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Arrived in Denver - BB discussion with ICC

I'm back from Denver... long, productive days (I couldn't post because the g&h keys won't work on my laptop... now I'm docked at home and happily can use those particular keys - so I can log in!)... We hammered ICC pretty hard about their previous manner of creating the Communities of Interest (now informally called the thing in the thing).

There will be a peer to peer community section that will be for members only, but the bulletin board will look alot like the old one and free to all. It's still going to be on their sharepoint platform (which is why the vbulletin won't work).

ICC "manned up", acknowledged that they alienated many of us, and apologized for that. The other one from ICC was Kyle, the web content editor. Sanjay is the CIO. Michael is the VP in charge of marketing, outreach, and 3 other things.. I didn't get his card.

Webtek is more than a web design company, I think...

All in all, I believe we all felt pretty good about it when we left... 4 of us rode to the airport together and that's what we talked about all the way to DIA.

Missed you UB... I'll call you this week. You get home yet JP (Like rent a car and drive)?

Oh, and ICC is going to take that photo of 3 beautiful people... they seem to think that may not be completely representative of ICC membership (go figure)... to their credit, they did select all the pretty people to go.

And you can lay to rest your suspicions that I'm not a woman.
 
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I like this sponsor on the banner at iccsafe tonight ~

"International Code Council World Toilet Summit "

hahaha, , , advertisers . . . go figure
 
Hi Nice Lady,

I knew ya'll would make us proud. All of you get some much needed rest. You've earned it.

I'll keep the phone nearby,

Uncle Bob
 
Not home yet. The wife and I decides to make a mini-vacation out of the flight to Denver.

It was a pleasure meeting everyone on this forum that was at the ICC Man-up meeting. Peach is a peach, Fatboy's not fat but he does have one heck of a moustache!!! You could hang him in a tree and use his tache for a swing! Daddy-o won a nice AE gift certificate along with.....well let me put it this way...there were six nice gifts and "our gang" won 5 out of 6...not bad huh??? Vegas Paul is a smooth dresser that may need to think about Greecion Formula...pretty quick!!! TJacobs well what can I say....Go cubs!! jpranch...Yep!! He's a cowboy..he was talking about buying a mule but I'm not quite ready to move to Wyoming. Code Neophyte...good guy..he just couldn't get a word in because believe it or not Frank....from Virginia..can't remember how to spell his last name loves to talk......man does he love to talk...the discussion went from residential fire sprinklers to air bags in a car..all in one breath!!! Met Enginerd and I believe Tim...the fire guy. Didn't get to talk to him much. Anyway the pleasure was all mine meeting all of you folks from this forum. I'll look forward to meeting up again!

About the meeting..another rep from ICC that was there was Tom, which is with ICC web support. So the people from ICC was Mike, Tom, Sanjay (sp) and Kyle.

As others have said VERY IMPRESSIVE MEETING. I honestly believe that ICC is on the right track. They owned up to the terrible mistake and when the building discussion forum comes back they are just going to torpedo the Community's of Interest. Which was refered to as the Thing of Things.

I honestly feel ICC is serious and things will actuall be better than the old BB thta was yanked out from underneath us.

Nobody pulled any punches and ICC took it on the chin like they deserved. Things will get better.
 
The challenge for ICC will be how they deal with the rational heretics that challenge the status quo.

Building officials need a place to talk about issues that are important to them but it should be recognized that there are other stakeholders who are interested in codes and how they are administered. I also share the concern that ICC will attempt to impose their ideas of political correctness. In the long term such circling of the wagons will not serve ICC or the building officials well.
 
It was truly a privilege finally meeting many of you and putting a face with the formerly-faceless identity. Hope everyone made it home safely (Mule and TJacobs: hope you're enjoying your extended stay).

Echoing what the others have said, I came away with a renewed sense of optimism regarding the future of the ICC website - particularly the discussion board - and the ICC, as well. We can't be afraid of changes - changes in appearance, changes in technology, etc.; but the ICC certainly went about the change they instituted last year in the worst way they possibly could have, and they completely acknowledge that. The new board my have a slightly different feel, but the functional aspects that we demand (and that were stripped away in the Edsel of Interest) will be reinstated. Time will tell, but I am open to giving it a chance. I'm looking forward to working with this group on the project as it continues to develop, and hope we get opportunities to meet again in the future.
 
Home again. There was a lot of excellent dicussion. On point not mentoned yet and concearn by Mark K: We did tell the icc that posts on the forum would (shall) allow us to complain about the icc. This is good and healthy for any organization! Mike Armstrong agreed and furthur stated that the icc really needed to get "thick skined". You all need to also know that this in part is about money. Now that in and of itself is not a bad thing. Here are some interesting tid bits relayed to some of the group last Thursday night: Within one hour after the old site shut down the cow received 400 email compliants. In the first week the cow received 4,000 email compliants! Sense last October membership has fallen 30%. After the shutdown of the old site the number of hits on their site fell by 7,000 per month! These are staggering numbers.

I too enjoyed meeting everybody and hope to see a lot of you again in Charlotte. For those of you who could not attend let me share this: To say we were pretty hard on the icc dudes there is understated. I think they finally understand the level of anger, hurt, and distrust that THEY are respondsable for.

