Re: Common Meals System Online
From: Eva Passalacqua (evathinknot.com)
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:57:18 -0700 (PDT)
I currently take care of the bookkeeping and accounts for our common meals at Rocky Hill. We've had some discussions about creating an online system for meal signup/tracking and decided against it for the time being.

I'm a professional web developer and I have a strong inclination, generally, in favor of developing online tools to help streamline and organize things -- in this case, however, I was personally against creating an online system for meals.

* We have residents who are not really internet users, and this would either exclude them from easy participation or require that we have both a paper system and an online system. Which is, in my opinion, far more complex than just paper!

* I like the fact that checking the menus for meals and signing up requires a trip to the Common House to use the meals book. As we're living here and trying to establish closer interpersonal ties, I've argued against creating "online community" for our IRL (in-real-life) community. It's all too easy for the "ease" of online communication to supplant face-to-face communication.

* We are also currently functioning on an "honor system" for meals work participation, which requires far less record-keeping.

Eventually, if we get internet access and a computer set up in our Common House, I would possibly design a web-based database to handle meals, and make it accessible only from the Common House -- simply because it would make the bookkeeping much easier. (But first I have to finish rebuilding our web site!)

Eva Passalacqua
Rocky Hill Cohousing
Northampton, MA
http://www.rockyhillcohousing.org



Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.