April 2023 COMMENTS ARE SWITCHED ON

Hi my name is Roy, last October I was elected as a committee member and as the Website Administer, CES admin and Membership secretary

There have been a series of requests to update the website and CES site and to produce a manual and to have a members-only area. We are working on it, possibly a bit slow to start but never mind we still have another 5 months.

And Please

If you are interested in helping in any way we would love to hear from you membership@brislets.com, it’s a love job, there is a freeze on the Admin account so no one is going to be paid 🙂

Website

Newsletter Archives

As promised we have done some work on archiving newsletters but there are many gaps in the collection https://brislets.com/newsletter/

Could you please

if you have newsletter files that we are missing send them to membership@brislets.com, many thanks to the people who have made the effort so far.

Could someone

have a look and generate an index of the contents for each newsletter we could include that with the download on the website it looks a bit sparse at the moment.

Could someone

look for older newsletters that were only produced on paper. They need to be scanned and uploaded to our website. Scanning is simple and cheap if you go to Office Works again there is no promise that you will be reimbursed.

Committee meeting Archives

As promised we have done some work on archiving MC minutes https://brislets.com/minutes/
Recipients of this report can access them directly but later we will arrange that people will need to log into the CES and follow a link from there

Could you please

if you have any minutes we haven’t archived yet, can you send them to membership@brislets.com.

Could we have some feedback

about how secure these minutes should be, some people whose opinions are very relevant are past committee members. No response will be considered as agreement.

1) They could be just available online, they are now IFF you know the URL

2) They could be accessible only to members who log into the CES, you need to be a member with a password, to get the link to the archives on the website – this would be my preferred option.

Thanks to the people who dug into their closets and provided these important records.

We set up Google Analytics

This gives us some useful tips about who is using the website and why. I will do a report next month.

And we did heaps of maintenance stuff.

Some of it hadn’t been done for years, and personally, I think it would be good if we could get a group together to go through the whole website, one day.

We did an update of the google maps of members.

There was some feedback that people didn’t want their addresses available and that some people’s pins overlapped if they lived in the same suburb
We fixed that, now:

– No one’s address is available on the map you have to actually login to CES to get personal details
– At great trouble and expense everyone’s pin was shifted a small random amount to so your pin never shows your house.

Could you have a look

and see if you are happy with your entry, if you aren’t we can so anything you want to make you happy including removing you if that is your will.

Members area

We are well on the way to setting up a Member’s Area. The relevant plugin is BBPress if anyone is interested. We are proposing that we set it up, invite everyone and if they come we have a useful feature – if they don’t, we won’t

Oh and the manual that was requested

Here It’s also a work in progress, you will notice that it links back to the website to give future website editors some hints.

Could you consider helping to produce this document

all you have to do is start typing, and add your name to the authors list. I am aware it will need editing. Don’t worry about using correct styles (unless you can) and don’t worry about breaking it, there are backups

CES

Personal security on the CES

We responded to a request from members to hide people’s addresses on the CES. This was in an effort to frustrate scammers. I got about a 1/3 of the way through and the feedback was most people didn’t care and some people were a bit annoyed, so I stopped.
Personally, I have chosen to leave all my details. My reasoning is that my details are out there anyway and having my details available to members makes trading easier

Could you please

consider how you want to handle your own security?

Could you please

Let me know if I can help or do it for you ?

CES and LETS are Alive and well

LETs was always a pioneering idea, “Practical Mutual Credit”. There are lots of new innovations like bitcoin but personally, I think these things are flawed because the early adopters are trying to make a massive profit on the back of new members, they call them Ponzi schemes, if you know about them.
Mutual Credit doesn’t do that, there is no interest, no profit and no room for powermongers.

Personally, I am making a renewed commitment to LETS. I go on a pension in 2 weeks and I have clear ideas about how LETS can increase my wealth and help me make a contribution to the community
My blog is here https://royletsblog.online/ it’s a work in progress, I have 5 months to get this working as well.

Offers and wants are good

See attached

We are going to do a whip around next month, there are a few people whose offers and wants look good but have fallen out of date, we will send them a reminder. It is good to have lots of offers and wants and you don’t have to take on everything everyone needs

Membership

We had a good increase in membership early in the year, it seemed like a direct response to setting g the levy to zero and Kathryn and Jessica’s advertising.

Currently, we have 3 members resigning but it’s clear that they just got old or moved, happens

There are some powerful things we can do to increase membership if anyone is enthused.

That’s it for the month

LETS get on with it 🙂

– roy –