New This Year

Each year, we have listened to participants in this fitness program, and we changed some aspects of the program in response. As we learned from these experiences, the program continues to evolve, and remain responsive to everyone's needs. Lets take a moment to go over the new facets of the program for 2008.

We are changing names Each year, we have included the year in our name. As this program becomes more permanent, it becomes helpful to adopt a name that does not change from year to year. A lot of literature and other items carry our name and logo, and that had to change each year. With the move to the name FitMI, the effort required for new branding each year can go into other, more productive tasks. In addition, we identify our efforts with fitness throughout Michigan. you can pronounce our new name as "Fit 'm I", and if you stay with our program, you will be!

New Privacy statement We have adopted a somewhat less restrictive privacy statement, which protects your personal information while allowing some forms of data sharing that were not permitted previously. We believe that the privacy statement is important and we are committed to protecting the information you give us. Our privacy statement as changed to permit distribution of summaries of your participation in rankings of participants, and in team summaries, and this reflects changes in how more people are using our fitness program, connecting with us through team participation, and a desire from some people to promote some spirit of competition, although this may not be your goal.

The principal difference introduced this year is the idea of a session, a period of about 8 weeks, which we would like to use as the primary time period for activities, measuring team and individual performance, and computing rankings for both participants and teams. We have three such sessions in 2008.

Registration The session structure changes the registration process slightly. You need to check the sessions in which you will participate (you can change this information later, but not after a session starts).

If you are not going to record exercise for a time, such as a summer vacation period, you simply do not check that period, and the system will not expect you to enter anything in that period. You are not "falling behind" by not checking a session, you simply are not in the running, and you can resume during another session without suffering a penalty in the standings because others were exercising and recording when you were not. Everyone will be recording and contending by session, and rankings will be shown based on each persons. progress in each session.

Exercise Progress Entry Unchanged from last year, except that now you will only see the dates for the current session when you get to the entry page. We will furnish a link that page that allows you go back to the entry page for your previous session, in case you need to enter more data there.

More Flexible Reports We will provide reports that allow you to control how they are sorted, so you can make your own choices about what values are important for seeing "the best" in the category that is important to you.

Team Data Entry If you are a team leader, we will provide you with more extensive support and orientation, along with improved software tools that will make your position easier. This includes methods of recording a whole team in a format that makes it easy and faster to record and enter, complete with forms that team members can fill out and submit for data entry. As a team leader, you will also have better tools for contacting your team members. We encourage you to enter your results in a timely manner.

Improved Event Calendar We will be providing a more calendar-like layout for event display, with more categories that users can selectively display. We also encourage other fitness groups in the area to enter their own event information, which we will make available (after light review) to all users of our website. We are also open to other announcements and notices on our site, but we will examine these on a case-by-case basis, with priority given to our sponsoring organizations.

Additional Communication and Management tools FitMI project leaders will also have a number of tools and procedures that will streamline the working of FitMI and maximize the value of time spent on these efforts.

In addition, you will get messages regarding timely entry and other information as the project progresses, to keep you aware of your participation in FitMI and developments as we progress through the 2008 season.

Copyright 2008

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