Last night I attended the monthly Roundtable for the Boy Scouts of America in the Pacific Skyline Council. The focus of the meeting was websites for scout troops. It was well done and I learned a lot.
The first presenter came up and showed his Troop's website. It was done using Adobe's Dreamweaver several years ago and looked pretty good. Unfortunately it was very technical and none of the Scouts even wanted to learn how to modify the information. That means that it is a task for Scoutmasters, assistant Scoutmasters, or technical parents.
The next presenter had two sites: one for the Pack (Cub Scouts) and one for the Troop. The Pack's website was more mature and done using Joomla. It was very functional and looked like it meets the needs of the Pack quite nicely. He then showed us the Troop site that was doine using WordPress. While it didn't have the depth of the Joomla site, it looked much easier to administer and there was interest by the boys in being able to maintain it.
The third presenter showed us his site which was created with Troopmaster. It was impressive because it integrated with their software to keep track of the boys advancements. As everyone knows, an Eagle Scout is a big deal and anything that allows parents and leaders to streamline the process is very welcome. Of the 4 technologies shown this far in the evening, this was definitely my favorite.
The fourth presenter showed a site created with Google Sites. It lacked the Scout tracking integration found in Troopmaster, but was very easy to use. I came home and recommended that my wife might want to consider it for her small custom sewing business.
Before the meeting last night, I had heard about all of these products but hadn't really given them much thought. It was a real eye-opener to see them in action and how people are using them to send out scouting information. I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks.
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