A Scouting rant!

[Stew]

I think the problem is that the OP couldn't find out through Google. Now that's either Google's problem or the OP hadn't tackled the problem in such a way that Google could give him the answer.

The Scouts have done their bit and made it easy to find if you hit their website. Maybe not having a go at the Scouts in the thread title would be a good thing as the folk who volunteer and put their time in see it as a slant against them.

Though I must admit Stew that rather than going through the Scout website I did a little experiment and typed in Beavers in Aylesbury and the first thing that came up was the Aylesbury Scouting District website with the address and meeting times.

Must be me being thick but it doesn't give that result for me.

Not to worry though as I'm evidently wrong and offending.

 

[Goatboy]

Sorry Stew, I wasn't having a go at you. I've found that how you word questions really make a huge difference with internet search engines, and some engines are better than others.

I found that a lot of the younger staff who worked with me often took longer to find things on the internet than an middle aged duffer like me could. I found this strange as they'd been brought up with nothing else since the nets inception in 1983. I eventually put in down to years of researching things in library's and encyclopaedias. Because you had to search by titles and headings it made you thing in a condensed and often obtuse way to find what you were after.

Was just trying to say that it wasn't anybodies fault, just different ways of doing things. Hope you didn't take any offence, and that the Scouting leaders didn't either.

Cheers,
GB.

 

[Essexman]

Stew - my wife is brownie leader and helps with guides. They are run off their feet just running the groups, not much time for extras. All local groups are over subscribed, no need to advertise at all. The bigger problem is getting parents to give up time and help out.

 

[seg1959]

No I won't cut them some slack. They are a massive world wide organisation and HQ should be thinking what happens on the ground.

OP, I think you need to redo your Google search. "Beavers Aylesbury" brings back pages upon pages of scout groups in Aylesbury, first page has the district site as the first entry at the very top. "Join the adventure" takes you to the search for a local group.

However, if you type in "where is the nearest beaver colony in Aylesbury?" it comes up with a page of rubbish - so the moral is to keep it short and concise!

seg1959
Group Scout Leader (volunteer ;-) )

 

[santaman2000]

Stew just out of interest I went on to the Scouts home page, in the top right hand quarter of the screen was a box to pop in my postcode, then clicked and in less than a second I had the 25 nearest groups to me with contact details included.

They don't seem to be hiding under a bush at all.

Scout Home Page HERE

Hope this helps
GB.

And this approach seems to me to be the most logical. Both for anyone doing a search, and for the scouts or any similar organization as well.

 

[jonny the monkey]

Another thing with google is that search results vary from computer computer based upon your previous searching history. You could search a string of words on one machine and search the exact same words on a different computer and turn up different results 1984-esque

 

[vestlenning]

I have used Google since the beginning, and imo it is less helpful now than in it's prime. We better not forget other ways to navigate the web, if we want to locate stuff.

 

[santaman2000]

Another thing with google is that search results vary from computer computer based upon your previous searching history. You could search a string of words on one machine and search the exact same words on a different computer and turn up different results 1984-esque

The individual machines store info regarding previous searches made on them in particular and rank the "hits" according to that machine's user's searches.

I have used Google since the beginning, and imo it is less helpful now than in it's prime. We better not forget other ways to navigate the web, if we want to locate stuff.

True. But GB's advice is still the best idea. No matter what you use you should be able to search using different index methods.

 

[Zodiak]

For what its worth, in my district we discourage groups from having a website unless they have somebody to keep it up to date otherwise they look sloppy and are not a good advert. In most cases a simple page with a few local details such as a map to the HQ, and a link pointing to scouts.org.uk will be about right. Having sections showing what we are doing next week is great until somebody can't update it one week and then it starts to look a bit shabby.
As for signing up the Gilwell push now is for inquiries to be handled through the district, not individual groups, so that new members can be give the option of other groups if their first choice is full. We started that last year and it seems to be working quite well.

And I hope you sons enjoys his time with Scouting.

 

[Bowlander]

Our local group have a website, twitter feed and Facebook page, but I got no response to the emails and messages so went down to the hut and found the phone number of the leader and hey presto.

We tried one colony and it seemed like a glorified creche, folk just shoved their kids through the door and went. Unruly kids were just ignored. We're trying a more local colony later in the month so fingers crossed!