Closing Thoughts

The dust has cleared, everybody's home, the last newsletter printed, and the webcam has been shut down.

Looking back on the 2 short weeks of the Jamboree, we learned a lot. We learned that a Subcamp website can indeed provide a service above what the National website provides; indeed they complemented each other well. We learned that people would review the website daily. Indeed, some 24,000 visitors and some 1.7 million page hits later, it appears that people really like the concept.

The webcam was, by far, the biggest hit. It appears that parents really liked to see their Scouts, even when they aren't home. Second most popular were the Subcamp newsletters. Keeping up on the Subcamp news of the day was daily reading for many, as was commented through the Guestbook.

And then there was the Guestbook. Oh, my! That was a little item that blossomed in an unanticipated manner. We never guessed that people would use it as an e-mail forum to reach their Scouts. Hundreds and hundreds (and hundreds) of entries later, we had to develop some means to get the communications to the Scouts. In a facility the size of the Jamboree, I'm not sure that personal email directly to Scouts can ever be possible, but for "next time" we will have to think ahead of time about how to effectively use that tool. Rest assured, the emails were available for your Scouts to read, although I'm not sure that they were all aware to look (some were, and did).

The entire intent of this little experiment was to determine whether it was technologically possible to run the operation from a tent in the middle of a hot field with no phone lines in a "hostile" environment, and to provide the level of quality that people expect in a modern web delivery service. I think we achieved that. We learned some things, and have put together an after-action report of things that we'd do differently next time. We're interested in feedback, should you like to send any. Please use the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of the page, as we check the Guestbook a lot less frequently now...

Part of our success was due to technological problems elsewhere in the world. Down the street, at Longstreet, networking problems in the National website trailer allowed us to be the first website "on the air". Tragedy meant that people everywhere, looking for information, hit our website heavily. Humidity, wireless data dropouts, and a "fuzzy" webcam were all challenges to be dealt with. However we were still a source of information for those around the world. We heard from soldiers in Iraq, visitors from Germany, Australia, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere around the USA.

All the Live articles, newsletters, and photo galleries (actually the entire site) will remain active until the 1 year subscription with the service provider runs out at the end of December. Until then, feel free to visit back as much as you'd like to relive the memories.

We thank you all for your attention and feedback, and look forward to providing a quality service in 2010!

Peter and Bob

Subcamp 3 Communications Team