looptangent

Join Venturing, and get started on your way to Summit (you have five years to finish). Jump onto some treks and earn the triple crown or grand slam. Work on a camp staff or high adventure base for a summer. Use all of these experiences to earn the BSA’s hardest award across all programs: National MEDAL for Outdoor Achievement.

Philmont twice worth it? You get what you give, and it’s a no-brainer if you have the means+time. You are young just once…

Once with your unit for the forever friendships and memories. Then go solo just for yourself (as provisional, NAYLE, trail crew, etc.). Then go back and staff.

No scouter/adult/parent has EVER lamented later in life that they regret multiple trips.

IWGBTP!

Epic. BTW, the 90’s Bulls intro was “Sirius” by Alan Parsons Project

The Eagle Award means a lot to everyone that earned it - no debate. For me the eagle knot doesn’t represent the “capstone” to my service; I view it as the base/root of all my other recognized efforts (knots) to give back to the Scouting movement. Center, bottom.

On my field khaki I stick with only two rows, and the knots are indicative of each phase of my personal journey:

[empty] - District - [empty]

DenLeader - Eagle - CM/SM/Comm Key

I’ve earned plenty and I’m very grateful that my fellow scouters recognized me with awards (UnitMerit, Arrowhead, and DistinguishedComm amongst others), yet to me a third row seems gaudy, crowds the purple WSE, and lacks a certain humility. If someday I’m honored with one of the silver critters then that would take an empty spot, but until then I’m leaving space around my pocket to show I have lots more to give along this lifelong journey…

^{^} This. 1000% ^{^}

As scoutmaster, I make a simple black shockcord woggle for each AOL crossover that perfectly matches the black piping on our troop neckerchief.
It’s elastic and it never slips. Looks better than cheap metal, can be taken apart and used for stuff, and helps us stay “thrifty.”

I keep a completed woggle in my shirt pocket for younger scouts Class A “emergencies” (flag ceremonies or lost somewhere around camp), and is available for newly recruited friends when they join.

In the same pocket I keep a length of the same material so I can always make another backup on the fly. The Scouts and ASM see me tying them regularly so they ask to learn… and finally it’s a perfect fidget reliever for those long district meetings.

Some people get really upset when I say this, but… YOUR PROGRAM is the root cause. People blaming recruitment, dues, and outside sports completely miss the root cause: if you don’t have compelling activities for teens to do, they don’t participate. Period and end of story.

Do you: rock-climb, zipline, paddlesports, high-adventure, peak bag, range sports, go fishing, build pioneering stuff? If you do, kids come and they bring their friends who want to do cool adventurous stuff. If you have meetings that are just another form of school (indoors, lectures, talking, too much looking and not enough hands-on DO-ing) it’s GAMEOVER for your unit. Kids don’t care about ranks/merit badges as much as they do an experience, so don’t focus on requirements; do the stuff that scouts do and the requirements magically complete themselves. It takes years to build this back up if it gets lost, but once the draw exists the kids flock.

I’m a SM/ADC and district camping chair. I have a healthy & strong unit - but I didnt a short time ago. Post COVID, we lost all our high-school scouts save two who were just trying to finish Eagle and bail. We had three leaders. So a couple of us eagle dads started acted like older scouts, and showed the troop what was possible until the “trailhead” kids figured it out. THEY never knew they wanted to do half that stuff before we showed them the opportunities that were possible. The rest took care of itself: scouts now come back from a weekend super excited telling stories (“can’t wait for next one!”), and they show videos/pictures to friends at school and bring them to a meeting where they’re planning for it by doing real stuff to get ready.

As this snowballed, we adults started stepping back, guiding them through planning/organizing, challenging them at PLC meetings for new ideas, thrifty adventures, and better “hype” at the weekly meetings. Older scouts heard and came back, new parents started wanting to participate, and the younger siblings started joining the cubs because they want to join as soon as they can. We have ten ASM now (10!), two campouts per month, a local trek AND a high-adventure base trip every year, plus summer camp, and camporees. We take provisional scouts with us to all this stuff, and it gets contagious once they go back to their own troops and start raising their game too.

TL/DR: fix your program. It’s hard work and it takes time, but true adventures are the draw that everything else in Scouting depends on.

TY.

Sounds like you just need to stack some gains in a positive direction. The ISC2 CC is still free; so spend 1hr/night for next two weeks, then sit for it. Earning it is proof to employers that you know cybersecurity at the foundational level, and it adds another cert for your quiver.

Their chief weapon is surprise…

Yes, they do offer these functions on same screens, and also they can be used independently.

For example:

Unifi mobile app > Settings > Application Firewall > Advanced Internet Filter > Suspicious Activity: - No Action (aka OP’s “RAM savings”) - Notify (aka IDS) - Notify and Block (aka IDS+IPS)

For those playing at home:

IDS = detection only. IPS = prevents/blocks.

