Happy October, everyone! This month we've got some pretty big news in a few different areas. I apologize for the recent radio silence, we've been hard at work and haven't had a lot of time to focus on communications.
For starters, October Socials is indeed happening! Everything is planned out, but we still haven't received confirmation from our venue yet about the event. I haven't wanted to publish the details about it just yet in case they end up cancelling on us or in case there's a technical difficulty, so stay tuned. It won't be as early as September Socials was, so no need to panic about scheduling. We will publish information about the socials as soon as we can be 100% confident about when and where it'll be happening.
The next piece of news is one that's been mentioned before, and it's about our members. Starting now, officially, we are moving away from email being our main contact point with members. What this means is that instead of delivering private member newsletter emails regarding events and the like, notices for members will be displayed on the site itself. Providing an easy way for us to reach you and for you to respond to, say, surveys, from the comfort of our website. We are going to actively be improving many parts of the website to accommodate this, and sort of make it a one stop shop for our members to get all the Bt+ info they need. If you are a member and haven't accessed your account since sign up, then I encourage you to Login, bookmark the page, and check the home page every week or so to see if there's new information.
The public mailing list will likely remain, that way everyone, member or not, can get notifications and news about new blog posts, events, activism opportunities, and the like. Current members have been automatically subscribed to this mailing list, but future members will not be. If current members want to unsubscribe, then they should be able to at the bottom of any page of the website through the "Unsubscribe" button.
The final big piece of news is the reason why we're stepping away from the email dependency, and that's that we're adding a new contact option for members, Signal! Now, in addition to being able to sign up with email, you can (and are encouraged) to use Signal as your main contact point instead. This offers pros and cons compared to email, but the biggest pro is that its more secure, and many potential members have shown hesitancy to sign up due to not wanting us to have their email. Current members can move from email to Signal by using our new Member Support form, a page where members can submit requests directly to us about assistance they need regarding their membership.
We've been hard at work making Bt+ as good as it can be for our members. You asked, and we listened, and we are fully dedicated to keeping our members safe and happy. Once again, keep an eye out for info regarding October socials. We will likely send out an email once we can, since it would be unreasonable to ask people to just check the site every day, but that will hopefully be the last email regarding events. Our events are booked out months in advance, so our plan for here on out is to announce information about future events one month in advance, that way members don't need to frantically check the site for new info.
Thanks for reading!