No more CAC avi bulletins via e-mail
Just received this e-mail from the Canadian Avalanche Centre, sorry to see it go as it was a valuable service. If you have thoughts or opinions on this respond here and maybe the CAC will take notice?
Dear CAC Avalanche Forecast Subscriber,
This email is to notify you that on July 1, the Canadian Avalanche Centre will shut down our forecast and blog email delivery system and delete all subscriber lists. This means we will no longer be able to send avalanche forecasts to your email inbox. There are a number of reasons for this, the main ones being:
New anti-spam legislation that comes into effect July 1 adds requirements that increase the time and resources needed to legally provide a bulk email service.
Administration of the email system takes up a significant amount of valuable CAC forecaster time. This includes set up and launch of the system every fall, maintenance of the lists during the season, dealing with the hundreds of out-of-office messages that come to our in-box every month, troubleshooting problems for users, checking and deleting expired email addresses, etc.
The cost of bulk emailing has increased.
Ongoing difficulties incorporating partner forecasts into our email system.
There are numerous systems available that allow users to set up and manage delivery of forecasts according to their own needs and wishes.
For these reasons, we have determined that maintaining a bulk email service is no longer a good use of CAC funds and resources.
For those of you who already use a news feeder or aggregator we suggest adding the avalanche forecasts you need and want to that system. For those unfamiliar with feed software and applications, we will provide ideas and suggestions to help you set up your own feed; check for this information next fall in the avalanche forecast section of our website.
We also encourage everyone to use our mobile app (CAC Mobile) to view forecasts on your smartphone. Through CAC Mobile you can also submit observations, which can be viewed by other app users and the CAC’s forecasters who use your observations to improve the forecasts. An upgrade to the app is planned for next season and will fix existing bugs as well as adding new features.
If you have comments, questions, or concerns please contact me.
Sincerely,
Karl Klassen
Public Avalanche Warning Service Manager
