Over the past year BJCP IT Directorate has taken on a project to migrate from our legacy infrastructure to a modern IT infrastructure. Our current IT infrastructure was designed and implemented nearly 20 years ago – and while it has held up surprisingly well – the operational model implemented at that time required manual updates to the website on a regular basis. While delays related to these updates have been reduced substantially last year with regular weekly updates, we are working to move to a platform where all updates will be instantaneous (other than those requiring review/approval).
To this end, we have been working on building a new platform, codenamed “Bravo”. This platform is now nearing completion and is in the beta testing phase.
Bravo will replace the current “Member Portal” with a completely new interface. In addition to being able to see your judge record, the member portal will allow you to search for upcoming competitions, search for and sign up for exams, register competitions, submit competition reports, see your exam scores and exam related paperwork, order Pin/Badge/Sensory Kits, make payments, register for running an exam etc. But most important of all, Bravo will process competition points, exam results and associated rank promotions in real time. Further, once Bravo is in place, we will be able to scale and add features and enhancements not previously possible.
As mentioned, Bravo is currently in Beta testing. We are working out some of the final issues and functionality. Once completed, we will migrate to it in stages, initially only for IT directorate processing, next to Competition and Exam Directorate processing and when ready; to general membership, and finally retiring the current “legacy” member portal.
We will continue to provide updates as we make progress on this.
– Hirendu Vaishnav, Ph.D. (BJCP Assistant IT Director)