Do you want the tech suit back for SCY?

Expensive? We use iContact (not Club Assistant) to manage our email communications. The cost is pretty reasonable (MUCH less than our paper newsletter costs every month), and it includes the ability to do surveys of the type you describe. As a bonus, if you wish it limits the survey to the people subscribed to the list (ie, LMSC members). There have to be other online survey tools that are reasonably cheap. This one looks free: http://www.kwiksurveys.com But of course there is no need to do a poll just to suggest a rule change. I suppose the idea is to strengthen the case for tech suits, but of course there is no guarantee that it will do that. You can run the poll after the deadline, though. People asking for the poll are insisting on the club assistant. Personally, I haven't asked why. Other people may have. At the moment, every time we, at the SPMA suggest something, the accusations fly that we are trying to twiost and game the poll, and other alusions of improprieties - like you;ve seen here, people speculating about my motivations for doing a starter interest poll here, and someone even going as far as suggesting it was being 'gamed' here too. We asked if club assistant is willing to donate their service, and there's been no answer. We asked how much the poll would costs, and no answer, other then couple people complaining about "It won't be as much as you think". We don't know what to think to start with. As for the cost, anyone can read SPMA minutes throughout past year. Our Chair of last 6-8 months resigned, SPMA just hired a brand new treasured because .... well, stuff has been botched, and the last recommendation was, don't spend *any* money except on bare necessities till things are resolved. Our former chair, the person who is pushing for this poll is the very same person who made this "no spending" reccomendation. again... another loong story that doesn't belong here. People are resigning, and being voted in and out to remedy all this. I suggested a number of times that poll is not necessary for SPMA to actually try and accomodate people wanting the suit - se my advice to Glen earlier in this thread. But, for the most part that is being rejected and seen as the attempt to squash the opposition... by people who have learly demonstrated they have no idea how USMS structure and rule making process works. Certain people expressed that, paraphrasing here 'east coasters gamed the convention vote in Chicago, because west coast clubs can't spend the money to send people for a fast weekend at a swanky convention' .... and we should bring Rob Butcher in on this, because SPMA is lying to us, and how the same four people are running the place and we can't be trusted... and OMG, the list goes on and on and on. There are dozens of nasty emails coming in daily, for some weeks now. Whomever started the tech suit effort within our LMSC, heavily impregnated it with anti establishment sentiment, (we know, we've seen all of the circulating emails, even the ones we werent supposed to see) so short of us somehow magically making the USMS overturn the tech suit ruling, we'll be wrong and the bad guys. Sorry I keep going into this. I keep wanting to respond to the nice people here with good suggestions, instead of invalidating and ignoring them, or just rejecting the ideas, but I really don't know how to explain things in a way they will make sense, without painting the whole picture. This gets me into the territory of controversial stuff. I'm sorry about that. I feel a bit between the rock and a hard place here, I don't want anyone to feel ignored and negelected. I probably shouldn't have started this poll either. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Give people a place and opportunity to cast their vote and be heard, while other avenues are being looked at. Instead it took the same directions as emails... accusations (just little less direct then via emails), mistrust, complaints, and very little serious action. Personally, I am disguisted with it all, and tired of losing sleep over it for weeks now, and ready to quit volunteering for the SPMA and my team, which I've been doing since around 2001 or 2002. I'm one of those background people who is (soon to be) married to a coach, holds no title, and just does everything, because noone else has stepped up to the place and "the team needs it". Our team has between 200 and 300 people, I don't know exactly, as it's not my job to keep exact track. It is like having 200 children, and I don't mean this in a bad way, I love my teammates, every single one of them. What I am trying to say, there's always something that needs doing... and it fall on the shoulders of us, the bad guys.

Expensive? We use iContact (not Club Assistant) to manage our email communications. The cost is pretty reasonable (MUCH less than our paper newsletter costs every month), and it includes the ability to do surveys of the type you describe. As a bonus, if you wish it limits the survey to the people subscribed to the list (ie, LMSC members). There have to be other online survey tools that are reasonably cheap. This one looks free: http://www.kwiksurveys.com But of course there is no need to do a poll just to suggest a rule change. I suppose the idea is to strengthen the case for tech suits, but of course there is no guarantee that it will do that. You can run the poll after the deadline, though. People asking for the poll are insisting on the club assistant. Personally, I haven't asked why. Other people may have. At the moment, every time we, at the SPMA suggest something, the accusations fly that we are trying to twiost and game the poll, and other alusions of improprieties - like you;ve seen here, people speculating about my motivations for doing a starter interest poll here, and someone even going as far as suggesting it was being 'gamed' here too. We asked if club assistant is willing to donate their service, and there's been no answer. We asked how much the poll would costs, and no answer, other then couple people complaining about "It won't be as much as you think". We don't know what to think to start with. As for the cost, anyone can read SPMA minutes throughout past year. Our Chair of last 6-8 months resigned, SPMA just hired a brand new treasured because .... well, stuff has been botched, and the last recommendation was, don't spend *any* money except on bare necessities till things are resolved. Our former chair, the person who is pushing for this poll is the very same person who made this "no spending" reccomendation. again... another loong story that doesn't belong here. People are resigning, and being voted in and out to remedy all this. I suggested a number of times that poll is not necessary for SPMA to actually try and accomodate people wanting the suit - se my advice to Glen earlier in this thread. But, for the most part that is being rejected and seen as the attempt to squash the opposition... by people who have learly demonstrated they have no idea how USMS structure and rule making process works. Certain people expressed that, paraphrasing here 'east coasters gamed the convention vote in Chicago, because west coast clubs can't spend the money to send people for a fast weekend at a swanky convention' .... and we should bring Rob Butcher in on this, because SPMA is lying to us, and how the same four people are running the place and we can't be trusted... and OMG, the list goes on and on and on. There are dozens of nasty emails coming in daily, for some weeks now. Whomever started the tech suit effort within our LMSC, heavily impregnated it with anti establishment sentiment, (we know, we've seen all of the circulating emails, even the ones we werent supposed to see) so short of us somehow magically making the USMS overturn the tech suit ruling, we'll be wrong and the bad guys. Sorry I keep going into this. I keep wanting to respond to the nice people here with good suggestions, instead of invalidating and ignoring them, or just rejecting the ideas, but I really don't know how to explain things in a way they will make sense, without painting the whole picture. This gets me into the territory of controversial stuff. I'm sorry about that. I feel a bit between the rock and a hard place here, I don't want anyone to feel ignored and negelected. I probably shouldn't have started this poll either. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Give people a place and opportunity to cast their vote and be heard, while other avenues are being looked at. Instead it took the same directions as emails... accusations (just little less direct then via emails), mistrust, complaints, and very little serious action. Personally, I am disguisted with it all, and tired of losing sleep over it for weeks now, and ready to quit volunteering for the SPMA and my team, which I've been doing since around 2001 or 2002. I'm one of those background people who is (soon to be) married to a coach, holds no title, and just does everything, because noone else has stepped up to the place and "the team needs it". Our team has between 200 and 300 people, I don't know exactly, as it's not my job to keep exact track. It is like having 200 children, and I don't mean this in a bad way, I love my teammates, every single one of them. What I am trying to say, there's always something that needs doing... and it fall on the shoulders of us, the bad guys.