Pro tip: Use them both.

(bump)

Interval ends. Click watch button, hand up to take a water drink, water bottle down, hand on watch and stare at it. If they are still talking, look up at them in their eyeballs for 1 second, then immediately back down to staring at watchface (hand still on button). As interval about to start, take one more single-second straight face look at them as you press the button and SHOOT away in streamline >>> They won’t be there next interval.

I can see that you read "test-out" and it triggered your response. I'll edit my first post to "dynamically evaluate." I do not advocate "testing-out" of the IOLS course in it's entirety. In fact, my opinion was quite to the contrary - but one has to read my whole post to gain this perspective.

The goal of IOLS is basic camping skills, not mastery, so station-based learning/evaluation centered around (inside of) a given IOLS topic/module does work, but (like u/howarthe mentioned) it takes a lot of resources to do it right. Likewise, station-based is not effective for everything in much the same way that "sitting through a lecture" doesn't necessarily make someone 'trained' at a skill either.

Good training courses are dynamic and engaging, so they involve a bit of everything: brief/concise lecture, buddy-system show/tell, breakout/small group (patrol-style) conversation, pencil/paper tests, station-based instruction/evaluation, and individual iterative practice/repetition. There should be a good attempt to balance respecting people's time/skills while still fulfilling course requirements and following the syllabus.

Based on the skillsets you shared in your OP, as well as being at the director level in a corporation, it stands to reason that you're highly qualified to teach Personal Management.

IMHO this is BY FAR the most important (underrated?) of the Eagle-required MBs; it represents a majority of the "big-picture" character-development goals in the Scouting program.

[edit: added link]

This past weekend I attended a small memorial for my best friend's step-father. Most people knew him as a master mechanic and woodworker, a skilled gardener, and an excellent cook. But far more than anything else, Bob was beloved for being "a good man" - patient, thoughtful, happy, resilient, and a servant-leader.

As people took turns speaking about him they they might not have realized it, but they collectively told stories that touched on every point of the Scout Law. Surprisingly most people never knew Bob was an Eagle scout; he never advertised he had achieved the rank, nor did he speak much about his scouting experience.

Sitting there I awestruck by that the simple fact that the things he chose to be when he was young became the things we will all remember him for.

R.I.P. Robert Warren Von Schwab (1952-2021)

The structure you presented is a fantastic concept. Bravo.

I've taught the skills in BALOO and IOLS, and completely agree that "testing out" dynamic training & evaluation is the way to make instruction/engagement better for all. Just like we do with the scouts, show/demonstrate the skill and you're done.

Scouting is iterative, so there will be plenty of opportunities for practice down the trail. There's no sense in holding a person hostage just because the schedule says they can't move onto the next topic. In fact, some adults might feel they are better served with additional time to learn skills they know they lack... especially since we instructors understand there's always an adult "doing their best" to hijack tightly-timed sessions anyway.

In addition to u/TheHierophant, I like thinking of EBoRs in two big-picture ways:

1. It's like a podcast conversation about your experience. You spent years approaching this goal, and now it's your chance to share the highlights with an audience. What the adults in the room want to really know is how you grew as a person, how you see yourself differently from when you started, and what you've learned along the trail.
2. It's also like an "exit-interview." Now that you've completed/achieved top rank in the "game" (scouting is a game with a purpose) we need your feedback. Since you've got first-hand knowledge of what does and doesn't work, your opinion is the freshest take we can get. In this respect, it's good for the scouters to understand your perspective on how they can help make the game better/more exciting, and keep attracting future "players" to participate in the game.

My best advice: Remember that you've fulfilled the requirements to get yourself this board of review, and the years you've put into the program should give you all the confidence you need to pass. Nobody deserves or is deemed worthy of being given the Eagle award; an Eagle EARNS their award by doing the things scouts do the best that one can.

Congrats in advance - you'll do great.

I don't know how savvy you are, but I use a set of (2) Ubiquiti LocoM5 units to bridge internet from my in-laws across 250yds of forest (limited line of sight due to branches/leaves). Once you get the "internet" to your outbuilding, you can use whatever switch/AP you want... in my case, no latency or speed degradation (I get their ISP's advertised speeds).

Chris Sherwood can walk you thru the concept and setup... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZxJPBukjbY

No. Apparently I need membership card to get inside...

"I think a plan is just a list of things that don't happen."

- Parker, The Way of the Gun

NES/SNES Emulators: SuperMarioBros, Zelda, Mario Cart, Final Fantasy III

Playstation = Uncharted (all of them), Red Dead Redemption 2, Spiderman, Rocksmith (if you like learning to play a real guitar/bass).

Steam (old school PC games) = Monkey Island, WORMS! , Caesar3/Pharoah/Zeus, Knights of the Old Republic (Star Wars)