David I'd like to once again thank you for the sterling job you do with the GFA web site. I realise that your efforts, like those of so many in the gliding community, are volunteered and our time to do this is limited by work / family / Club committments.
My frustration is that: (a) the GFA executive members / office staff didn't post an e-mail to this list (where plenty of their members are known to hang out) (b) the GFA apparently didn't contact its member clubs (at least nothing that I'm aware of as at our Committee meeting on September 17th) (c) the GFA didn't contact the membership secretaries of its clubs (i.e. me) despite the fact they have our names, address and e-mail on file. (d) the GFA could have even e-mailed every single member which it has an e-mail address for on their database to notify anyone that this web-based facility was NOW online (the AG/Skysailor article give it a decidedly "when implemented" future, and in any case, there seem to be a number of people who simply don't read the magazine like they used to). This is what I mean by "quietly switched on". The opposite of this would have been to have been to have any combination of items (a) to (d) above announcing this to the GFA membership at large. I don't believe this is the job of the GFA webmaster (which is why I lay no blame at your feet). It should be the role of the GFA Executive and paid staff - they're the people with the ability (and responsibility) to "Press Release" this sort of stuff and generate the bulk of the content. A webmaster's job is to publish it for the rest of us to see. Look at any corporate web site. Almost all have a press release section and the names of those writing the releases are NEVER "webmaster@ ....", but those of some PR / Marketing / Executive type. I do check the "What's new" section of the GFA web site often, but wonder how many other people would do likewise on a regular basis. The fact that I missed it means that either I'm a skim-reader and I skimmed too much, or that something as significant as I believe this is (essentially a paradigm shift in the way GFA deals with its members and member clubs) was listed under a one line title of "GFA membership lists" which failed to arouse my interest. I only found out in a round-about way because of an e-mail conversation between Tim Shirley, Beryl Hartley and myself to do with starting a GFA/FAI awards database (rather than the 50 years of all-paper records that are still used at present), and Tim pointed out that Clubmate (the GFA membership database) can do the awards too (but currently doesn't). That got me searching the GFA web site and I found it under GFA Information. Otherwise, I would have missed catching it in the What's New section and been blisfully unaware of the existence of the membership lists because it would have scrolled down too far on the list (as time went on), and then it would only have been noticed if I happened to look in the GFA Information section of the GFA web site and it caught my attention. I am sure we'll read more about this change eventually in a future AG/Skysailor. My point is (once again, getting on my soapbox) that the GFA seems to do these things with the absolute minimum amount of fanfare. Given the decline in membership numbers, it hardly seems the right approach. The GFA needs to be enthusing and motivating its members, not hoping they'll quitely do it by themselves (how many sporting teams could achieve success if they had a coach like this ?). I for one would have applauded loudly if I had been advised in a more direct way since it makes my job much easier as a club membership secretary. Maybe Simon Hackett can run a quick webstats / analog analysis of the GFA web site logs to actually give us an indication of how many people have visited those pages. It would be interesting to review those again in the next few weeks (once people have read this thread on the list). Regards Jason Armistead ----- Original Message ----- From: David Head <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2001 9:42 AM Subject: RE: [aus-soaring] GFA membership data now on the web > Jason, > It wasn't 'quietly switched on' - it was listed on the GFA '"What's New" > page on 30 August 2001. > > David -- * You are subscribed to the aus-soaring mailing list. * To Unsubscribe: send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] * with "unsubscribe aus-soaring" in the body of the message * or with "help" in the body of the message for more information.
