I've been a council member for the past three years. In that period I've been involved in some projects that worked well and some that didn't! A lot of the work I've done is more 'behind the scenes', but some of things that members might have noticed are listed below.
My first project on council was Scubatext, the group SMS service used by over a hundred branches to communicate (for free) to their members. After careful vetting by Ernie Crook, the club's solicitor, it was rolled out to the club and has been very well received. It's still up and running, and being used by branches to set up diving and social events.
Council member Derek Ellerby and I worked to bring iDive, the environmentally friendly electronic version of Dive magazine, to our members. As part of this process we were also able to arrange distribution to our student members, giving them an additional membership benefit and encouraging them to see the world of BSAC beyond their branch. I've been involved in various other efforts during my time to help student branches, and although not directly involved with the current freshers project it has been great to see its success.
From my second year on council I led the strategy team working on social networking. The most visible, and successful, strand of this has been the BSAC and BSAC Snorkelling Facebook page, which I conceived of and set up. The Facebook page has been so productive for BSAC that it has now been moved entirely into HQ's remit, where membership has grown from around a thousand to around five thousand. This has proved immensely useful for communicating news to our members and getting their feedback. It's also promoted a lot of interaction between members and branches.
On the theme of 'changing with the times', I wrote the council papers that proposed moving the DOC to another place and point in the year, and changing its name. I'm sure it was not the first time this was suggested, and I freely admit that I have not done the hard work to move it - that has been Jeff Reed and his teams in the NDC and at HQ - but I'm delighted that for the first time in many years it was a sell out event and very well received by everyone who attended.
Most of the last year has been spent working with the other members of the Articles review team, trying to ensure that BSAC and its members maintain legal protection in the light of changing legislation. It has been an extremely long and technical process, cumulating in a set of documents that will be voted on at the AGM this year. The short version is that the previous articles were not compatible with the updated legal definitions of a company limited by guarantee, and no longer really reflected the way that BSAC worked. The update hopefully will make it much easier in the future to keep up to date with changes to the legal framework that we operate under.
In between all this I've managed to fit in a fair bit of diving and instructing too - I've run a number of Ice Diving SDCs in Scotland, trying our new sites and training instructors to increase the likelihood of courses running when the opportunity arises. I'm active in Edinburgh Divers (BSAC 21), and also from time to time help out with teaching in the Edinburgh University branch, EUSAC.
I'd appreciate your vote!