Camping Committee

MINSI TRAILS CAMPING COMMITTEE IS MOVING APRIL 15th.
We are moving from a string of email addresses to a news blog.
Our blog address is: www.minsitrailscc.wordpress.com (as in minsi trails camping committee).

Please subscribe today and make the move with us. See the attachment on how to email subscribe from the blog site. There will be a link from our camping web site, www.minsitrails.com/camping around April 1st. Look for the link at the bottom left entitled " Camping Committee".

Between now and April 15th, all camping committee information will be distributed both through this list of emails as well as to the new blog's email subscribers.

What's nice about the blog is that it provides:

- a real time alert that a new news post has been made by sending the news contents to all email subscribers.
- a concise list of all the recent news posts in one place, through the blog itself, for easy reference.
- subscribers maintain the emails used, by updating with new addresses or unsubscribing outright.

So please, take the 5 minutes to visit the blog and subscribe.

Change in approach to the committee: formal ---to---> forum.

As many of you know, we have begun various conference calls at 7pm Sunday evenings. These sessions are designed to decentralize our discussions from small select groups at meetings to more open forums where more individuals can share their ideas and offer their talents. Our formal committee structure will consist of our team leads for our various focus areas. No formal committee membership will be required to take part in our discussions. Someone's decision to subscribe to the Committee's news blog and their membership in BSA-MTC, are the only requirements for being on the committee, and taking part in the forums.

The Sunday conference calls are a step towards committee and team forums. Please feel free to join in those conversations. Decisions and proposals will be generated during those calls. Your input and insights are important to all of us.

Quarterly Camping Committee Meetings Continue.
We will continue to meet quarterly with all the other Council committees for coordination purposes and for broad, across the board camping committee discussions. Our 2nd quarter meeting will focus on a key new effort - a 5 - 10 year strategic plan. The Council's Asset Advisory Board will be developing the 5 to 10 year plan for our Council's assets (camp properties, council office property, equipment, gear, vehicles, etc.). The Council (camp) Properties Committee and the Council Camping (program Committee are represented. We have been tasked with stating our vision for camping programs (more than "camp" program) for Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts and Venturers. Our first draft development will take place at the April quarterly meeting. We will finalize the vision at our 3rd quarter meeting. Please follow our news blog posts for more details shortly.

Attention Team Leads -
· Please take advantage of this news blog and our access to conference call capabilities (with special thanks to my employer) to make your specific area discussions available to the most folks possible.
· I have not included any email addresses for the committee's team leads. If you would like your email address included, please send me the address you prefer. See "About the Committee" on the page's header to see find the team leads.

Minsi Trails Camping News Blog also established.
Finally, we will be using news blog technically to communicate information about our camping programs far and wide. Like the committee's news blog, it is email subscription driven. We plan to launch this Tuesday evening, 3/15, at our pre-camp leaders' meeting, with attendance estimated to be around 100. This will serve as an excellent base from which to feed a steady stream of camping news to our customer base.

You can find the Camping News Blog at: www.MinsiTrailsCamping.wordpress.com