This blog is in the late stages of its life. That’s not to say I’ve dropped any of the issues mentioned here, just that some have moved and others are looking for new homes. For instance:
- www.aauw.org comments: moved to www.aauw.org tracking form
It’s the best way to get a personal message back from the staff on your issue. Specific volunteers have insight into what’s been reported there.
- Training wish list: some things may still be posted here, but for the most part as I find ideas that I think are applicable to AAUW, I’m tagging them with “aauwtech” at del.icio.us. See also wiki.bbvx.org for information that I’ve organized for training purposes — feel free to jump in and add to that.
- General: Items that would have been posted here have been moved to the AAUW NC blog or to my Change blog.
On the other hand, this blog may live for awhile until I have time to figure out a better home for the categories:
- TUAG: Hmm… I need to review those posts and figure out what to do with them and where they’re to live. The TUAG has had a few successes, but the discussion here was not part of that.
- Membership: Hmm…, again. Some of these issues are still open. Some could be referred to the web site tracking system. Others may need to go somewhere else.
I have blogged for a year, since CA online book group decided to try it for discussion. Start-up was awkward so members continued using listserv, but I kept posting comments & book covers. In January the blog became a forum to discuss proposed bylaws changes. Members have not tried it but I convert their listserv emails to posts & comments. I am sure they would appreciate its efficiency if they could experience it, but busy folks have no time for even a brief learning curve. A good demo might convince them but I can’t figure out how to provide one. I’d like some suggestions!
There’s some concern that when documents are distributed in Word, users must hit “ctrl-click” to follow links. [This is a relatively new “feature” in Word. It corrects the behavior in Word 98 that had inadvertent clicks exiting Word to bring up the browser.]
What’s the feeling on whether “training” is needed for this? After all, Word itself is pretty explicit letting folks know what to do:
This actually opens up a much larger question. How much of “standard desktop training” should the Association provide to its members. Since 2001, I’ve been saying that people need to get basic training in their communities - community colleges, other continuing education centers, bookstores, local training businesses, friends and neighbors, etc. - though I’ll admit, not everyone understood that this was my message. [See 9/25/01 AAUW Online live and search for “shoemaker”. Raleigh branch URL is now http://rwc.aauwnc.org.]
This is posted to “training wish list” because I think there’s the start of a session on how to do branch web sites using a “content management system”. In the spring of 2005, the Association considered an agreement with a Michigan company who rolled out www.aauwonline.com as a platform for for AAUW branches. Their system was based on Mambo (which has since forked to the open source Joomla! system) and a few branches signed up, but I don’t know of any who actually got their sites up and running. I played with the system some and found Mambo much too “heavy” for branch use. WordPress is, in contrast, a simpler, more flexible system. Large branches with strong needs for communication and member dialog may want to explore other systems (e.g. Drupal/CivicSpace or the Xoops described by my co-author), but WordPress is, I think, the right tool for many branches.
With Douglass Davis of St. Augustine’s College, I gave a talk on PHP-based Content Management Systems at the Triangle PHP Users’ Group (www.tripug.org) meeting on Wednesday, May 3.
[If you don’t have PowerPoint installed, you can use the PPT Viewer to open the “slides” above. Note that the handout above is a PDF file with clickable links to the resources indicated.]
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A survey of the North Carolina branches shows that 2/3 assess themselves as good or excellent in the use of technology. [In contrast, for other skills encouraged for branches - membership recruitment, visibility, leadership development and strategic planning, about half ranked themselves poor/fair.] This is surprising, but hopeful. Maybe I’ll be able to find some other folks in NC to shoulder some of the technology efforts. But maybe some of the branches aren’t yet aware of what they could be doing. It’ll be interesting to see if the training efforts recommended here really do have an “audience”. See http://news.aauwnc.org for the full results of the survey.
Of course, particularly with things that change as fast as computing environments, there’s never “enough” training. One of the topics of the training, then, needs to be “where to get more help”?
I’ve found the e-newsletters (now RSS feeds) from www.logicaltips.com to be very helpful. They’ve just started a forum, too, which may be a good supplement to the newsletter and its archives. See http://forum.logicalexpressions.com/
Anyone have other suggestions? Please post a comment.
While there’s another note on mail merge, there are some other tips we all need to use the modern word processor efficiently:
- headers and footers (populated with page numbers, date saved, version info, etc.)
- automatically generated tables of contents
- track changes to show differences between versions of a document
- appropriate use of styles (particularly for TOCs)
… and more tbd …
I’m posting this under “training,” but again, the correct choice of a tool may be key to how involved the “training” is. For instance, if a mailing list is used to exchange working documents, there need to be all kinds of protocols devised to say
- How are messages related to the project “tagged”
- Who keeps the “one true source” and incorporates all the changes
- etc., etc., etc.
On the other hand, with the proper choice of a tool/environment these problems go away — handled by the workflow embedded in the tool — or at least are raised up a level that don’t require such attention to the details of the process.
One tool just recommended on the NTEN discussion list is www.airset.com. Others are listed in the Groupware section of opensourcecms.com. If you’ve got recommendations or experience with any tools that would be appropriate for a geographically diverse group of AAUW members (e.g. a state or national committee) please do comment.
This is related to the post on mail merge, but is focused on how the local data respository is updated and maintained.
Obviously, if it’s easy to download and Excel or CSV file from the Association with the branch contact information, it should be straightforward to upload that into the local system used to keep track of members, run mailing labels for the local newsletter, print off phone lists for the telephone tree, etc., etc.
However, “straightforward” doesn’t mean “intuitively obvious” so this is, no doubt, a training opportunity.
On the other hand, having spent a considerable part of my life trying to train folks on “not the best” software, changing the underlying platform might make the training much simpler. What I’m thinking of is a “standard” branch database (maybe distributed in OpenOffice format) and corresponding web services application. I’m not enough a programmer to even do a prototype here, but wouldn’t it be great if there were a button on the local app that would make a query to the Association data store and get back the necessary updates? Maybe an XML app of some sort? The Association then could become the “one true source” of contact data — strongly encouraging all branch and personal updates to be done through them. We’re years away, I know, but could we start thinking about things in those terms?