BBVX Blog

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.

Severity: severe
Audience: large
Fiscal effect: yep
Policy question: hmm
Reported: well, sort of - but does it need to be?
Link: Various

AAUW is a complex organization and since even earlier incarnations of the website (www.archive.org anyone?) the web site’s way of dealing with this has been long lists of somewhat related topics. See, for example, the left hand menu on the Member Center.

Some pages try to deal with these lists by providing some structure (e.g. forms for states, branches, etc.), but others appear to throw up their hands and just list things alphabetically. That last might be okay if the items in the list were parallel in some way, but things like the list of topics in the member center left-hand menu are just really odd.

Evidence that this is a problem is in the response to the SAR/SEC regional meeting Web Tour workshop. This was repeated at the Conference of State Leaders. The workshop — all info at http://wiki.bbvx.org — is just a simple front end to some of the key content on www.aauw.org, so it might be considered a prototype for a new navigation system.

I’m not minimizing the difficulty of this problem, just documenting it as an issue that must be addressed in the new web design.

One challenge to the TUAG is to look at what technology trends AAUW needs to track — how will things be different in 10 or 15 years. Frankly, there aren’t any “futurists” in the group. If you’ve recommendations on this, feel free to register and join the conversation. In the meantime, here are some resources that may spark discussion:

• A citizen journalism project on “Nonprofits of the Future: NGOs of 2016″. The idea is to paint a picture of what a technologically empowered nonprofit will look like a decade or so from now. Check out

http://www.socialedge.org/Events/ThoughtLeaders/30

• May 30, 2006, talk “Computing the Future: Release 2016″ by Dan Reed,
  Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and Chief Information
  Officer, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

  The Power Point slides, in a .pdf file, are VERY impressive!!! All 60 of
  them — http://www.renci.org/publications/talks/reedtalk5-30-06.pdf

  Video, Podcast, Power Point slides, etc. are available from
  http://www.renci.org/news/2016talk.php

The TUAG is reviewing an online version of the BDR - “Branch Dues Report” submitted by each branch with the dues of renewing members, so this may be moot, but I’d like to document it.

The report has a final summary page. [See example summary Page] The problem with the table on that page is that there’s “N/A” in the spot where one would enter the number of renewing MBHL and MBL members. Even though they pay no dues to the Association, they need to be included in the count of renewing members for the sake of any reconciliation with branch records. The lines for MBHL and renewing MBL members should, I think, look like the lines for Dual Members. The report may need a new line for new life members (those paying 20 times the current annual branch dues in order to join the Association “for life”).

[On another topic, this form shows Associate members paying $15 dues (rather than the amount charged to branch members as specified in the bylaws). However, this isn’t a big deal since all Associate members were admitted before July 1, 1957 and cannot rejoin if they drop membership. Therefore, this problem will go away next year when all remaining Associate members will qualify for MAHL status and so their Association dues will drop to $0.]

Severity: life-threatening
Audience: large
Fiscal effect: absolutely
Reported: yes, yes, yes
Policy Question: yes
Link: http://www.aauw.org/member_center/forms/branchofficers.cfm

Okay, shoot me. The branch officer form *still* hasn’t changed. Branch and state presidents are expected to complete a form where they enter names and addresses of all their officers - and to do it in a format that is not at all useful for them to use in other contexts. [Seven pages, give me a break.]

I know this sounds like whining, but the issue has been raised since the IT2001 campaign: www.mindspring.com/~it2001

Aside from the completely unnecessary data entry (the Association HAS all that address data, after all), it is just super annoying to be told (3/31/04, e-mail from membership department, regarding listing “secretary” as a standard position):

we’ll bring this to our IT dept. and we’ll see what we can do. As soon as it’s feasible, we’ll add it to the web form.

and then to be told (4/13/06, e-mail from IT on the same subject):

[this] needs to be brought up to membership department/committee for discussion

Either it’s been decided or it hasn’t. Will someone please find a way to collect all the info on this and move forward? And, in the meantime, is there any way to make the HTML form and the MS Word form agree? The MS Word form includes officers 10-12 (C/U, Int’l and Newsletter Editor) that don’t appear on the HTML form (but still no secretary …).

