Council Activities Overbooked

[SctDad]

How about this BW

 

If you cannot see where I am coming from, like some of the other, more constructive postings, then don't post. If you are going to do nothing more than Pick apart everything that I say then save your time. You have done this with everything that I ask about. You want to point out things that I am doing wrong, and not stick to the question at hand.

 

For those that understand and gave me sound advise on where to start, John, Lisa, baschram645, Eagle92, Annie, and Shortridge, Thank you for your advice. I started looking into fixing this for the future.

 

As a side note, these conflicts were broght up at our District Commissioners meeting and they are working on some things to fix this.

[Eagle92]

Here are some of my ideas.

 

1) Have the VP of Program Plan all council level activities 18 months in advance. right now it's 12 months, and sometimes after the council calendar comes out, things get added to the calendar or dates change. Once it's set, keep it set.

 

1a. EXCEPTION when it's possible to have multiple events at the same location. An example of this is could be the council can hold a BS camporee at one camp, a Venturing rendevous (I think that's what it's called) at the camp 2 miles down the road, and the program Extravaganza for all leaders at one section of the camp hosting the rendevous. All three activities within 2 miles of each other. It may be possible to hold UoS and District committee training at the same location.

 

2) Space events out through out the year so that two events are not going on at the same time, or even back to back. Some of us have to make choices when activities are back to back in order to fulfill family and work commitments. Plus it allows units the opportunity to do their own program, and not constantly doing council activities.

 

3) In addition to Council activities, district activities that are 'set in stone" like camporee, RTs, banquet, etc need to be placed on the council calendar and should not conflict with the council

calender.

 

4) We need some type of either newsletter or updated council website that lists all added on district events, i.e training, that is based upon the needs of the district. This is my biggest pet peeve at the moment in that we do not have an active training chair at the moment, and I have no idea when other districts are offering stuff like BALOO and OWL.

 

Yes training is a pet peeve of mine at the moment. Our council is so large, it's pretty much every district for themselves when it comes to conducting training, i.e NLE, CLS, IOLS, BALOO, OWL, etc. So if you don't have enough staff and/or interest in conducting a training, it doesn't get done and you have to find the course yourself elsewhere with out any assistance from the DE. Hopefully the new council training chair will fix this problem.

 

I remember sitting in the scout office with my district program chair, other DPCs and a few of their DEs, the VP of Program , and all those who were running council events with calendars and planning the calendar. It was along drawn out Saturday, but the calender had fewer problems. Ans as a DE who was supposed to attend EVERYTHING, it was manageable.

 

Ok off soapbox.(This message has been edited by eagle92)

[Bob White]

SctDad, Maybe the answer to your question is that you are incorrect about your premise, and I am trying to get you to reconsider what the real problem is. I am not the only poster who has tried to explain the real problem to you.

[evmori]

SctDad, Maybe the answer to your question is that you are incorrect about your premise, and I am trying to get you to reconsider what the real problem is. I am not the only poster who has tried to explain the real problem to you.

 

Bob,

 

Are you in the same council as SctDad? If not you don't know what the real problem is!

[BadenP]

Sct Dad that is what Bob loves to do pick apart to see if he can get a rise out of you so don't jump to his condescending attitude. It sounds to me like there needs to be much better communication between your districts and council training committees, it seems to me that a few people are falling down on the job.

[baschram645]

Sctdad,

Have your program people look at combining activities as previously mentioned. We hold a Merit Badge college every year in December, usually the 2nd weekend. This is attended by most scout troops. You now have all the leaders in one place. Time for IOLS classroom sessions, YPT, NLE and a lot of other training. A lot can be done in a days time and this works really well. This takes a lot of pressure off the districts to plan training dates and offers an extra opportunity to train.

 

Our council also holds a training weekend; BALOO, Scoutmaster fundamentals and Webelos Leader training is conducted. Classes that can be combined are and specific ones are done apart. The staff is not so stretched and facilities are not double booked.

 

Our district events are similar in that we combine our camporees and klondikes into a scout/webelos type event with activites for each group.

