Don't let your Admin stay in the Dark Ages

07-02-2022

Historically, Freemasons were often at the forefront of advancement and cutting edge technology. However, in modern times we are often accused of clinging to the past and withstanding change, perhaps to our detriment.

In our Ceremonies and customs, I’m absolutely in favour of perpetuating our ancient mysteries.

In our Admin, not so much.

Illustrated here is a beautiful Engraved Lodge Summons, printed in 1760 by Henry Dawkins. It is indeed a thing of beauty, but I cannot imagine many Secretaries today would be cranking their printing presses to produce the like. Similarly, few Secretaries (I hope!) are still sending hand-written letters, and most have at least embraced word-processing, if not Summons-by-email.

Times do and will move on, so why be slow in the adoption of technology?

The Working Tools project is aimed to take a step forward in this adoption.  We’re bringing time-honed systems, tools, tricks and best-practices from experienced brothers, and infusing them with cloud-computing technology, into a mobile-friendly and accessible format.

Cloud computing has it’s own virtues but particularly for Masonic Lodges, it’s amazing for maintaining backups of our valuable history, for facilitating handovers to our successors, and even making our lives a little easier until that happens. Update Attendance on the go, send a reminder from your phone, or run business level-reports to wow your Officer’s meeting. These are tools that were unavailable to our paper-based predecessors.

I am pleased to see advancements by the United Grand Lodge of England, with the long-awaited rollout of Hermes, which aims to improve some of their archaic systems in a similar way. But of course, it’s baby steps, as many Secretaries and Sribes-E simply aren’t ready to be forcefully digitised.  It will be a long time before UGLE are able to integrate Table Plans or Email into their systems!

Of course Hermes is also limited in its scope, being only for Lodges and Chapters under UGLE.   We’re exceptionally proud that The Working Tools can be customised to any Masonic Order, and any Grand Lodge or jurisdiction.

So Secretaries, Scribes, Recorders and other brothers alike;  give The Working Tools a try for free, or book a Zoom call with our team for a Demo of the system today,  and get your Admin out of the Dark Ages!