Hi, I'm very pleased to announce the formation of a new Maple Society branch: The Maple Society of Britain and Ireland! (TMSBI). TMSBI is being formed in order to better serve the Maple Society community of Britain and Ireland. Although the Society was formed and grew in the UK, recent evolution has left Britain and Ireland without a structure to oversee benefits and meetings. TMSBI plans to fill that gap, in just the same way as The Maple Society of North America (TMSNA, formerly the North American Branch or NAB) does for that geographical area. Earlier this year, a group of ex MS committee members (Hugh, Dan, Miles, Jan) began discussions on how to better guarantee benefits to members in the UK and Ireland. Their conclusion was that an autonomous group, focused on benefits and issues of proximity, was the best way. They requested that I Chair the committee, with Dan Crowley and Miles Hayward as Vice-Chairs, and I agreed. Hugh Angus is temporarily on leave from us for personal reasons but will be returning to organize meetings. Jan Walker resumes her role as Secretary. (Personally, let me say how great it is to be working again with these friends, all experienced ex-committee members. Especially Hugh, who for many people _is_ the Maple Society, particularly after Peter Gregory's passing.) We have put up a rudimentary web site: https://tmsbi.org, which will let you renew your membership for 2024, get in contact, etc. This is the permanent link for TMSBI, though the site itself will be changing in future. We expect to have our gift aid charitable status very soon. Our main focus is on restoring benefits (like the seed distribution), ensuring existing benefits are fulfilled (like the Newsletter being on time), and introducing some new benefits (like the upcoming e-bulletin). Check out the website for more about benefits. As people within our area know, there will be a general meeting tomorrow at 18h00 GMT, we look forward to seeing you there. You should already have the link, if you don't please contact secretary@tmsbi.org. Here's a mystery to leave you guessing; what is it? Cheers, -Emery
Congratulations, and the best of luck for this branch of the MS ! Mystery maple : it looks a bit like Acer elegantulum, but that seems too simple... And the leaves are not serrated too.
Thank you Alain, there's lots to do. Sorry, not A. elegantulum. But you probably have the Section and Series right. ;) (Probably!)
Another leave... I don't understand this decision the new President of TMS or IMS returned the fee to a new Italian member saying that he will have to organize himself for six months and in the meantime suggested he join the English/Irish branch. Was there a need for this split? Was Brexit from Europe not enough? When reading your words, I seem to hear Emery that lady who, in the aftermath of Brexit, said: finally the Tamigi is once again English and not European river. without controversy and with the almost twenty-year friendship that binds us I would like to understand Alessandro
Hi Alex, TMBSI had to happen because British and Irish members weren't getting any benefits, and there was no one to make sure they did. There is no split, any more than the Americans are not part of the International Maple Society. I don't know anything about your new Italian member, but we do have an offshore membership to accommodate people not physically in the UK. Simon Grant is now President of TIMS, and put forward proposals to make things run more smoothly, which we are working on. I'd be happy to explain more and discuss, perhaps in a private conversation would be better. -Emery
I have been attempting to join the IMS with no success so far… the process online is peculiar at best. As for the North American branch, I get the message below and I am not willing to proceed. Also, as far as I can tell, the North American branch is headed by a person who is from a for profit company, and I am not OK with that. Any advice would be appreciated.
Hi Nik, that's all quite odd! The current President of TMSNA is Bill Hibler, and yes he does own a business, but it has nothing to do with the Maple Society. TMSNA is a registered non-profit in the US, joining them should be easy as they use a professional membership management software package that is well reputed (and also not that cheap!) I can't say much about the TIMS website, I don't know how functional it is. Haven't looked. Did you get the error message going directly the website https://www.maplesocietynorthamerica.org ? I went and clicked on join, it all looks secure (https). The neoncrm.com part is just the company that handles the payment system. https://themaplesocietynorthamericanbranch.app.neoncrm.com/forms/become-a-member Let me know if your problems persist, I'll have someone there get in touch with you. Closer! But still not it. Cheers, -E
Hi Emery, The first link you sent still gives the same message. Or any link that shows up after a search for the Maple Society North America. The second link you posted seems to work fine. I will give it a shot at registering tomorrow. I was under the wrong impression that one of the Mr Maple guys is the president… but I couldn’t access the NA branch website to see that this is not the case. Thanks for the info! And thank you for your help with the registration link!
On the advice of my husband, who works for a cybersecurity company, I decided against joining the Maple Society North America branch. Any organization or company who respects their members should be easily able to provide for their online security…
It would appear the only branch that is functioning is TMSBI. The IMS and the North American branch seem to be quite irrelevant… which begs the question: Why isn’t TMSBI THE Maple Society and why can’t anyone outside Britain and Ireland easily become a member?
