After several months of work on this, we are finally in a position to start moving the camp administration and infrastructure into one interface. This has been a journey I want to share with you. For years, everything in the camp has been managed through spreadsheets. Over time, as the complexity of what we do became clearer, the number of spreadsheets proliferated. At first, everyone had access to the spreadsheets. Still, after a few unfortunate events where campers inadvertently deleted vital information, we had to lock them down and begin using forms that fed into the spreadsheets.

At some point, it became clear we had to generate some kind of content to help campers know more about what they were getting into and who the rest of us were. It was easy at first because everyone involved knew each other from the beach. We all hung out and spent time on a regular basis, so even if we weren't the best of friends (although many of us were), we at least knew how each ticked and what we could expect of each other. But as more people who were not as involved in our beach community wanted to get involved in our camp, it became clear we had to establish a way to tell them about what we do, why we do it, and how we do it. That was more complicated than we could have known at the time.

We had, at one point, a nifty semi-mobile app written by a Fancy Bitch to share each other's faces that allowed us to make sure those who came from across the country would recognize each other when they showed up in camp after only hearing our voices over phone calls. We had a sophisticated WordPress build that camper who was with us for one year built, but then he started traveling across the world, and the installation slowly disintegrated. Then, another one that another camper took on, but then she didn't have time anymore. Then we had a Drupal install we began developing, but the chap behind it ended up being a horrible person who stole our domain and 10's thousands of dollars from his family (and some from us, too).

As the spreadsheets proliferated, so did the maintenance. Campers would offer to help, but the amount of time needed to teach the complexity of what we do grew to outweigh the benefit of having the help in the first place. So, over the last few years, a considerable part of my efforts have been spent managing spreadsheets, something other TCOs know all too well. In 2022, after the pandemic swept away how camps had operated previously, I asked if anyone would step up to help solve our problems in this area. Several wanted to know how to help, but the task was too big for a single burn cycle, so nothing much happened. And so, my hands were forced. 

More soon.