MattR

Welcome to the forums, @Armymutt! Your enthusiasm sounds wonderful. Best of luck and please stick around!

A lab/golden mix and an Australian shepherd. Two dogs that need to be exercised.

Join scouts. My wife and I were going through old photographs and there was a pile from when my son was a webelo and a young boy scout. I vaguely remember when he was a tiger cub. He's 29 now and takes his dogs up 14000' mountains. While I still cherish my time with him he'll never sit in my lap again. Most all of scouting is at the unit level and so all the politics and rehashing of perceived mistakes can be ignored. Shanah Tova.

Maybe we could look at this from another angle. There was a several minute segment about the BSA on TV. Not only did it include video of this scout it included some high adventure shots and some other outdoor shots. Lots of people saw it. That is good for everyone interested in scouting. The eagle rank is one of those Yin/Yang things. As a positive it can be a great motivator. As a negative it can be a great motivator (and overwhelm other good aspects of scouting).

I can't believe I'm saying this but thank you for making the connection between porn and scouts. 😀 Now we're closer to back on track.

This is in the Open Discussion-Program sub forum and the discussion about porn is not related.

Call the insurance company and ask them. I did that once, asking them what constitutes a scout event and they gave me a very simple answer that blew the lid off of a lot of bad info that random scouters just assumed.

How about a section with ideas for helping patrols? I have yet to see a scout oriented site that has anything like that. So, just like menus and activity ideas are concrete examples that scouts can try out, how about specific examples of making duty rosters or solving people problems or just being afraid of screwing up as a new pl. Call it Patrol Life.

My understanding of the do not scan rule is that this is a HIPPA requirement, not a BSA requirement. I heard this from a guy that works IT for the city. However, I haven't read it in a more aauthoritative source.

You're right that the BSA is not a charity, and yet it still needs donations to operate. That's a conflict that I can't see ending well. Fewer donations and fewer volunteers will lead to councils having to charge more than their current costs of $500-$1000/scout/year. This will be a very "elite" organization. For me, I can't volunteer for an organization that isn't set up to take everyone. It's why I'm starting to volunteer at my son's old middle school. Besides, what does it say of the aims regarding citizenship if not all citizens can afford the program? If the BSA had the mindset that they were going to take all kids then they would not be in the financial situation they find themselves.Rather than a hammer looking for nails mindset it would require more asking and listening. Personally, I think it would be much stronger and attract a lot more kids. But I'm mostly just a clueless old SM with fond memories of watching a lot of kids have fun and grow up.

I came to this conclusion a long time ago. Pine trees make lousy bear bag trees and that's what I hike near. One problem with canisters is they don't work well with packs unless the pack is huge. I'm not sure how accurate this is, but the only times I've had bears in my camp is when I camp in well established sites. Bears make rounds. So I try to stay out of their rotation.

How? That seems to be the crux of the app. If you can make that work, inexpensively, then you'll have an impressive app. Heck, put in a module for explaining how to do the patrol method well and there'd be more interest. However, I think it's a hard problem to solve. To me this is less a software problem than a content problem. Good content is hard to create. Rather than talk about it I'd suggest making a prototype for one merit badge, say first aid, and show that to people. The software doesn't really need to be very well written. But the content needs to be engaging. Good luck.

@TAHAWK, it worked for me. If I just tap the " button above the editor, between the link button and the <> button, I get And I can paste into it. Or, I can paste some stuff, hilight it, and then press the " button Does that help? I'm not sure what you did but I fixed your post.

Scouter.com? Oh, sorry. But, to answer seriously, I suspect that if it's a phone company style breakup then the councils will have to agree on any changes. It will be bureaucratic to some extent but the bigger councils may end up with more say. Some councils might just split off. They might want to adapt it so different councils can make changes.

Maybe what this adds up to is: When we were young it was easy to use the patrol method because we had the experiences, as free range kids, to deal with people problems. And now it's much harder. I had luck with having a feedback mechanism for the patrols. Often, people problems would fester but having guidance to show the scouts how to bring up tough subjects in a thorns and roses session helped. It's the little things like this that aren't really described very well. Teamwork really depends on dealing with these types of problems.