VOODOO, MAGIC, WIZARDRY, PIXEL DUST AND ALL THINGS IT I haven’t written anything for Open House since my introductory piece about 5 years ago, since folks aren’t usually interested in all the behind-the-scenes stuff that makes the National Association for Bikers with a Disability tick. So, I thought I’d put fingers to keyboard for a change. One of the first things I was tasked with was updating the main website (www.nabd.org. uk) which has been ticking along quite nicely for the past few years. One part of that website is the membership joining section. This had to be reworked to cope with the introduction of the instalment plans and subscriptions that we wanted to provide. This would make it easier to pay for membership in the first place, and autorenew so you wouldn’t have to remember to do it in the future. This has given me a few headaches, in the way that the memberships are recorded and the info passed to Mark Mayo (our Membership Officer), whose job it is to print membership cards and send out reminders
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etc. This has led to some memberships falling through the cracks and being missed. As well as duplicate cards being sent out to some members, for which we apologise. With the advent of COVID-19 and our National Rally & every other fundraising event being cancelled, we hastily organised the Virtual Online events. With our Patron, troubadour Stevie Simpson, leading the idea forward. This involved a hasty week of rehearsal and technical troubleshooting. In order to make sure that everyone got online at the right time and could be heard and seen, although not always the right way up! Some worked better than others, but I’d say that all the events were a huge success, and our heartfelt
thanks go to each and every artist and donor for making it all happen. This in turn led to the speedy launch of a new shop, for the sale of the Virtual Rally patches. The system allows Julie Williams (our Office Manager) to easily see the orders, print packing slips and invoices, plus gives us greater stock control management. There’s been the odd hiccup along the way but that system too seems to be embraced by our supporters and working well. So, over the summer my thoughts turned once again to the membership system. I’ve been trialling several methods over the years, ideally aiming for an Open-Source solution that wouldn’t cost