As for me I'm sure as hell not going down the garden path with blinders on. Yes it was a very good meeting and productive as well. BUT, (or is that BUTT?) show me, show me, show me. Now listen cow and listen good. You (we) better get it right. There will not ever be another chance period.
 
peach said:
I'm back from Denver... long, productive days (I couldn't post because the g&h keys won't work on my laptop... now I'm docked at home and happily can use those particular keys - so I can log in!)... We hammered ICC pretty hard about their previous manner of creating the Communities of Interest (now informally called the thing in the thing).There will be a peer to peer community section that will be for members only, but the bulletin board will look alot like the old one and free to all. It's still going to be on their sharepoint platform (which is why the vbulletin won't work).

ICC "manned up", acknowledged that they alienated many of us, and apologized for that. The other one from ICC was Kyle, the web content editor. Sanjay is the CIO. Michael is the VP in charge of marketing, outreach, and 3 other things.. I didn't get his card.

Webtek is more than a web design company, I think...

All in all, I believe we all felt pretty good about it when we left... 4 of us rode to the airport together and that's what we talked about all the way to DIA.

Missed you UB... I'll call you this week. You get home yet JP (Like rent a car and drive)?

Oh, and ICC is going to take that photo of 3 beautiful people... they seem to think that may not be completely representative of ICC membership (go figure)... to their credit, they did select all the pretty people to go.

And you can lay to rest your suspicions that I'm not a woman.
Click to expand...
An alternative to vBulletin is phpBB which I believe can be worked into Sharepoint.

The trick is actually KNOWING what to do and how to share the MS SQL database without F***ing it all up.

phpBB is very similar to vBulletin in many ways.
 
phpBB compared to VBulletin is like comparing a used Pinto to a new Mercedes Benz E class

They both get you where you want to go but you will have more stability, safety, functionality and comfort in the latter.
 
Recieved this message from Milton Grew; who tried to post here and had some difficulty; so he e-mailed this to me, and I am posting it.

Note: Could someone help him join this site, please.

"Milton Grew

Milton Gregory "Greg" Grew, AIA is CEO of Grew Design, Inc and Grew Construction, LLC in Woodbury, CT. Greg is a licensed architect, building official, and contractor with over 20 years designing/building residential, commercial and institutional building projects. www.GrewDesign.com

ICC INTENDS TO BE MORE USER-FRIENDLY

September 11th, 2010 by Milton Grew

I was pleased to have been invited by the International Code Council (ICC) to participate in the ICC Community Coalition Event held in Denver, Colorado during September 8 - 10, 2010. There were about 40 of us including ICC administration, ICC technology staff, ICC website consultants, ICC members who are code officials, architects, engineers, students, builders, and even some non-members. The objective of the meeting was to determine how ICC can better serve its members and the public through its discussion board, website resources, social media and organically creating groups to share their experience and specialized knowledge.

The ICC has realized that there has been a disconnect that developed between active online members and the code council. The old online discussion board which had been well used by the public and membership to answer questions and exchange ideas was taken down. Then another discussion board was brought online that was poorly received due to its integration with “Communities of Interest”. On top of that the council’s entire website had become cumbersome, difficult to use, hard to search, and unreliable. Active online members went looking elsewhere for discussion boards and found other places to communicate.

Some of us had an inkling that ICC was waking up to the problem when we had been asked to respond to a couple of online surveys that seemed targeted at getting to heart of our discontent. But what an even better gesture when some of us were invited to participate in this event in Denver where we were encouraged to speak freely and the attenders pulled no punches and expressed everything that annoyed them about the ICC’s web presence and resources. And ICC staff, in particular Michael Armstrong, SVP of Membership and Outreach Services, were excellent listeners, willing to admit mistakes, and came prepared to show us a preview of ideas they had for improvements. Even better, they accepted constructive criticism of these improvements and made the committment to gradually role out a new discussion board and website features and resources.

Valerie Mach of Web Teks, Inc. very ably moderated most of our discussions. Tom Larson, President of Web Teks, Inc. helped us appreciate some of the more technical aspects of website development. Sanjay Gupta, ICC Chief Information Officer gave us good feedback on our concerns and discussed how the improvements would be sequenced. Michael Armstrong, ICC SVP kept us in touch with the bigger picture and reassured us of ICC’s commitment to improving. DaMika Lofton of Web Teks, Inc. was a great host in organizing handouts, travel arrangements, and making the event an enjoyable experience. Kyle Volenik, Web Content Editor for ICC was very enthusiastic about his role in expanding ICC into social networks.

I won’t spoil the surprises and don’t want to give away too much so I will leave it for ICC to make their formal announcements when they are ready. I wanted to share with my readers that they should look forward to the improvements and be ready to accept a more user-friendly code organization. These changes will help the public appreciate the value of building codes and increase the professionalism of its members."

