Chesapeake Chapter Ordeal 2011 and The Finder of Lost Objects

Last weekend in the wind and rain, Nentico Lodge 12, Order of the Arrow, Chesapeake Chapter, held our annual Ordeal for new members and returning Brothers. Again this year I assisted with registration, as well as general service around camp and some membership duties for the Lodge. Rain was predicted on Saturday, but the Friday check-in and sleeping "under the stars" remained dry.


REGISTRATION UPDATES

With more pre-registrations this year than I remember from prior years, we entered as many as we could find into the OA LodgeMaster (OALM) database before the Chesapeake Ordeal, intending to minimize candidates spent in line before the ceremonies. That worked out well, with only a very few people showing up with no records. As usual, though, not everyone who planned to attend showed up, with 8 possible Ordeal members unable to be inducted. They were identified as having no Clan after everyone in attendance had been assigned to an Elangomat.

I puzzled over how to deal with their records, since deleting them from the Chesapeake Ordeal event would lose their pre-pay status. So I decided to move their event record to the next one chronologically. I could not see how to do that from the OALM Event Manager screen; you can only delete from there.




On each individual record in the Membership Manager screen, I selected their Attendance history record, modifying it from the Chesapeake Ordeal to the Arrowhead/Thurgood Marshall Ordeal. Hopefully, if they can't make that one, someone else will push their record to the next Ordeal in the season. At the end of their eligibility, we'll need to figure out what to do, as we still have their registration fee.






LOST AND FOUND

At the end of the weekend, I waited at Camp Saffran for the Summer Camp open house scheduled for later Sunday. As each person left, gear, papers, and other materials lingered in the Nentico Pavilion and the administration building. Once everyone else was gone, I decided I needed to get a lost and found going. I carted the useful gear home and shot the photographs below.

Since that time, one new Ordeal member has picked up the bedroll, but I still have a rain coat, water bottle, and pair of gloves (plus a carved arrow on a string). If you can identify these, let me know and we'll return them to their rightful owners. If not, I guess they go into our Troop trailer with other found objects.

Mastering OALM

Nentico Lodge is transitioning to a new membership database. In the process of centralizing the storage, we're distributing the data integrity responsibility. It's going to be an interesting next few months. Chesapeake Chapter will be first out of the gate as we have the earliest Ordeal in calendar year 2010. Here are a few comments from my perspective - non-authoritative, unofficial, and maybe helpful.

First, a process flow chart. I came up with this after working on the volume test in early December. It's broken into 2 main areas - Unit Elections, then Chapter Ordeals. The reason for this should be obvious, though the data hand-offs from unit to chapter, and from chapter to chapter, will need to be tested to see how it works.

The "In" circles are where someone will be entering data, either the Chapter Adviser or their designee. Likewise, the "Out" circles represent data reports, on-screen, on paper, or to various media formats. As an example, reports back to Scoutmasters on those elected can help find spelling mistakes or other inaccuracies. I've left out validation of BSA ID numbers for simplicity, but that needs to happen somehow.

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The second page, the Ordeal process, looks more complex, but will probably be simpler in practice. The bigger adjustment at the Ordeal will likely be managing the transition from the "old way" to the "new way." I've seen challenges with pre-registration, especially when the forms don't make it to the Ordeal site on time. With a central database, this can be avoided with the up-to-the-minute synchronization process.



The trick to simplifying check-in will be to have as many of those elected on the records as possible. Given that April's Ordeal could include elections as far back as late April or early May 2009, it would not surprise me if someone showed up whose data was not online yet. We'll need a way to make sure they are recorded and the elections are checked.

Here is one screen shot of menus I saw during a test phase:




A few things to note about this:

• Someone has to set up events if I can't access "Event Manager". For best results long term, we should agree on a format so they can be more easily found.
• Membership Manager needs some practice, and also some rules around capitalization, abbreviations, etc.
• Chapter Reports are useful. Once we're back online I'll highlight a few I found. I should have taken screen shots before, so there you go...
• Unit Contact Manager sounds like an address book, but it seems to be more of a calendar showing who was contacted when. It's probably useful for tracking many elections, though it will take some time to become familiar with it.
• There are exception reports, including a nice one that can do partial name matching to search for duplicates or typos.
• I think Service Hours can also be used for meeting attendance. Again, once we're online I will try this at a Chapter meeting to wok out the kinks.

We talked about whether this tool can help the Extended Elangomat program. I believe it can, based on the reporting and organization logic. I hope so.

Lastly, this cryptic pop up:



The answer is not always one or the other. It depends what you want to do. So read, understand, then choose.