MattR

I agree that a meeting is not high on anyone's list. But social interaction is going to become more and more important. Extended solitude is hard on the spirit. This could go all the way through summer. I'd love to be proven wrong but, we all know the motto. I was wondering about different ways to have social interaction for kids without the contact. Make a pioneering project out of pencils, string and rubber bands. Patrol chess or checkers via zoom with side channels to strategize. Make a treasure map using google earth or maps. If one can set up multiple meetings, one for each room in a puzzle, that might be fun as the scouts skip from room to room. Have each scout make a campfire in their backyard and then connect with zoom to sing, tell stories, or the usual games like cross sticks. If you can't make a fire go into your closet with a flashlight. Other ideas?

Ours always said high adventure.

I hate to be the grinch, but most likely all high adventure and summer camps will be cancelled or limited to August. Cancelling the entire summer would actually mean good news with respect to number of hospitalizations because the curve will be stretched out. Italy thought China was an outlier and now everyone thinks Italy is an outlier. And yet the US is not slowing things down as well as Italy is now. The US population density is much lower than Italy and we are younger, so that's good news, but it's still going to be rough. My county went from 7 to 19 cases in a day (that's likely due to better testing) but even at 33% increase per day we'll be at 88k cases in a month. However, if the number of cases is a tenth of actual cases then our peak will be before that as there are only 360k people in our county. That's the worst scenario. The better scenario is the infection rate is slowed and it drags out a lot longer. One model I saw said an early (and bad) ending was mid July and a late (good) ending was some time in August. I think the discussion might be more useful if it were: How can the scouts help after the carnage is over?

Not just rechartering but all the data. For some reason the BSA has very important information that must be guarded by humans. That is the reason that this whole thing can't be just a simple web interface that every parent can use. I understand the need to ensure adults have YPT but nothing else needs to get above the unit. What other youth organization cares about all the data we require? Advancement, training, knots. When my son was on a soccer team all they cared about was his address, that a parent signed a consent form and that he paid. Each year they just started over. In software that's called stateless and it's much simpler to write software for. How important is it to keep records of all this? Changing the mindset of the BSA to leave advancement at the unit level would be an enormous challenge.

All good ideas. But this is more than rechartering and even more than software. Making robust software that scales to a million users is expensive and there is no money. My guess is there needs to be a simpler goal rather than an easier process. What is all this data used for? Part of it is doing background checks. Part of it is collecting money. Tracking training and advancement and membership. There are also security issues that add a lot of complexity. Rechartering is a big pain for us mostly because of tracking down parents that don't respond. So if this process were pushed down to the families it would become a pain for a different reason.

Concealed Carry Map, Medical Alert and 29 Super Hot Flight Attendants. No, this is what ads I got. I admit, I did click on a Daily Mail news item. I think we need a different competition for funniest mix of ads served.

Maybe nobody failed? Or rather the issue is the perception vs the reality of eagle. Eagle is a list of requirements. Our perception is that it's about character and self sufficiency and other subjective ideas. I don't see how any list of requirements ensures any of these traits. I truly see where you're coming from. I've been there but I don't see a way to improve the situation. What character really gets down to is a desire to do the right thing. How people get there is a much bigger topic than scouts and orders of magnitude bigger than a rank patch.

Welcome to the forum! Most troops have custom activity shirts and someone is printing them. My troop sure does. I have never heard of anyone getting upset. Honestly, I say go for it. As for patches, some patches have a loop of the edging thread that makes for a button hole so the scouts can easily attach them to their uniform temporarily. If your serger can do that then that would be nice. I have no idea how those loops are made, though.

I'm going for a hike.

Yep, I understand why you're saying that. There are a lot of long discussions about detail that probably doesn't make that much difference to the end goal. In the OP I was more interested in how the patrol leaders were being developed, they're the most important leaders in the troop. If the SPL is helping develop the PL's then this troop(s) are better than most. If not, they're missing the same point that most others are missing. I'd rather see descriptions of different ways of doing things that all work.

You might have a cached copy of a bad home page. Try clearing your browser history. I have no problem loading scouter.com

I can, and did. If it's not what you want let me know and I'll change it for you.

Welcome to the forum, @atrox79. Going from 7 scouts to 3+1 patrols sounds great. I'd be interested in hearing how that happened. As for a female SPL, hopefully the response from national will be: you have two troops so you need two SPL's, a boy for the boy's troop and a girl for the girl's troop. Here's another idea. Get rid of the SPL. The girl's troop doesn't need one as there is only one patrol. For the three boy patrols the PLC can consist of the three PL's working together. They can figure out how to have a single, senior PL to cover events. They might go round robin. They might just have the senior most PL be the SPL. Let them decide. The point is the focus should be on a group of patrols, not a troop. If the girl's patrol wants to do something different then they should (they are a different troop, after all). And if one of the boy patrols wants to do something different then they should as well.

