Venting is good and I think the last time I vented similar complaints I clarified to you what lay behind the pent up frustration, especially in relation to things, help archive material offered to NPU met with plain disinterest or, when accepted with bad management of material donated.
On the other hand, if you contact NPU to have a fault in the website access fixed and the same fault returns before the month is out there comes a time when you are not bothered to contact them to have it fixed again.
On the first point. You know all the people involved personally to some extent. Could you not at least lift the phone and talk to them first and then come to your own conclusions? I fully accept that you may decide that you are hard done by if you expect something in return for your efforts. It would be a pity if these petty matters came in the way of members availing of your input. Isn’t that the most important thing? Or isn’t it?
Personally I prefer to think of offering assistance to NPU as giving to the piping community. NPU is its members and three staff, not the faceless, ominous organisation that we seem to like to think it is from time to time. Actually its quite easy to think of NPU in that way if the alternative is actually having to do something about it, isn’t it?
How many times did you ring Terry to sort out your problem? Once? Maybe if you were more aware of the pressures on the staff you’d be a bit more forgiving.
These staff are willing to help members (…eventually at times) who have problems. Even those members whose complaints on public forums have degenerated into realms personal at times.
I see piping and the ITM community in a state of self serving stasis at the moment compared to the highly active days of ‘the revival’.
What’s the difference between then and now? As far as I see it is that people where much more willing to muck in and give a hand back then, and they were not so prepared to fall into cynical lethargy, feel sorry for themselves, make selfish demands, stamp their feet etc. etc…
I wish we could grow up again. Things seemed much more real before the piping world went ‘cyber’.
Point taken. Venting though is good and puts things in perspective, making you instantly realise some of the problems are indeed petty.
As I said, Terry did fix the problem I had with the website immediately (within the hour in fact) and I appreciated that very much. Only, the next time I tried to access the archive I was denied access again, at that point on one level I thought ‘feck it’ while on anither I didn’t want to bother Terry with the same again as he probably has more important things to do (which then really leads me to think the problem shouldn’t have occurred again, ideally).
And I’d be still interested in doing a bit but I also think that people who have something to offer should feel the interest in their contributing something should be at least meet some interest from the receiving side. For that reason I took my Ennis tapes straight to Pat.
On the questionnaire a while ago I replied to the question what I would liek to see improved in NPU : communication with the membership. That still stands I do think that there are many members in the organisation who are willing and able to contribute a lot but who don’t. Improving communication would help NPU to tap into this potential resource far more effectively. (and I know it’s easier to state this from behind a computer than to implement it as an organisation already overstressed but it is possibly the great difference with the situation 20 or so years ago, somehow there was a bigger incentive to do your bit for piping).
A chairde, as i was away for a bit i never got the chance to see all this happen. I am solely responsible for the initial post on the site of NPU.It is nice to see that people do care people do want to muck in, the problem i think as peter stated is communication.
Just to make sure there is no misunderstandings because sometimes on a forum people can take the wrong meaning.
So here goes, my original post was posted in the absense of having a feeling that i knew people well enough to phone them and ask them what the craic with the site was.I imagine i am not alone in this. As debate on the forum wasnt really happening i took it upon myself to try and start it for the benefit of that mighty cause we call piping.
NPU do sterling work for the pipes it just isn’t in your face and i appreciate and publicly thank all those involved.
I do want to help and do what i can do in my own area to promote piping, but it is limited. Maybe in the next survey NPU do we can offer our help in time and energy so if anyone needs me to muck in then just ask, i’m not going to push myself on others as i don’t really know what i can do living in Belfast, i’m sure many other pipers feel the same.
I think that i have succeeded in getting people talking about what piping needs and that is the most important thing at the end of the day. I have also learned that a lot of people do care, want to help and are ready. All we need is a bit of organisation.