Dear BARC members: after many years of being a guest to the board meetings, having a path all the way through the different elected and non-elected positions, being the president during a pandemic, I am now back down to just being the webpage manager but noticed a hurdle that the club needs to overcome. The hurdle I’m talking about is really part of the life blood of any organization, that is communication between the officers and the membership. This needs to be a two way conversation that should be easy and free flowing. To that end, I investigated the use of the webpage “Groups.io” to see if we could accomplish these objectives. I have heard people say that we could use Facebook to do that however, the problem with these kind of social media outlets is there really after pumping advertisement to you. They’re also horribly insecure and expose you to problems that the Internet has become famous for. What I’ve discovered is that we can create a “W4AMC” group on the webpage that only members of Brightleaf can see. If you are a member, then you can sign in and post messages to either the group or to the board or to an individual that others can see. Others can then comment on those messages which allows the free flow of ideas between eveyone. The other objective that this accomplishes is that it is quite secure compared to any other way of doing this. It also is self regulating in the sense that you can decide when you need to change your password and adjust your messaging as it fits you. You don’t need to contact anybody else to do that so you’re in full control yourself on your account. For the users this is a free service, for the group it may cost us a total of $10 or $20 a month once we get established after 90 days of trying it out. If we get above 500 members, then the price goes up a little bit but then again I think we could afford that if we had 500 members.
Another feature of this is it allows us to have topics for these messages so that we can group issues such as help about antennas or radios in separate folders. It further allows us to have files in a central location on the cloud where we can put instruction manuals for all the radios that we have in the club and how to run the software to do logging or the digital modes. It is a central depository that is available for all the members where ever they are. It also has an area for the Brightleaf constitution and the documents that we should all have access to.
Another thing that it does really well is it maintains the calendar. You can subscribe to the calendar so that your calendar in your phone gets updated with whatever activity gets added to the group calendar. This means that you’re always informed as to what’s going on in the club and what are the activities that are coming up. With this kind of access, I hope that the membership will be more engaged in the club and more willing to participate in the different areas that the membership may like.
Another feature of it is the roster. The roster is now going to be kept at the Groups page only visible to the members. That also means that if you need to contact anybody or send somebody an email you can directly go to the roster and push a button and send an email to that individual or to the group. It has many other features such as a wiki page that allows us to generate an instruction manual for the group. This will take some time to build, but it can be not only a history of Brightleaf, but also how we like to do things as well as the rules and regulations outlined in the constitution. There are other features that are advantageous to this, but the ones I have listed above would help tremendously in making it easier to run the club as well as getting the message out to the membership so that the officers are doing what the membership would like them to do. Without that level of communication, it’s a guessing game for the officers to try to guess what the membership wants.
At the recent board meeting, we discussed the fact that the webpage and the Facebook groups are what we call “outwardly facing” image of Brightleaf, so that nonmembers can get a taste of what we’re about and hopefully want to sign up and become part of the club. The application forms and the PayPal account is on the webpage for those that want to join. The group.io is really an “internal facing” image of the club just for members to improve member to member communications and help coordinate the activities of the club. That is not for public consumption. This also allows us to have the security that our email addresses and phone numbers don’t get out there on the Internet because we’re all in it together as a club in a scure location. Others that are not club members don’t care whether they publish your personal information or not, this is what I’m trying to guard against by doing it this way. We all must be vigilant to keep our club and our activities safe because there are a lot of bad actors out there. We do want to have new members come on board, but we need to make sure that they are well intentioned and want to join the club for good reasons.
I sincerely hope that everyone will sign up to the group.io page and be part of it. Being a passive member and standing on the sidelines, not messaging or participating in the group, doesn’t make the group stronger. It’s a lot more fun if we all get together and help each other out and participate in the different activities, that’s what Brightleaf is all about. This is an effort to make the club more in tune to the membership as well as making it a lot more fun to do Amateur radio as a group. Because this is just starting, there isn’t a lot there yet, but as the group gets going, and people start using it, I hope it will become a wonderful touchstone for us all to touch and communicate with. After all we are communicators are we not? So please test it out and be patient, we will mold this tool into what we need to do for us all. Thank you very much and see you in the group,
73 PETER N4PVH.
Addendum: I will be adding images to this blog and helpful hints as an initial guide. This is the first edition of this message to the membership. Stay in tune for further changes to this blog.
UPDATE: The bill came due and was not paid so we could not update the calendar. I gave a $200 donation to get access to the site for the next year and corrected the calendar. Please use this and tell me of errors and omission. I will be glad to update it when needed. 73 Peter.
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