While I am probably more paperless than the next person (I'm a green business consultant), I believe that its okay to have membership applications submitted typed on paper. Why make it easy? The resourceful person will find a way!

As for everything else like dues, conference registration and the like, we are getting there but for some reason seem to have technical challenges year after year...

Except for those (me) on the other side who have to end up typing everything up anyway once the apps are received. :(

THIS.

I agree with both of you, actually.

I can look back and say honestly that part of the "fun" was the stress of typing it and suddenly being indispensable to my LBs when they learned my family had a typewriter. In fact, I think I typed out at least one of their apps in addition to mine.

But I just mentioned about about hour ago the story of one of my chapter brothers who was "locked out" of the system because someone at HQ typed his social security number incorrectly in the system from his application and it took him months (if not a year, IIRC) to be confirmed as an Alpha after he was reclaimed.

Since I can't say with certainty what any other org's application looks like, it seems a reasonable compromise for those who value paper apps would be to enter demographic info online/in digital format and complete the rest of the app (qualitative portions, if any) with a typewriter.

Thing is I'm not even sure where I'd find a typewriter now. I don't think the local library (school or public) has them anymore. My office doesn't have one and the last place I saw one was at a bank where I worked. I'm a big fan of the 'fill this out on the computer and print or submit electronically' OR 'print and fill out by hand'

I think the challenge presented is why mccoyred and Senusret I see value in using a typewriter. They definitely exist, even if only in the form of a word processor.

I'm probably going to be shunned for freely handing out a solution like the one I'm about to give, but if it were me, I would scan the forms into PDF and use the typewriter function to fill them out. If the typewriter function is blocked, Foxit PDF will override the block and let you type into the page.

Eh, I don't see much of the point in making an unnecessary hurdle. Sure there are workarounds, but if that's the point then make the online form only submittable during a random hour each day or something. (And I'm not just talking about GLO membership here, but I'm including that too.) It feels a bit 'when I was your age, we had to..."

As long as using Word or typing into a PDF is possible I think that's ideal. (And then a typewriter as the backup). And speaking as someone who likes to have my data in a useful format on the back end, I'd rather get it from an electronic form than a paper typed one.

Overall, I'd rather make people jump through hoops to better suit MY needs, not just make them jump through hoops because we always jumped through them that way when I joined. (But then I'm anal about my data.)