Hi Nik, I'm interested in what your husband is concerned about with the North American site. Not at all doubting his expertise, just that the TMSBI site is hacked together by us in wordpress, whereas TMSNA has a much better looking and seemingly more functional site, done in Wix. TIMS has been preparing (seemingly forever) a site from the same Wix designer with the same look-and-feel; we are also considering moving to a Wix site from the same person next year. (The long delays from TIMS have nothing to do with the designer.) So if there are security concerns, I'd be very grateful to hear about them! Although TIMS is non-functional as a membership organization, but TMSNA seems to be working well: there are pretty frequent meetings, IIRC there's a yearly meeting coming up. @LoverOfMaples was mentioning that there hadn't been any regional meetings in your area, in a while but I'm sure they are working to rectify that. (I remember there was a Boston visit not too many years ago). TMSNA is also very focused on providing the promised benefits, I'm actually in contact with them practically daily right at the moment. They do seem to have a pretty large and active member base, I know they're planning on doing NA based seed distribution for the first time this year, I'd expect to see seed from (talking out my hat here, as I know organization is TBD) UBC, Morris, Raulston, Arnold. There are so many great sources in the US. It's much more difficult for us to manage sending seed to the US, as we've found out in the past, sometimes it doesn't arrive. So I wouldn't want you to miss out on any potential benefits. Looking forward to reading your response! Thanks, -E P.S. I see your order and will get you set up over the next couple of days. Feel free to DM if you want to discuss websites etc off the public forum. P.P.S., Since the beginning, the MS was run by UK volunteers, starting with Peter Gregory and Roy Lancaster. An American Branch (NAB) split off at some point. While it was always an international society, the feeling was that more emphasis needed to be placed on different regions with growing memberships, so the MS was reorganized, becoming TIMS. Unfortunately, this effort led more to the abandonment of members and inability to deliver benefits, rather than the hoped-for resurgence. Following the period you referenced earlier, NAB became TMSNA under new management and grew ten-fold, and now TMSBI serves our region as well as some (and perhaps an increasing number of) off-shore members. I know that there is a autonomous French branch currently in formation, and the thought is that TIMS will be reorganized entirely. -E
Hi Emery, Thank you so much for your detailed response! I am not able to access any of that information online. It seems all efforts of TMSNA are channeled towards their Facebook account. I do not and will never use Facebook. That in effect blocks my access to TMSNA. TMSNA’s website certificate is invalid, and thus, cannot be trusted with any personal information. I always go a step further and never visit such sites that are not properly maintained… you never know what could be happening in the background. In this day and age, I am not willing to risk it. Both Chrome and Safari give the exact same message when I try to visit any page of TMSNA site. Everything seems perfectly fine with TMSBI’s website. Again, thank you, and I look forward to becoming a member of TMSBI! (BTW, traveling to the UK/Ireland is pretty much the same for me as traveling to the West coast. In a way, I am happy that I couldn’t join TMSNA, I’d rather be a member of the branch than started it all…).
I think a lot of MS information is tribal, in part because some of it pre-dates the web (but not the internet), but also we haven't been very good at transparency, which I'd very much like to change. This is very interesting indeed. The bum certificate, I mean. I'm surprised I haven't seen it, as a very paranoid (security conscious, haha) browser. I don't even let most scripts run. Thanks very much @Nik , I'll pass these on right now, and will get you "processed" (sounds more sinister than it is!) Cheers, -E
Nik, I am very confused by your experience with our certificate. Our certificate is valid and up-to-date. Between our webmaster, Emery and I we have used our site in Edge, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Duck duck go. None of them show an invalid certificate. We have a separate link to our Facebook page as well as Instagram but nothing is channeled there. Please note this image which I can replicate with every browser I mention above. Can you please explain how you received any of the images you have displayed or why you think our website channels through Facebook? Bill Hibler President, Maple Society of North America
The Maple Society of North America is a registered non-profit organization that is not affiliated with any other organization. Our officers and board members are a mixture of retired, employed and self-employed individuals, none of whom have a financial interest in the organization and all of whom are serving terms with varying expiration dates. I hope you will reconsider joining our organization. Our next national event is in Valley Forge, PA and we would love to see you there.
The same certificate notice shows up on three different devices. Something seems wrong with the security certificate. Our router has an extra level of security, and its security mechanism picks up an anomaly in the TMSNA certificate and flags it as not configured correctly. This happens very infrequently with other sites, this is only the first time in about a month. However, our router provides an option to override the security protection, which is what I just did and now can access the site. Thank you @BillHibler for the information about TMSNA!
ditto In the interest of completeness, you can add Chrome to your list (I use Chrome and your certificate looks valid to me and Google).
Glad to hear it. I hope you'll reconsider your decision and join us rather than TMSBI. It makes it a bit of a hassle for them because of the newsletter. We are working on ways to simplify this but currently they have to be mailed from the organization where the person is a member. Also, we have to create an affiliate membership in MSNA in order for you to register for and attend events in North America.
Although it is my second-most used browser, somehow I had omitted Chrome when including my list of browsers. This is the image from my Chrome.