 

In our town we combine with the pack when doing Scouting for Food. It all goes to the same place and gives us more people to cover more territory. (It also helps that I am an assistant CM and the Cubmaster is an Assistant SM) The only other time we do things together is Crossover, and when we take the WII's camping with the troop.

 

It still seems like alot of double or triple booking occurs.

[Scouter&mom]

VP of program Planning? Training frequent enough that all can get it shortly after joining? Training that is available soon after registration, before role is changed (especially for Cub Leaders).

 

Wow!! I want to change districts and councils.

 

If our council has a VP of Program planning, I don't know who it is. Our program planning for council (and district to a degree) is done in several marathon sessions by the volunteers who will be heading up various events. As coordinator (dean if you like that term) of UoS and member of district training committee, I am a member of the program planning committee. We like many small councils don't have but one major training day a year. We have attempted to hold scheduled training within the individual districts and it is just too hard to get instructors for everything you need and get enough students to show up to make it worth your while. The last two or three years, we have just had an annual UoS that we rotate the location from district to district and gotten much better turnout. That being said when we put it on the calendar, at about the same time of the year each year, no other district or council event is scheduled for the same time. That day is TRAINING DAY.

 

Some district events get moved based on district committee advice, but council events have dates set pretty far in advance. This month we have our final meeting to set the calendar for next year. Going from the end of summer camps through summer camps (and Jambo 2010).

 

We do tend to set things on a pretty standard schedule. This year our Webelos Weekend got moved from Nov (where it has been for a number of years) to September, because the CE thought we should include swimming. Well the leaders all complained, because it was only 2-3 weeks after school night signups and many of the boys were too new. I am happy to say that fall of 2009, it will be back to November.

 

As Lisa suggested, let the planners of the events know about your conflicts and maybe even volunteer to help with some.

 

Program planning is a perfect example of the 20/80 theory-- 20%of the people do 80% of the work.

[emb021]

Hmmm. In the councils I've worked with, overbooking of the calender has never been a problem. Most events occur every year at about the same time. Heck, for some of the major events, once one is done, they are usually already getting out info (including the date) for the next year's event. In one council I am in, they have a rule about no council/district event occuring closer then 2 weeks away. We also ramped down the number of events as well.

 

 

[SSScout]

Been busy elsewhere. Just read thru this thread.

The problem is well known if not consciously acknowledged. Due to a gravitational anomaly and the third premise of the General Theory of Relativity and cotrary to general belief, there is really only 8 weekends in a calendar year. I can testify to this. A single example::

 

Back in April of 2008, I conferred with the Program Chair of our District. We perused the published Council and District and school calenders. We agreed on a date for an activity I was to lead in 2009. Nothing on that date to conflict. Nothing. Penned it in.

After our "redistricting" in June, (see another thread), we have had several planning/scheduling meetings (called, I kid you not, 'calendering'). At last saturday morning's meeting, our new Program Chair (third in a year) listed all the claimed activities and organized them on the blackboard by genre (Cubs, training, etc.) and by date. Sonofagun, the weekend of my activity now had FIVE other activities listed. All worthy things to do.

We then scratched our collective heads and realized that most of the listed activities were, indeed, collected around only 8 or 9 weekends.For Scout purposes, it was like the rest of the year didn't exist.

 

Council? District? Old traditional "we've always done it then" stuff, out of 6 Old Districts, we now have ONE mega district. And 4 or 5 "sub areas"; so we may have 3 camporees in October, and 2 Klondike Derbies in January and multiple IOLS in April. This is looked on as a good thing in many respects, and egos need to be salved.

 

Communicate better and you may want to be glad for the multiple opportunities

 

Like the man said, ya pays yer money and takes yer cherce.

[SctDad]

We talked about the upcoming weekend for the Webelos Last night at our chapter meeting. We decided that since there has been a lacking of advertising for the UoS that we are going to have our OA weekend that date. I have to agree with a lot of the others in that it is a general thought that the Uos will be a bust due to lack of promotion. The only mention is on the council calander.

 

baschram645

 

I like your idea with combining the training while the boys are doing thier activities. I talked with one of the program coordinators and he like the idea too. Asked me to try to come up with some suggestions for the time frames and training plans.

 

I will spin a new thread for that one though.