Members and Friends of Northern Colorado Rocketry

Let me first introduce myself, as I have not been very vocal during club events. I am Brad Morse, I have been a member of NCR since 2006. I assumed control of the website a few years ago.

The website has been dilapidated and dysfunctional for years. Even the recent attempted re-write published officially in 2014 as ncrocketry.club instantly became unmaintainable [my fault]. This site had many problems, and for many reasons; but it also achieved some key objectives. In the initial transition I composed these documents to communicate a transparent plan to continue a fresh start of the site. See these legacy docs: roadmap and site-help.

I will own all of the decisions and failures of the site since 2014: poor communication, unstable hosting solutions, lack of admin capabilities, broken launch log entry and no user profile or membership management, no email integration, language choice was unsuitable for quick development cycles and new feature development. The list goes on. Including frustration of club members who suddenly lost access to flight logs. Sorry about this everyone - the data is not lost I promise.

Short list of successes in the 2014 re-write:
- Preservation of the original club forum content [the top concern by all members for any fundamental change to the site]
- Somewhat cleaner user experience [compare to the 2014 ncrocketry.org]
- GO/NO GO Launch status message [this was the most highly requested feature in 2013 along with an image gallery]
- Easy editable content by a privileged user from the website - no coding or html required.
- Hard lesson learned of choosing the right vendors when hosting a community website

Better Communication

Slack is a real-time chat application http://ncrocketry.slack.com There is a standing invitation to all club members to join the NCR Slack channel. Members must join by invitation only - request an invite today. This helps to better coordinate with people who want to learn more and help with the site.

There are forum topics for the website open to all members. I invite everyone to engage and contribute.

Goal: Within the next year [by June 2018], the website reflects the vibrant and active NCR community in support of rocketry hobbyists everywhere.
Measured by: Number of active posts and Google Analytics website activity statistics, users per month should reflect a healthy percentage of the club membership.

Sincerely,
Brad