College Groups

[jimstermer 0]

Somewhere on the website there should be a section outlining the skydiving clubs at different universities and their clubs.

It'd be helpful to know if there's a local college in the area with a club since most people in college are going to be around the same skill level.

There's a group of us currently out at the University of Michigan trying to get a group started up and get more people introduced to skydiving. (as of 12/24/06 http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jimster/index.html)

I've seen a site for Georgia Tech (http://www.gtskydive.com/index.php)

and one for Maryland (but i cant seem to find that link)

[pilotdave 0]

Maryland (my old club) put together a list of other collegiate clubs... it's very outdated now, but it's a start.

http://www.studentorg.umd.edu/cpsc/OtherClubs.html

There's a popup now on that site (if you don't block em) with a message from the new club officers... very strange to me since I've known every officer in that club since it was formed and now it's being run by strangers! Looks like they're gonna replace the purty site I designed too...

Dave

[Eule 0]

Quote

Somewhere on the website there should be a section outlining the skydiving clubs at different universities and their clubs.

This might fit in with the dropzone listings. Even though the university club (probably) isn't a dropzone, the dropzone listings seem to have the required functionality - basic contact information and a geographic search. It would need to be clearly labeled in the name ("Wossamotta University Skydiving Club") and in the description so people wouldn't get confused. You'd probably want to put in the lat/lon of the campus so the geographic search would work right.

As always, keeping these updated is probably the hard part. Once the club has a listing, this fact should be written down somewhere and given to the new members/officers - "don't forget to update our listing at dropzone.com if something changes." Something else that might help is to have a "role" email address like skydiving-club@example.edu , instead of a particular person like joe.smith@example.edu . The "role" address can forward to whoever is answering the email this semester. Same thing with the website - having something like www.skydiveclub.example.edu will be easier to maintain than personal.example.edu/~joe.smith/skydive.html . Having an email address or a web site on the university's domain (example.edu) requires cooperation from the university IT people; these days most of them don't mind helping you with this, but some don't like to do it. In this case, a Gmail (or similar) e-mail address could be useful; free Web hosts are a bit more problematic.

Eule

PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

[jimstermer 0]

Going with email contacts seems like it would be easier since they would/could follow a more standardized format. I'm not sure about other universities but mine allows us, at any time and at no expense, to create email addresses for student groups. If you just had a contact list you wouldnt really need the groups website.

As for the websites, the one currently being used by the club at my school is just on my personal account, we are in the process of getting it transfered over to a www.umich.edu/~skydive or something similar. So for other schools it shouldnt be too hard.

Something that might make things easier is to just add on to the current dropzones. Most universitites seem to acknowledge a certain DZ as their home DZ. Would it be easier to allow a user to search for a college and have it return the home DZ and somewhere in the description have that noted?

[benblee 0]

That was the driving idea behind www.collegeskydiving.com and it's been working really well so far. There is an email newsletter signup that people can subscribe to and it works really well. The system tracks everything so you don't have to rely on one person updating things. We are also working with the USPA and trying to get a college listing through them. We are also hosting virtual competitions so all college students can compete and submit videos.

If you need webspace I can also set up a website for you at www.collegeskydiving.com/"your_school" if you wanted. You would have a login and track it yourself. We have a ton of webspace and want to help the schools anyway we can.

Send a Private Message or email if you have any questions or suggestions.

Ben Lee
www.CollegeSkydiving.com

[VTflyer 0]

The University of Vermont is also in the works of forming a skydiving club. Presently our proposal and lots of safety information is in the hands of the university's lawyers

I think we made a pretty strong case so hopefully we will have one up and running for next year