EAA Website is Pretty Awful

O

OneCharlieTango

Cleared for Takeoff
Joined
Dec 21, 2018
Messages
1,082
Display Name
Display name:
OneCharlieTango
I’ve just become an officer of the local EAA chapter, which has led me to look for some specific things on eaa.org. I can’t believe what a disorganized mess it is, and how very unfriendly it is with portables. For instance, some articles are displayed with one or 2 words per line, meaning you have to scroll through 600 lines to read a 1000 word piece.

Do they not have an IT department? They seem to have every other way of employing people.

They keep talking about “getting more young people into aviation” and acting like the solution is to reach out to specific demographics. Nope. Young people (and others who’ve tried hard not to age prematurely) are fluent in Internet. Having an attractive, informative, and — importantly — easy to navigate website should be Priority #1 — well before Young Eagles, Ray Scholarships, and Women Fly events. Those things might be just groovy, but they’re completely invisible without a decent front page.

Rant over. What’s the solution?
 
OneCharlieTango said:
I’ve just become an officer of the local EAA chapter, which has led me to look for some specific things on eaa.org. I can’t believe what a disorganized mess it is, and how very unfriendly it is with portables. For instance, some articles are displayed with one or 2 words per line, meaning you have to scroll through 600 lines to read a 1000 word piece.

Do they not have an IT department? They seem to have every other way of employing people.

They keep talking about “getting more young people into aviation” and acting like the solution is to reach out to specific demographics. Nope. Young people (and others who’ve tried hard not to age prematurely) are fluent in Internet. Having an attractive, informative, and — importantly — easy to navigate website should be Priority #1 — well before Young Eagles, Ray Scholarships, and Women Fly events. Those things might be just groovy, but they’re completely invisible without a decent front page.

Rant over. What’s the solution?
Click to expand...

You are the solution.
 
Department? EAA HQ is a pretty small operation.
 
I’ve basically worked there, and I did work at CAF head quarters...

EAA is ahead by orders of magnitude, yet they’re all VERY lacking in common sense application of assets.

The biggest problem is, wait for it... MONEY.

They simply pay awful and retention suffers. Building a real team is REAL hard. The folks that can afford the non pay have agendas, the folks that can’t afford the pay leave... dreams of grandeur damn the pay quickly give way to reality.

A bad economy helps, generally people are hungrier for ANY job and work harder, but during those times participation suffers. It’s a REALLY varsity situation, that is overcome for short periods of time by VERY capable leadership.

The comment about YOU being the solution isn’t far from the truth. These are volunteer dependent organizations. Headquarters frequently doesn’t REALLY understand or act as though they understand this.

EAA offers volunteers tangible stuff, CAF does not. Most organizations fall in the middle.

Not complaining here without a solution, just my take on what I’ve observed. I simply find these organizations much more complex than one might think.
 
How am I the solution? I’m not an IT guy. I’m just and end user who recognizes a bad product.
 
If you need someone to do, it must be you.
 
OneCharlieTango said:
I’ve just become an officer of the local EAA chapter, which has led me to look for some specific things on eaa.org. I can’t believe what a disorganized mess it is, and how very unfriendly it is with portables. For instance, some articles are displayed with one or 2 words per line, meaning you have to scroll through 600 lines to read a 1000 word piece.

Do they not have an IT department? They seem to have every other way of employing people.

They keep talking about “getting more young people into aviation” and acting like the solution is to reach out to specific demographics. Nope. Young people (and others who’ve tried hard not to age prematurely) are fluent in Internet. Having an attractive, informative, and — importantly — easy to navigate website should be Priority #1 — well before Young Eagles, Ray Scholarships, and Women Fly events. Those things might be just groovy, but they’re completely invisible without a decent front page.

Rant over. What’s the solution?
Click to expand...
Doesn't look bad to me, but I'm on a computer. Try to view it in desktop mode, or find a computer, people are spoiled these days. Desktop mode should pretend to be a computer. Be glad you don't have to dial up with your land line and watch the cursor scan across the screen as the text shows up and you had to imagine the graphics.
 
Last edited:
I have dealt with many clunky sites, some of them major government ones. Obsolete computers, and old software can make a bad experience even worse. Some volunteer IT people are working with skills that failed to keep them employed, so now they volunteer. There are many reasons why such an organization has substandard web sites, and modernizing a large site is fraught with alligators in the resident programs.

I avoid reading anything on my iPhone, except IM's when the ipad is unavailable.

If it is more than a page long, even the Ipad bugs me.

I am on my desktop or laptop for all serious reading.

That said, thank you for volunteering for an organization that I have high regards for. I have visited Sun n Fun twice, and the local chapter does a lot with the local interested kids.
 
The OP must have never used IACRA
 
“Fluent in the internet” these days means “like OMG, I got like, sooo many likes and like sooo many followers on my Instagram. Also, like, what’s a “web page”, that’s soooo 1992.”
 
eman1200 said:
“Fluent in the internet” these days means “like OMG, I got like, sooo many likes and like sooo many followers on my Instagram. Also, like, what’s a “web page”, that’s soooo 1992.”
Click to expand...
Maybe. But there are young people whose attention spans are long enough to get through pilot training. See any of a thousand of them on Instagram or YouTube. When they first decide to investigate flying, they ask Google about it. Then they scroll past a couple of music videos (Foo Fighters and Tom Petty — old bands my dad used to like) and eventually tap links to actual websites, which they view on their phones. This talk of “it must be viewed on a desktop” is ridiculous.

And if, like me, you’re a new officer, it’s very difficult to find answers to specific questions about officer duties, chapter management, and the relationship of the chapter to the national organization.

And don’t get me started on the Airventure app……
 
The internet doesn’t get young people into aviation, we do, by taking them flying.
 
Mxfarm said:
The internet doesn’t get young people into aviation, we do, by taking them flying.
Click to expand...

eh, I don't disagree but u got young'ns watching these stupid aviation youtube videos and more than likely getting interested in it that way more so than some old dudes taking them up. a lot more people (young and old) have easy, free access to youtube and most likely don't have easy access to people with planes. but yeah, taking people up is good too.
 
I sure agree, seems like one of my standard questions now is - “did you learn this on utube?”.
To many think on-screen achievement = real life ability , but there are good youth out there, and boy do they have it made.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top