Council-Level Forums (& District)

We want to discuss things within our district and council-wide. Council-level Scoutbook forums would be a perfect compliment to the unit-level forums already enabled.

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I have added this to the requested enhancement list. I do not envision it being given a high priority.

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Carolyn, I highly recommend attending your district Roundtable to address Council level issues.

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@KenTodd I question that equation. Roundtables and forums serve very different purposes, and could never substitute for each other. Roundtables are one night per month, unavailable to anyone who has other commitments. Roundtables are also a fixed length and so inherently limited in scope and depth. Forums allow for a broader range of topics, far-reaching and round-the-clock engagement, agile brainstorming and event planning, and more in-depth discussion than can be had in 1 hour per month Roundtables. There’s no comparison.

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Legacy forum new-feature requests related to the same subject include:

District forums:
https://www.scoutbook.com/mobile/forums/new-feature-requests/28857/using-scoutbook-for-district-functions/

Council forums:
https://www.scoutbook.com/mobile/forums/new-feature-requests/167886/forum-by-council/

Both:
https://www.scoutbook.com/mobile/forums/new-feature-requests/162837/district---council-visibility-to-rosters-and-leader-communications-as-well-as-district-round-table/
https://www.scoutbook.com/mobile/forums/new-feature-requests/55967/council-and-district-forums/
https://www.scoutbook.com/mobile/forums/new-feature-requests/81162/council-district-positions-and-groups/
https://www.scoutbook.com/mobile/forums/new-feature-requests/106155/district-council-operations-forum/

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Carolyn, although the actual Roundtable Meeting itself is only 90 minutes, once a month, these are the opportunities to meet and start conversations with the applicable member of your district committee no your questions.

The one challenge of a District SB forum, and especially a Council SB forum, is that many district and council leaders do not have access to SB, so it is hard to answer the questions. In our council, many of our districts, like mine, have electronic Roundtable communications where questions can be asked and answered and discussion can take place. If you district does not already have something like this, suggest they start one.

To me, Roundtable has 3 purposes, passing our information about program changes and upcoming events that have been planned for your unit to participate in, sharing program ideas, and networking. I have completely scrapped a planned program, or cut it back in scope, to discuss a topic of need by a unit. And of course the Parking Lot Meetings an go down some interesting rabbit holes to chew on questions and comments.

Every registered leader in the BSA now has free access to Scoutbook. While Scoutbook does not have position codes for district and council leaders, they can still log in using their my.scouting.org ID and password and thus have access to these forums.

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This would be a highly valuable feature at the District level for sharing information and documents. Our district currently utilizes a yahoo group but the participation is sparse since many scouters do not have a yahoo login or desire to use it. But every scouter has a Scoutbook login now.

This is intended to serve a very different purpose than a round table.

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@edavignon Are council/district position codes a likely prerequisite for developing higher-order forums?

Most likely. I doubt BSA IT would want to moderate council and district forums so there would need to be a way to identify moderators.

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Cool. I’ve requested those as a new feature now, too. :slight_smile:

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Thanks, it’s a good idea, but understand if it’s a lower priority.

Having specific channels for positions at all three levels (C,D,&U) would be a great benefit for sharing best practices around training.

At least at the D and U level, the quality of position on-boarding and training varies widely. With designated channels for these position based conversations, we would have a way to community cross train from outside of your immediate D or U.

To say that Round Tables are a replacement for forums is to say that we only need to talk about Scouting once a month. Forums serve an entirely different purpose. The fact that some Cs & Ds have separate systems to handle these communications highlights the overall need. Why force all of these conversations to be spread across disperate systems? The standardization of A communications platform should be the goal. This simplifies both parental and leader on-boarding, training, and streamlines ongoing operations at all levels. It becomes THE source for info. Not check here for this, and there for that.

Seems like it should be a higher priority since we’re so close already.

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:smiley: Painfully close.

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This appears to be an actively pursued feature request.

At the very least, it should be marked and sent up the chain.

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