I am recording my first Roundtable Tools. I understand the “top part” where you record the whole or fractional numbers of people from the different units. I understand this is to see what units sent how many people. Ok.
The bottom part isn’t clear to me.
Question 1: When it says “Unit Leaders” does it mean unit adult volunteers? It doesn’t seem to add the people from above, do I do that manually? Or is this true “Unit Leaders”, that is, for Cub Scouts, is it Cub Masters?
Question 2: Odd that units could get fractional credit, but commissioners can’t. So if I count myself as an Assistant Cub Roundtable Commissioner, should I also count myself as a member of my troop?
Thanks for the clarity. I checked the online training videos and power point, and didn’t see this level of detail that I am wondering about.
I think I have found my own answers.
It is odd that Commissioner Tools Roundtables doesn’t add up all of the attendance. Why not sum up all of those that have attended?
It is also odd that you can’t do a fractional commissioner, but can support fractional adults between units, that doesn’t seem consistent, does it?
What does it call those adult volunteers “Unit Leaders”? “Unit Leaders” would be a total of Scoutmasters, Cubmasters, and Crew Advisors, no? It should be called Unit attendance or Unit volunteers or unit adult volunteers. Unit Leaders has a specific meaning.
Well, it is odd that you can enter halves for unit volunteers, but then when you sum them up, you can’t have a half. So, how do you enter 5.5 cub volunteers and 5.5 Scouts BSA volunteers.
Sorry for the late reply. I think the reason or potential reason you dont have a sum, is that sometimes RT are done on different days. For example I know a district that is so geographically large that they do two roundtables a month.
'unit leaders" is a general term talking about all people representing the units… sometimes this is a parent.
I usually dont give my commissioners or my staff credit for the units they represent. The weird exceptions might be for things like recharter where i’m also doing the recharter.
Does this help?
It helps me with the system as is. Thanks.
I would still recommend:
-A different term than unit leaders as it is ambiguous. Since say, a Scoutmaster is the unit leader, if we have 2 Scoutmasters, and an an assistant in attendance, I would say there are 2 unit leaders in attendance. This would be a moot point if it auto summed as it should. A parent is for sure not a unit leader. Unit Volunteers would be a fine term. A unit leader is a unit leader - SM, CM, or CA.
-auto sum the different groups, it needn’t “close” the entry, just only allow inputs to the other fields and. Or the totals. For round tables on different nights, they would have different entries. Or just do it live as the values are entered, after you leave each cell, show the new total. Like excel.
-allow fractional people in the sums as long as the total adds up. Such a big deal is made about someone representing 2 groups in the framing, it is odd that it doesn’t allow fractions in the totals. We have some representing a pack and a troop, but then what does one put for the sum? It is a construct that is only taken so far and then stops, seems odd.
-have a blank for professionals. I put them down as guests / visitors, but are DE and DD are normal attendees.
I have to admit that summing things twice is a pain. I wouldn’t mind if the bottom would automatically sum from the bottom.
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So as the “Father” of Commissioner Tools (CT), I think it might be helpful if I were to provide an input here.
The term “Leader” as applied in CT is the same as BSA uses for any registered unit volunteer: leader. Yes, BSA’s terminology is confusing at times when we say “Unit Leader” and simultaneously can mean either the ‘top’ Unit Leader (upper case) and mean the CM, SM, etc. or any registered unit volunteer (lower case, except when dictated by grammar rules), but over time, with experience, most of us can figure it out.
At the time CT was created roundtables DID count leaders differently when they showed up and ‘signed in’ for multiple units; this typically happened for LDS units where one “leader” would sometimes sign in for as many as 8 units. Some roundtables would count that individual leader as 8 “noses,” once for each unit. Some roundtables (typically more often Cub RTs where Koo-stick competitions were ‘keen’) would count the “leader” as 0.125 “noses” per unit.
Rather than prescribe an approach, in order to provide ‘flexibility’ that would permit BOTH methods of counting “noses” the system does not automatically tally the leader count for RT programs.
But times change. None of this is to say that it is not possible for the current Technology Lead and his Team to change the way CT works.
I hope this makes sense.
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Thanks for the background. It is clear that it allows the flexibility you talk about and makes sense that it doesn’t auto add. Then add in the ambiguous Unit Leader term, is where I got stuck. I’ve got it now. I would update training to make that clear since it seemed to make it simpler. I guess I was making it more complicated.
Where have you put professionals? Do people not count them or put them in as guests?
You raise a good point about professionals, who are not specifically called out in the totals. Under the circumstances I think your solution makes the most sense. I.e., count them as guests. As for training… @MichaelWeber1
So if I count the leaders for every unit they are associated with. I have a sign in sheet that has a spot for them to list all of their units, and populate the CT after the meeting. The reason I do this is because the percentage at the end is the percent of units represented. To me the number of “noses” is kind of irrelevant. It is improving the units experience by have a representative at the meeting. Would I like to have 1 adult from every single unit come to roundtable? Absolutely! Unfortunately I don’t think that is likely to happen. Professionals I count as guests if they do not have a unit they are part of.
@JohnGeiser Thanks for sharing your process and philosophy. I agree - info flow and better units is more important that noses.
