That pesky activity schedule

by Tom Beckwith, T&T editor

It has been three years since the Board of Directors of the Colorado Mountain Club approved the CMC Strategic Plan. Since then, most of the decisions made about the long-term health of the club have been guided by the plan.

One of the items in the Strategic Plan has to do with the Activity Schedule. It calls for the publications department to publish the schedule more frequently and with greater accuracy.

At first blush, this seems like a straightforward and meritorious goal: all you need is more money to offset the extra printing costs and pay for the extra person to assist in producing the schedule. Right?

Wrong!

It’s more complicated than that. Publishing the Activity Schedule is a monumental collaborative effort between a virtual army of volunteers and the state publications “staff” (i.e., me.) In the Denver Group alone, more than thirty “schedulers” call hundreds of leaders twice a year to schedule trips. And in Estes Park, Shining Mountains group chair Madeline Framson contacts hundreds of leaders all by herself.

So the desire of a great many in the club to see more frequent activity schedules with fewer cancelled or moved trips is challenged by the fact that many of the volunteers who do the work of scheduling just can’t do any more than they’re already doing.

On the other hand, many leaders have difficulty committing to leading trips four or five months out.

It’s a vexing problem, and the Publications Committee is working hard to contact as many people in the club. The committee wants to know what you think the most important function of the Activity Schedule: it’s informational; and many people also use previous schedules as reference tools.

Do you save your schedules? If so, why?

Do you have access to the WorldWideWeb? If you do, would you prefer to read the Activity Schedule on-line as opposed to a paper copy?

Did you know that the schedule actually is on-line? You can go to http://www.cmc.org/cmc/tnt and click on the “Activity Schedule” button.

Would you like to be able to sign up for trips on-line?

Would you favor a more frequently published Activity Schedule—say four or six times a year instead of two?

The more people who communicate with the publications committee, the better the committee will be at making decisions. You can communicate your opinion to the chairman at john.r.ross@worldnet.att.net.