This is from the AECCafe; which has some articles that may be of interest to all;

http://www10.aeccafe.com/blogs/miltongrew/2010/09/11/icc-intends-to-be-more-user-friendly/

Thank you, Greg,

Uncle Bob
 
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All,

I also very much enjoyed meeting everyone that travelled to Denver and I enjoyed the ICC beer as well. Thanks... For me, the only way that this thing would work was with a huge helping of the ICC eating crow and owning up their mistakes. I sincerely feel that they came to the meeting with their hat in their hand and that this meeting went about as well as it possibly could have. Several things to note:

1. These ICC guys are all fairly new employees. They have replaced some of the ones that got us into this mess.

2. Webtec is a new contract hire as well to eliminate and replace the old company that gave them really bad advice.

3. The ICC is going to engage some of their teaching staff to participate in the new BB so that they are more interactive with the site.

4. Why did I not order Filet Mignon like everyone else?

5. New BB will have some very user friendly features (picture upload options, easy links, easy editing and previews etc.) with tutorials and such.

6. People, handles and archives from the old BB will be saved and cross referenced but I did not understand how.

7. I saw Michael, Demika and Valerie on the plane to D.C. coming home. They were all flying economy class with the rest of the real world.

I feel good about the product and the sincerity of the ICC. They seem to be in tune now with the situation and are working diligently to fix their mistakes. My 2c.
 
Just noticed that the ICC website is down for upgrades... maybe (just maybe), they are taking some of our comments to heart already.

Daddy... I wondered about #4 as well... :)
 
I enjoyed meeting everyone. Sorry about some of my long rants, but at least (as Mule pointed out) Frank could out-talk me without breathing. Mule - I'm not going the Grecian Formula route, at my age I'm just happy to have hair, regardless of color.

I can only repeat and reinforce what others have said about ICC's attitude. They were apologetic and contrite. I did NOT detect lip-service, although I came expecting it. I truly thought they were sincere. Maybe I'm being naive again, but I believe that they realize that they screwed the pooch last year and need to make drastic changes per our desires. Look forward to sharing the changes with all of you!
 
Perhaps we have all left the most important part out? The new site and BB is not fully developed yet. The group that met in Denver decides the final product. Now that is a scary thought! Yes they showed us their work to this point but it is a work in progress> The "hard release" will not happen until the spring of 2011. So there is still a lot of work to do. AND if this new site and BB falls on it's face those from the Denver group will hold some respondsibility. With that said I can only hope that we all do well? This remains to be seen...

Post Script: Those of us here on jars board have and will be reading all of the posts especially on this topic so that we can take all the suggestions / comments / compliants to the table. Don't think that just because you were not able to attend Denver that you do not have any impact. Nothing could be futhur from the truth!
 
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JP... I came home, discussed with hubbie and dogs... retirement in Gillette (or it's suburbs) doesn't sound half bad.

Neighbor came over yesterday wanting to give us part of his bushel of blue crabs, so they are, indeed in season. We passed (already making ribs).. and while I can eat pre-murdered food, can't get into the murder part of a meal.

YES, YES, YES... everyone feel free to contribute. After the paper launch and beta launch, we'll have a lot to impart to this larger group.
 
peach, "(or it's suburbs)". Sorry to disappoint but there arn't any. Yet. I'm sure that will come in time. Ya know you could have sent those crabs to me? What the heck!

Another thing that some may want to know. The question was asked as to why the icc did not do a press release prior to the Denver meeting. Mike Armstrong clearly indicated that even they were not sure if anybody would show up? And if they did show up how hostile would we be? They also did not release because they "did not want us to feel that we were being used by the icc proppaganda machine". I about fell out of my chair.

We all agreed that a press release should be done on the site sometime in the next two weeks. We shall see. Stay tuned for more...
 
suburbs may be 80 miles away (remember, I've been to Gillette) ... :) Those crabs would have crawled out of the FedEx box.

I believe ICC will put a press release on their website... and we'll pick it up on ours... if you have a webmaster willing to do that (OK..modify it to show your jurisdictions' participation.. even better, IMHO)... do it.

Stay tuned.
 
....Also, they did admit that have been monitoring this and other boards so if you post a comment on this thread it will be read.

Peach, How could you pass up fresh crabs???? Nothing better in my book. Even that filet. I don't think JPRanch can shoot me from Wyoming but ducking none the less. Enjoyed the trip immensely and we will all think of other things as the days progress. Keep em coming.
 
Daddy.. just look in their little eyes saying "don't boil me... I'll make a good house pet"...

JP's scraping those veggies off his plate was, well.. .priceless!
 
Well the wife and I are in the airport now fixing to head home. Just got a message that the flight home is delayed for 1 hour. They took the plane out of service. I would rather them take the plane out of service than have an inflight problem.

I asked Kyle, ICC web person. if he had ever been to this site. He stated no....so I gave him a business card to this site. I told him he might be able to get some feel for what our group wants and what is needed to gain our trust back as far as what is expected. So post away with your questions, wants, desires or anything you want ICC to hear.

I am patiently waiting to see how ICC responds.

Also an interesting note. At the meeting were placards for everyone to write their name on. Everyone from our group was not bashfull at all to write our handles on our name placards. So ICC and Webtech knew who we were and who we were representing. We also handed out several cards or gave information on how to find this site.
 
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