Purpose of the BCA Forum

Post by **David Cooke** » Thu 06 Jul 2006 16:25

These are, pretty much, some words I wrote for the UKCaving Forum. I think are worth reposting here:

I think it is worth saying what I see as the purpose of the BCA Forum. For those who haven't realised it, I'm the person who setup and administers the BCA Forum. LesW helps out with the admin and moderation.

The BCA Forum is primarily there for BCA and the institutions of British Caving (Regional Councils, Hidden Earth etc). It is for the use of the Officers and those who interact with the institutions. If other members of the caving community want to use it, that fine, but as far as I am concerned that is not its raison d'etre. For example I wont be creating forums for individual clubs whilst UKCaving is willing to host them. UKCaving Forum is a great place to chat about 'oles, BCA Forum is about running the organisations and as such I think there is space for both to happily co-exist.

For various reason BCA isn't as good as it should be at communicating with its membership nor between its Officers. I believe a Forum is a great new way of communicating that can make real and practical difference to BCA relationship with its membership and to its smooth running behind the scenes (Call me idealistic). Thus I got of my arse and set it up. I'm just waiting for BCA's Officers to seize the opportunity they've been given ...

The cost of the BCA Forum is paid for by BCA, although it pretty much gets it for free anyway, since it has to pay for the domain, hosting and database in order to run the BCA Website. My time is voluntary; I get paid nothing except complements - occasionally.