December 2013/January 2014

A Three Month Overview

These past three months have provided a great opportunity to meet our many talented CRRA members and business partners, deepen my understanding of our public policy issues and get a good sense of the adjustments we must make to build membership and value, increase our sponsorships , highlight our events,  integrate our governance  bodies and  fashion a responsive, dynamic organization.

Since my arrival both the certification program and website redesign and consolidation have been high priorities for us to address as both provide high profile professional and public exposure for CRRA.  Not surprisingly, along with developing a 2014 budget, we devoted significant time to both programs in December. Details are below!

Completing Final Negotiations with Contactor - Website Consolidation and Redesign Project

Targeting a January start to our long awaited website consolidation and redesign project, Board member Monica Devincenzi and I have been working with a Board of Directors-approved firm on contract details. Monica and I met with the CEO on December 18.  The meeting, which also linked with the developer team via conference call, addressed a number of technical issues.

 One technical issue for us to resolve is how much archival material we want to manually transfer and reformat on the website versus maintaining this material in original format and providing access through a direct link on our website (a less expensive option).  

We will be addressing the final features of the contract and presenting it for Board approval in early January . Once we have addressed our own “to–do” tasks, the project should take about ninety day to complete.

In addition to refreshed design work, we want to better integrate our systems using Drupal , the open source content management system, and retaining Wild Apricot, our member management software. This project will create a full one-stop- shop for our members, combine two sites - crra.com and crra.us- and make significant improvements in website security.

Certification Program Renewal Discussion Ongoing

Reviewing our previous certification programs and assessing how we should move forward with respect to certification took center stage in December.

The CRRA Board and Board Advisors held a certification conference call on December 17 to generate a “portfolio of ideas”.  I developed and distributed three separate on-line surveys – for students, instructors and for board/advisors.  I forwarded to our Certification Committee the survey results the week of December 23 with a composite summary sent December 27.

A conference call for instructors is scheduled for January 8. The Certification Committee meets via conference call January 13. At the January 30 Board & Advisors Retreat in San Jose we will make some fundamental decisions regarding the direction of CRRA’s certification program for 2014 and beyond.

Should the Board decide to move forward with a new certification program there were certain broad and generic program features that a majority of all survey respondents agree upon:

Board Retreat 2014 – Meeting Arrangements Completed