www.LAInspectorsJournal.org

[Marc]

I attended a Louisiana State Board of Home Inspectors meeting today and it struck me how the Board's discussions resembled a series of TIJ threads, except that they were live and in person. I also realized how immature some of the ideas were that the Board was arriving at, and how it could be improved by more lengthy discussions and by the participation of a greater number of inspectors. I came home and immediately purchased a domain name for a forum that will be for the use of any licensed home inspector in our state. I'll attempt to install a free forum software made by Vanilla until such time that I can afford something better. I already had an account with a hosting vender for my website and didn't need to purchase any additional space....yet. The whole point is to get widespread participation by the state's inspectors and the curious glaze of our state board to effect an equivalent increased 'cyber' participation by inspectors in our Board's activities.

It will be a few days before the domain dns servers are pointed towards the host, after wish I can begin to install the software. I'm not an IT tech but I got the courage to try. []

Through it all, the question plagues me: Why am I doing this and not the Board itself? I spent less than $50!

Marc

[Erby]

Because the board is smart enough to realize that the majority of inspectors won't participate in such a thing.

I, personally, spend a lot of time pushing The Inspectors Journal, Inspection News, etc to help make other Kentucky inspectors aware of the resources available. I even put RSS news feeds from them on the state association website.

You know how many of the Kentucky Inspectors (currently 355) I see regularly participating in these boards. Let's just say I could count all of them using just my fingers.

Maybe there's a few more that lurk instead of participating (I don't get to see who all has registered on either one from Kentucky) but I'd bet I could still just use my fingers and toes to count all of them.

A lot don't care. Heck, according to a reliable source on the State Licensing Board, they still get reports hand written on yellow legal paper from a few guys renewing their license.

Others choose different methods of education.

I wish you luck, but I wouldn't set your expectations too high!

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[kurt]

Because the board is smart enough to realize that the majority of inspectors won't participate in such a thing.

I doubt that. Most boards don't realize much of anything.

Get folks in here; we've already got resources for them.

[Marc]

I doubt that. Most boards don't realize much of anything.

Get folks in here; we've already got resources for them.

My thinking is that this statewide forum will not only link the state's inspectors to our Board but link them to TIJ also. It's a bridge, sort of, going both ways. Once they sample the local forum, they'll be exposed to the national version, I'll see to that. We need this local version anyway because every state is different in regard to governmental oversight or regulation and issues do arise that relate to that.

Right now, I'm trying to figure the best way to introduce it. Introductions can have a big effect on initial enthusiasm and I'm keeping Erby's point in mind.

Marc

[David Meiland]

My web host has a whole slew of back-end software you can install to support a website, including a couple of different threaded discussion forums. You might ask yours if there is something already in place that they can simply switch on for you.