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Your Groups experience of internet and email
Created 3rd March 2009 @ 21:31
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Hi
I\’ve just taken over as the Chairman of the Newcastle group.
One of the things our group is looking do to is to set up a new website, our committee is considering the possiblility of having all the groups communications done by email, and also having a rolling programme where members can put on events at short notice on the website rather than a formal set programme.
What are other groups experiences of email and internet? has it harmed or enhanced attendance at events? what provision is made for members who do not have internet access? and do you have problems with events which are put on on the spur of the moment being cancelled at short notice because members don\’t have enough warning of the event and have maybe made other plans? A common problem in our group where alot of our members are also members of other groups (eg Ramblers) who maybe have a more rigid programme of events
Hi COPSE ex Croydon YHA Group have a full email list and also a web site for their full members and also their ex members i.e. associate members but emails have been so prolific that it caused a hue and cry at one point, you can have too much of a good thing sometimes.
Phil.
Thanks for your reply, what provision though do you make for those who are not on the internet? We have at least 9 out of a membership of 45 who don\’t have or don\’t want access to email, while not wanting to spurn modern communications I don\’t think its right for what is essentially a walking and hosteling group to insist that its members must have an email address! Would the YHA see this as some form of discrimination.
How also do you balance having a formal programme planned programme of events with things being put on Ad hoc (ie someone fancies doing a walk on Sunday and they put an email around the group 2 – 3 days before hand)?
Whilst Leicester Group still produces a paper programme two or three times a year, it\’s becoming increasingly irrelevant compared to the online version. Now that everyone knows that, if they decide to organise an event it will appear instantly on the web site, it\’s become difficult to get them to all commit to do so in advance of some artificial deadline date for the sake of the paper programme. More events probably take place that way, but it\’s hard on people without easy access to the web.
I don\’t have a solution to this – that\’s the modern world for you, keep up or lose out. The overall benefits make it worthwhile for the group in my opinion.
As for email, we don\’t use it much in a mass-communication-with-members way, but people certainly use it to talk to eachother. When I revamp our membership/programme system I\’ll probably add more email features, such as allowing people to opt in to an automatic \”what\’s happening this month?\” mailing, but I prefer to concentrate on web page delivery over email.
Incidentally, I\’ll be doing a session at this weekend\’s conference on group web sites, to be backed up with some technical articles on this site. So look out for them, and do get in touch if I can be of any help.
Our local group, Hostellers Sailing Club, now uses email almost exclusively for comunication between members and for our newsletters. We have set up a Yahoo email Group to help with this and this seems to work well. Its easy to set up, anyone can do that, but a few members did have trouble working out how to get a \’Yahoo Identity\’ which you need to make full use of the system, although you dont need that for just sending and recieving emails to/from the group membership.
We do still have a couple of members with no email adress and we try to remember to phone or write to them about whats happening, but I expect we forget sometimes. I suppose we are inadvertantly discriminating by using email as our main communication, but then if we sent out paper messages we would be discriminating against potential members who cant read. The world has changed and its become a fact that if you dont have email you will be excluded from a lot of good things (and some bad ones!). Email access is available free of charge at libraries in the UK.
John
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