The North Trail Adult Leader database originally started in 1996. Initially conceived by Rob Higgins, who was Assistant District Camping Promotion Ch airman. Rob's main responsibility was to ensure that the Summer Camping Agenda of every unit was know, and to promote the use of Circle Ten camps. Every uni t was called, and their agenda recorded. It was also discovered by Rob that the data from Council for actual unit leaders was out of date and always would be as it only got updated at recharter, if then.

Each of the six District Committees was keeping their own working list, and Rob volunteered to consolidate these into one consolidated list to share among the committees and maintain updates as they heard them. This went into a spreadsheet, and camping information was gradually added, which worked well fo r a year. The following year, with new camping data to add, Rob felt it would be good to keep the history as well as current camping data. Paula Higgins, Rob 's wife, was just learning Access and he asked her if she would build an Access database for the Camping Committee.

In 1998, they had the first Camping database. As Rob got involved with training, training registration records were added to the database. In 2000, n ow District Commissioner, Rob had added adult leader records from several training courses and then had access to copies of recharters for every unit and expanded the list to include all registered adult leaders in the North Trail units plus some from outside the district whom we had contact info on. By the end of 2001, the database had become the most dependable source of current unit leader information and now had most of the training records, as well as unit recharter history in it.

In 2002, finishing his term as District Commissioner, Rob took the job as District Vice-Chairman - Communications. By then, Randy Wilson had established the North Trail District website, and along with John Slaughter, they were asked to join the Communications committee by Rob. That year plans were formed to merge the website and the database. This effort was taken on by Randy and John. It has been a labor of love for them.

After a successful start to static reports being published on the North Trail website as a result of the database, Eric Wolf, who is the Crew Advisor for Venturing Crew 73, a technology based crew in North Trail District, started gradually helping with website operations. During Woodbadge 74 in April of 2005, Eric consulted with Communications Committee Chairman John Slaughter to propose a plan for a new online database as a ticket item. As a result of this , Eric was asked to join the committee by John. The resulting project is the product of this ticket. All Access database elements were converted to a MySQL database, which is centrally located and available to all members of the committee, instead of just one copy at a time on a PC. There was a web driven inte rface written that interfaces with the database, making all data real time. This, for future endeavors, will allow more flexibility in website enhancements and information maintenence.

The Communications Committee hopes you find the new design very user friendly, and should you have comments or suggestions, please direct them to the webmaster.