Programs. Then select ACTIVITY. Once you are on the program page, click the green "Complete Registration" button - this will allow you to pay the program fee and secure your spot.

If you are no longer interested in taking ACTIVITY, please click the Cancel Registration button or contact member services to cancel your registration. If you do not accept your offer, you will be cancelled automatically after five days.

The Branch landing page presents a newsfeed (blog) over which the branch has little control and does not make a very useful "home' or "welcoming" page for branch.

Ideally,branches should be able to design/manage landing pages to their liking, but that's another story.

Short of that, I request a better way to prioritize the blogs that appear on that page. As it stands, the page intermixes blogs submitted by the branch with blogs submitted by staff and others. The problem is that the volume of blogs originating from others overwhelms those originating from the branch, causing them to scroll off the page too quickly. The result is that most of the time the preponderance of blog entries have little branch relevance, while the ones that the Branch wants there have scrolled off.

A couple of ideas come to mind. First, procedurally, staff could stop using the branch tags except for unusually important cases. The blogs so-affected do appear on the Mountaineers home page, after all (and it's sort of branch-diminishing to also usurp the branch blog with that stuff).

A more sophisticated approach would be to programmatically give branch-originated blogs priority, at least until their expiration dates.

When looking at a calendar and considering whether a room is available or, with respect to youth program volunteer needs, whether there is a need for volunteers, that is not displayed. For example, in looking at a PC calendar, I have to know what all the room options are and then figure out what is available by exclusion. When I look at the "volunteer with youth calendar," I can see a program, but not how many volunteers it needs (if any). Prominently display the need so people "don't have to think" (the book that drives much web design) and can quickly get connected with program resources and needs.