Leather laces are still available. Firefighters use them, or at least those fighting forest fires. I would get white laces, dye one part blue, one part red and then carefully tie a woggle that had a blue, a white and a red stripe.

I don't think it's intentional. The training doesn't emphasize it so it's just fading. It's a constant battle to get parents to accept it and it takes a critical mass of adults to both teach the scouts and pull back parents. And a parent that's eagle is not necessarily helpful. Often they don't understand the difference between being an adult and the spl when they were 17.

Those posters are great! Taking a ship to a world jamboree would be a great adventure all by itself. Thanks for sharing.

So you didn't get the nginx message? The site was unavailable while the fixes were being made and I suspect the nginx message was a temporary landing spot while the server was up but the site wasn't. If that's what you were getting and it works now then I don't see an issue now. Thanks.

Why make these programs different? I have never understood that as it just seems confining. Why not have more opportunities within scouts for adventure or just organizing fun with your friends as soon as you turn 14? Eagle track, adventure track, service, environment, a mix, let the scout(s) decide. Make it an expectation. When you get old enough you have a responsibility. Make that the vision and maybe scouts would start practicing more leadership.

Well, maybe I'm not so sure. There was a problem with new users completing their signup process. I assumed this was related. Could you please tell me what you were doing to get this message, including hardware platform and browser. Thanks.

@TAHAWK, @SSScout, @T2Eagle and @Chadamus, the forum software was being fixed. There was a problem with new users getting set up correctly. It works now. Thanks for your patience.

I just got back from a campout and the weather was great. A lot of scouts were playing some version of hide and go seek for a long time and having a lot of fun. So, we're thinking of having a bunch of weekly meetings this summer that are just kids games in parks or primary schools, with the scouts wearing their class B's and a necker, and the adults ready to talk to parents. Add some leftover appliance boxes from big box stores for hiding spots if there aren't enough trees and we'll have some fun. We're thinking of how to invite neighbors and one idea is knock on some of the same doors we hand out food bank fliers to, and invite their kids to join us. We're looking for the 9-12 year olds so we'd like to do it along with a pack.

I don't think the problems with venturing is so much external forces (council, red tape,...) as it is internal. There's a lack of leadership development for one. It's assumed the scout program does that but that's becoming more questionable for multiple reasons. There's also a lack of a pipeline for new youth and new adults. Cubs has elementary schools. Scouts has Cubs. Venturing has bored scouts that likely don't have leadership skills. For adults it's worse. Most 14 year old scouts are happy without parents around, so the parents don't get involved. Makes sense until the adult leadership looks in the mirror one day and decides they're getting too old. I'd rather see venturing and Sea scouts blended into scouting, but that's another topic.

Committee Chair? Talk to the SM and ask him/her what their thought is about this guy. If they don't like him then it's time to remove him from his leadership position. It is your choice, after all, but you don't want to split the troop over this. If all the ASM's and SM agree with you then someone gets to have a frank talk with this guy. Unfortunately, since the SM hasn't already done something I suspect he/she doesn't want to confront this problem. It's not at all fun and it may fall on you to handle it. Anyway, you need very specific examples of what he's done and how it has hurt the troop. Also, since he's such a pain, you have to ask yourself why he's been given any responsibility. If this guy doesn't bother the other ASM's then it might be that this is not worth your energy. That is not the same as the ASM's just don't want to confront him. Is he yelling at scouts? That's a line I wouldn't tolerate. Occasionally we lose our temper but if this is a regular thing then out he goes. A third possibility is he might be able to learn. When someone talks to him they have to get a feel for whether this guy realizes that what he's doing is wrong. It's possible. If so, helping him improve would be a better solution. Most leadership issues are people problems. Good luck.

Does any other youth organization have discussions like this? This might seem like a silly question but how does having a most official record support our goals? Asking a scout to try and keep track of his records is a learning opportunity. The internet cloud seems to hurt that. Requiring a specific place (card, book, computer) doesn't seem to help. If a scout came up to me in a panic that he had lost his official record I'd chalk it up to being 14 but I'd give credit that the scout knew there was a problem. At that point the lesson is over so I'd help the scout recreate a new record.

Welcome to the forum, @InquisitiveScouter