As promised, the VBA will be releasing our latest and most
valuable new benefit: VBA Connect. This
new phase of member communications brings listserves to a higher level,
allowing our members to engage, connect and share like never before.
Within a week, all of our members will be receiving an email
from us, welcoming them to the new online communities. Please
read this email! There will be a lot of
useful information in the email about how to personalize your account and maximize
your benefits from the service. The two
most important items will be (1) to create or verify your profile and (2) to
check your settings in terms of how you want to receive notices and
conversations. You can get daily, weekly
or real time emails when your colleagues post questions, answers and documents
OR you can choose to just go online yourself and receive no notices. You will have a single sign-on, meaning VBA Connect uses your same username and password that you use for vtbar.org.
We know the listserves have been extremely active
lately. The real property folks are
still struggling with the Pearl Harbor Day release of myVTax and its aftermath of
glitches and confusion. Folks have had
to hand-copy responses and create a petition separately, just to make sense of
the countless comments and questions. We
at the VBA are listening. Those comments
have been cut and pasted into a word document, which is not pretty, but which
will save those comments for review and assembly after the change. Because the old listserve service was neither
archiveable nor searchable, the process became very cumbersome. VBA Connect will allow Section members and
other VBA members to view and search all conversation threads for the
information they need. Forgot the answer
to a post about a condo permit from 6 months ago? This problem will be a thing
of the past!
The Family Law Section has been actively requesting members’
positions for the upcoming House Judiciary Committee hearings on alimony
reform. Members had difficulty sharing
the Family Division Oversight Committee Report due to limitations of the
listserve service. Also, like the Real
Property Section issues, responses were difficult to find or categorize, and were
certainly not searchable. The Section
also had some intense discussions about whether Vermont should have a
presumption that joint responsibility is best for the child, codified like New
Hampshire. Arguments for either side
appeared strong, given the potential for pressure in abuse situations. Members had difficulty sharing the 50-State
report on the issue. The Section Members
expressed their gratitude to Section Chair, Penny Benelli, who has had to hand-assemble
the responses. These responses and
documents have been saved by us to post to the new system.
The online communities work much like other social media
platforms. You can have a profile that
is as extensive or as minimal as you wish.
You can add other members to your contacts for ease in communication or
you can have no contacts on your list at all.
Either way, VBA Connect does contain a full membership directory. VBA Connect is extremely user-friendly and the
folks at VBA will be your guide for any questions you may have. We will be posting documents to the library
and questions to the Sections to get you started but will place the system initially
in “full moderation” mode so that we do not bombard or overwhelm the membership
with superfluous information. The site
has been in Beta Testing but when it goes live, we will be calling on all
Section Chairs to post at least one discussion for further testing. Posts will have buttons clearly marked as “Reply
to Discussion” or “Reply to Sender” so that the formerly prevalent and often embarrassing
listserve posting errors will never recur.
Check out the screen shot below and be on the lookout for
this incredible benefit. Like winter,
VBA Connect is coming!
