Work has continued on a number of efforts for the IT Directorate.

If you visit your online judging record, you’ll notice some changes. We’ve made it possible to get your rank certificates directly from your judging record. If you’ve taken the exam recently, you will also be able to get copies of your RTPs and actual exam via this interface. We’re working on implementing some other enhancements, including making your membership card and judging labels printable from the judge portal. We’ll make a formal announcement when all the work is done, but we keep automating the elements of the judge package and other common judge paperwork. We’re doing this so we can reduce the workload on the Assistant Exam Directors, improve responsiveness, and evolve to a more self-service model. The certificate got a new design that matches the color scheme we’re going to use on the new web site (that’s right, color; the new certificates are no longer black and white). You can print any certificate that you’ve earned, not just the most recent one. We are also currently working to update the BJCP member badge with a similar color scheme and to enhance the information displayed. Stay tuned for updates on that project.

Once we have completed all the automation of the judge packet, we will stop mailing physical copies of the items that will be available online. This will save us money, but more importantly be a better use of our volunteer resources.

Previously, the BJCP provided updates to the web site hosting copies of all BJCP records on a 4 to 6 week schedule. Now, we have moved to more regular updates, targeting between 1 to 2 weeks for each update. This was made possible due to a number of process improvements and increased automation. Updates will occasionally take longer if we are trying to align an update with new functionality (lately, this has been improvements to the judge package).

As a side effect of the process changes, we’ve also changed how email notifications occur. We’re now sending additional notifications from our server when someone becomes a judge or when exam results are posted. Now when the email for exam results is received, the actual results will be on the server and the RTP and new certificate will be available from within your judge record.

We have added some additional fields to our database, including tracking exam graders directly. This allows us to provide database reports on who can help proctor written exams.

Earlier last Summer, we migrated our web services from the shared site we were using at Beer, Beer, and More Beer to a hosted service as the commercial provider BlueHost. This change will allow us to have more direct control over our environment, and to be able to implement additional applications and automation improvements. We have already been rolling out new functionality. We wish to thank Chris Graham and MoreBeer for their generous donation of server support over the years. They helped us out when we were flat broke and desperate. For that help and their kind support over the years, we are eternally grateful.

The longer-term impact of the server rehosting is yet to be seen. Mostly it will enable us to evolve to a more modern web site design and to add additional web services.

Work continues on our new web site. The look and feel has been completed, and we are working to provide more regular “widgets” that serve content based upon data stored in our database. A major effort is underway to manage the massive amounts of content we have accumulated over the years into simple, straightforward pages.

We have delayed the transition to the new web site design until more of the content can be organized. The legacy web site continues to operate, but in the new hosted web server environment. We are likely to start using the new web site without all the content converted and re-organized, and continue to make changes as we operate the new environment.

We expect the next phase of the update to our web site to include updates to some of our applications, as well as the creation of new ones. We have been in discussion with the Exam Directorate on discussions surrounding a potential online Exam Registration application. These are major changes and are in the early requirements analysis and design phase.

We need to migrate our legacy applications into the new WordPress environment, as we continue to develop new applications that are now possible on our new server.

We’re looking at making some brand new apps available, including having a way to suggest and rank commercial examples for the BJCP style guidelines.

James Golovich has been named Assistant IT Director, and is in charge of the application portfolio and back-end services on our web site. He originally joined the staff working on the project to resurrect the BJCP Vocabulary application. That project had stalled, but is now moving again. We’re hopeful that it will be completed within the next quarter. Since then, he has been instrumental in migrating our applications to the new hosted environment, and in taking over support of the various applications we’ve built.

Andy Weigel has been helping us with the web site, including coming up with the sweet certificate-generating code that allows your judge certificate to be displayed on the fly from the data in the online database. He’s also working on tools and support for our new WordPress-based web site.

We may need additional volunteers in the future. As we continue to migrate our applications, we could likely use experienced programmers in PHP and MySQL running under Linux. Experience with applications in a WordPress-based web site is also desirable.

We might also be looking for people to help with graphics and content for the web site.

We are not making a call for volunteers just yet, but those are some positions where we may need help in the future. If interested, contact it_director@bjcp.org.