2015: New Years resolutions for the RallyPoint website...what should they be?

CPT Andrew Kletzing. I think RP needs a clear sense of mission . . . whether it wants to be the military version of LinkedIn, FaceBook, or perhaps something entirely unique. It may help for RP to have more of a sense of transparency in corporate organization / management . . . perhaps in the form of a far more visible working board of directors / external advisory board . . . together with news about progress in corporate fundraising, strategic partnerships, and the repackaging of the RP concept for other military organizations . . . e.g. UK, FR, DE, others.

Perhaps RP volunteer moderator etc opportunities should be recast to serve as internship and/or professional development appointments together with perhaps weekly or monthly virtual meetings, maybe organizational development / corporate personnel training to develop marketable management knowledge / skills / abilities, lines of supervision, professional standards / evaluations / future employment references. Provision should be made for feedback from volunteers / interns and employees . . . and more careful retention studies should be run to ensure mutual expectations are being managed . . . so we do not lose valuable contributors.

We need some mechanism to protect discussions by personally vulnerable individuals from google / public view . . . perhaps some mechanism for our users to recommend marking as nonpublic and/or to expire and remove at some decent interval discussions re severe mental health / career / drinking / marriage / other difficulties . . . so these do not haunt the originators / participants forever. Along similar lines . . . we need to think through how to develop more consistent and appropriate guidelines for the discrete referral of potentially vulnerable users to chaplain / medical / other care and services via appropriate contacts at their local command / champva / tricare or other competent intake for intervention . . . the last thing we need is to become culpable in association with obviously unmet medical / interpersonal / psychiatric call for help.

RP email and posting would benefit from the ability to include PDF / DOC / other reasonable size attachments.

Some consideration should be given to developing nondilutive collaborative funding from the military and/or other organizations . . . perhaps through SBIR / STTR grant mechanism . . . or other Executive / Congressional Direct Appropriations to support further growth and development of RP as a platform for outreach and communication with the RP community. Newly developed IP with commercial potential should be documented and considered for appropriate legal protection. I am certain with time for careful study and consideration many other users will contribute additional tactical and strategic vision for improvement.

All that said . . . hearty congratulations to RP Management, Staff, and Volunteers for doing an exceptional job of bringing your theoretical comcept into being as a living / vibrant / caring military community . . . both online in the virtual world . . . and far more remarkably in physical world . . . together with the annual RP user meeting.

Thank you so much for helping me reconnect with my old friends and colleagues . . . and to meet and help new friends. My experience with RP has been deeply meaningful to me . . . and helped to fill a difficult void in my life.

My Warmest & Most Sincere Congratulations & Best Wishes To Everyone In The New Year!!!

Your Friend, Cheer Leader, Supporter & Colleague, Sandy ( Never Underestimate A Woman With Dog Tags )

LTC Yinon Weiss RallyPoint Team

CPT Aaron Kletzing how about, "Rallypoint vowes to only make spelling and grammar corrections to members posts and will never change the titles, posts or add photos to make them more controversial without the posting members permission?" Seems fair to me and I think we all deserve an official statement from RP on this issue.

Thank you all for your service and I wish you all a happy and healthy New Year!

I believe that RallyPoint is the next (or current) big thing for military. Particularly in the transition phases. As we know, the military itself doesn't do enough to prepare armed forces members for their next phases in life. RallyPoint has become a forum for some of these discussions and stands to command the whole, or the bulk of the active duty and veteran population.

From the employer side, there are tons of little veteran-assistance and for-profit entities sprouting up to "assist" with the transition, but NONE of them command the actual military population. I think that RallyPoint, with the current career-assistance options and job-boards is just scraping the surface. I imagine more services, networking sources and even in-person events or summits being extremely useful and making some serious waves in this military to civilian space. Creating these resources, transition packages, how-to videos...etc (branded by RP) could be huge. There is a lot of talk about networking and it's value, but it is apparent that many vets and transitioning service members don't actually know how to effectively do it; for example.