Positive Thinking

While I was working on something at my PC at work this morning, I was listening to the latest ‘Hour A Week?’ show by Cubmaster Chris.

Just listen to the last 10 – 15 minutes. Chris gets quite serious, but is so positive in what he says about us all volunteering as Leaders, you can’t help but feel uplifted! Give him a listen here or here.

Cubmaster Chris

1st Gilwell Park Scout Group / Gilwell Troop 1

As soon as you complete your Wood Badge training, you automatically become a member of the largest Scout Group in the world, 1st Gilwell Park Scout Group / Gilwell Troop 1.

Gilwell Park logo

I’ve found out today that the Scout Association are in the process of setting up a web site for 1st Gilwell and also issuing a regular newsletter. You can join up here and be told when the site is live – should be quite interesting!

Blogs and Comments

When I started doing this blog around two and a half years ago, I was doing it for me as a trial to see what blogging was all about and to try out the software. After looking at a few of the different options out there at the time I settled on WordPress on my own hosted web space. I stared out writing about anything that came to mind, but it’s gone a lot more Scout related, with the occasional other stuff. That’s probably as my Scouting is a bigger part of my life again.

When I started writing away, I never really expected anyone to read anything I was writing and it was well over a year before anyone made any comments. I guess more people started to read my stuff when I found some of the excellent blogs from my Scouting colleagues in the States and added them to the links list. I think it was the Lone Star Scouter blog (now re-christened Troop 483 Blog – must update!) I first came across, which then led to the others. They in turn added me to their lists and comments started to be left on my blog and also by me on the others. I must admit it came as a pleasant shock to find out people were leaving comments and that we all had many things in common.

Of course, I’ve had to put a couple of serious spam traps in place as the blog would have ended up as one giant advert for gambling and less savoury products! In fact I’ve had over 2500 spam comments which have been caught and deleted before I installed another anti spam device on top of the existing one.

Anyway, so far all but two of the comments (that weren’t spam) have been positive and friendly. They were criticisms, but wasn’t nasty, so I let it through (see the Another Scout Bashing post). Of course I am able to ignore or delete anything I want and that’s my choice as it’s my blog! But so far so good.

The thing that’s made me think of this is that there has been a rather negative comment sent to Jerry over at the Scoutmaster Minute. It was posted by someone anonymous and Jerry was thinking of dumping it but decided to reply and explain his reasons (see here & here). I think he did the right thing by explaining his position and not just ignoring the comment. It is easy, of course, just to hit the delete button and let it be at that, but to respond and explain yourself does take some time and thought.

I believe if you don’t agree with something someone has written (and I’ve never been in that position with the blogs I read), then comment by all means, but do it in a non personal way so it comes across as a debating point and not an attack. We all can’t be of the same mind on everything, but constructively putting our point across is the way to go.

So thanks to Gary, Steve, Shawn, Joy, Jerry and the PTC media crew, long may you keep on blogging and brightening up my days with your blogs and comments. And I hope you all find what I have to say at least vaguely interesting!

Dull but Necessary!

Last night I went to our District's Executive meeting to agree our budget for the next 12 months. This was not the most exciting 2 hours I have ever spent, but it needed to be done. For an organisation to run properly and successfully, it needs effective administration.

Tonight is our Group's Executive meeting which will be a bit more enjoyable and relaxed, but no less necessary. But this time we get biscuits as well as a drink!

UPDATE:

Ok, perhaps the title was a wee bit mean spirited, so perhaps it should have read 'Meetings'.

Anyway, at tonight's Executive, we were pleased to welcome a new parent to the committee and we came up with some interesting ideas for the Group in the future. It was a positive meeting and we all came away having made good contributions.

So some meetings can be dull, but necessary and others can lead to interesting discussions which result in good ideas for future activities for the Group and its continuing longevity.