A demo of doing this in a much more reasonable way was held in June 2005, but that system is still not online. Yes, I know, staff is short-handed and there are other priorities. I really do appreciate all that the Association is doing - DTL, Pay Equity, etc., etc. But is this problem really that hard? What do they *do* with the forms that are submitted? Is there really a need for branch presidents to waste their time reporting addresses and phone numbers when the branch treasurers are going to be asked to confirm EXACTLY THE SAME INFORMATION in less than two months?

As I’ve said over and over, unless we get a handle on how the organization handles data and streamlines its processes to fit with the lives of busy women, it is just another several stakes in our coffin. [Or we’re saying that we really do want the branches to just “go away” …]

The TUAG has collaborated with the Communications Working Group on the Association’s use of e-mail listserves: how many lists exists and how subscriptions are managed, which are “discussion” lists and which are “announcement” lists, etc. As part of that discussion we submitted the following list of suggestions for updated listserve practices:

Subject: PRIORITY/ADVISE: Format of One Shared World E-mail
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 18:10:54 -0500

Questions/concerns/ideas that resulted from the March 9 distribution of the “One Shared World” e-mail.

1. Some systems only display the first 15 characters of the sender’s name and then ask the recipient if they know the sender. As a result, some recipients determined that this was spam and deleted the message. Who authored this e-mail? We had not seen the administrator@aauw.org as the sender before. The sender’s name/department should be used with these “general” messages.

2. Every message sent to a list MUST clearly identify what list was used to send the message. Did this message go to everyone with an e-mail address on file with AAUW?

3. The subject line did not contain a tag that identified the message as a listserv/blast message. In the case of a blast, the tag preceding the subject could have said AAUW-ALL.

4. Because of incomplete information about the sender and recipient list, members were unable to determine if they should forward the message to their respective networks.

5. There was no ability to opt out of future messages of this type or to change an address if someone does want to continue to receive the messages. That ability is provided as boilerplate at the end of other AAUW listserv messages and should be included with blast messages. The software provides this option.

We understand that AAUW does have important information to share with its leaders and members. We want them to be willing recipients of information as well as providers of information. However, this example demonstrates that we must define an e-mail protocol/etiquette to be used in future e-mail distribution. We don’t want people to stop reading AAUW messages!

The group has been given access to the e-online application as it is to be released later this spring. We’ve been asked to comment on features and ease of use.The description of the application’s initial modules: AAUW Member Services E-OnLine Application

The underlying data access principles accepted by the board in January: Initial data access policy [See note near the end of “key messages from the board meeting” in EdEqChange #11, Feb. 2006 and another comment in this blog.]

We were given access on March 15 and were asked to respond by March 22. Oh, well.

I hope Betty doesn’t mind, but I’m posting the copy of the group’s working rules as approved by the board at their November meeting:

TUAG Working Rules: 11/05

They are, of course, a work in progress, but they are filed here as documentation of a snapshot of what we’re trying to do and how we’re trying to do it.

We were tangentially involved in a discussion between the public policy department and a couple of the states on whether or not it would make sense to “piggyback” state advocacy efforts on the Association’s Capwiz account (see the two minute activist).

The quote we got last fall would be $1500/year with a $2000 setup fee for each state — it would be somewhat less if more than 20 states signed up. This about matches the deal that LWV SC got - $2875 first year, $1875 thereafter.

It’s not clear how many states could afford that. If you’ve got other options, please post them here.

The EdEqChange memos are distributed in e-mail as Word documents (fairly large Word documents because of the graphic header on the first page), and are posted on www.aauw.org as PDFs. There are evidently some members who want the documents in “text” format. [I’m assuming that’s what really meant is HTML since the documents are now pretty long and would be difficult to read without some formatting.] A number of issues (from member training and the skills expected of member leaders, to document formatting and overall priorities) are being discussed.
See also discussion elsewhere of OpenOffice as an alternative to Word.