Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: The Future of Cohousing-L mailing list

[Kathryn McCamant (kmccamant]

Dear Fred...good idea! Glad you are taking this initiative. The conference
will be a great place to continue the conversation.

But I did want to question your assumption that CoHousing-L needs to be a
separate entity from the CoHousing Association. Personally, I see the
Association as the key link that ties us all together...and the umbrella
by which all the volunteer efforts that make this a movement more than
just a bunch of individual projects. To me, it makes total sense that
Cohousing-L exist as part of the Association. In recent years, I suspect
that most people find you thru the association website. I think formally
combining your efforts with the Association would be one way to secure
Coho-L's long term existence...whatever happens to any one of us along
life's road. Each of us do more or less depending on what else is going on
in our lives, but so far, the Association has continued and offers a great
format to bring in new energy as us old timers grow weary, move on, or
eventually die off. I think the Association needs all of our support and
encouragement, and the more of our volunteer efforts are done under the
umbrella of the Association, the strong both the Association is as well as
the cohousing movement.

Just my 2 cents (without any discussion with anyone CohoUS). Feel free to
share my comments as you see fit.

In community and with the utmost respect for you ongoing contribution to
the national and international cohousing discussion,


Katie 

-- 
Kathryn McCamant, President
CoHousing Solutions
241B Commercial Street
Nevada City, CA 95959
T.530.478.1970  C.916.798.4755
www.cohousing-solutions.com







On 2/20/15 9:54 AM, "Fred H Olson" <fholson [at] cohousing.org> wrote:

>
>I have managed Cohousing-L for over 21 years now, but WHAT IF I CROAK?
>
>Someday I will no longer be able to manage the list. NOT ANY TIME SOON
>but someday someone else will need to take over managing Cohousing-L.
>I expect to continue managing the list for a good long time yet.
>
>But life is unpredicatable; it seems like it would be wise to have a
>contingency plan for succession of a manager.
>
>There will be a session at the conference, currently scheduled for 4pm
>Friday -- "Cohousing-L Email Group: Looking to the Future " where we can
>discuss this (and other list related topics) but I wanted to start the
>discussion here. ( Conf. page: http://cohousing.org/2015conference )
>My 68th birthday is during the Cohousing conference in North Carolina
>in May which I will be attending for the first time since 1997.
>
>I frequently get thanks for managing a useful and civil discussion
>free of ads and distractions.  Such appreciation helps keep me at it.
>There are occasional lulls in the discussion. ( There were very few
>messages for about 4 weeks around last Thanksgiving. I was starting to
>wonder if we had discussed everything :) Then it gets busy like the
>last week or two...   We suffer from 'feast or famine'.
>
>For now I presume this online discussion will continue to be useful
>indefinitely. I and a number of people feel strongly that Cohousing-L
>should continue to be independent of Coho/US.
>
>With few exceptions it has been just me behind the scenes "managing"
>cohousing-L.  The software is maintained by a great ISP (Tigertech in
>Calif. http://justcomm.org/#tigertech ) and their tech support is also
>great.
>
>My suggestion is that we establish and maintain a small "post-Fred
>advisory group" of people with the interest and some expertise that
>would agree to make arrangements for the list to continue when I can
>no longer do so. The group's responsibilities would be:
>o maintain contact with each other and with Fred over the long run
>o recruiting someone to take over management tasks when needed.
>  Fortunately the list would continue to run unattended for a while
>  (tho some messages would not be distributed due to filters that
>  keep the "quality" high).
>o Arranging to pay the ISP ( currently I do that annually - it is only
>  $75/year. )
>
>If you are interested in being on such an advisory group or would
>consider managing the list someday please feel free to reply to Fred
>off list. There is a summary of tasks involved in managing cohousing-L
>at end of this message.
>
>Probably the key thing about managing the list (and an advisory group)
>is the long term nature of it.  Management tasks are usually not a big
>task, typically a few minutes EVERY DAY and it goes on for years.
>Fortunately it fits into my life easily.
>
>It would be desireable to have people on an advisory group who are
>committed for years until they are needed.  They would have have
>little to do til I croak. Ideally some advisors would be younger - say
>under 50 ...
>
>Fred ( below: Summary of tasks involved in managing cohousing-L )
>
>--
>Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411  USA        (near north Mpls)
>     Email:        fholson at cohousing.org      612-588-9532
>My Link Pg: http://fholson.cohousing.org         My org:
>Communications for Justice -- Free, superior listserv's w/o ads
>
>Summary of tasks involved in managing cohousing-L
>o Daily:
>-- review a few posts held by software filters --
>1) posted from a non-subscribed address
> a) some spam which gets discarded,
> b) post that is appropriate but came from an address that is not
>subscribed.
>    Approve it for distribution.
>    I generally send these posters a canned message suggesting actions
>they
>    may want to take depending on the situation
>2) post is too big
>   a) excessive quoting like a quoted digest - several ways of dealing
>      with these
>   b) has an attachment that needs to be dealt with
>   c) long but appropriate post, approve it
>
>o Less than daily (a few time a week?) :
>Deal with list related email.
>There usually is not too much of this and it varies widely.  Most often
>it is related to unsubscribing, subscribing, change of address.
>Fortuantely cohousing folks are very good about dealing with these things
>themselves via the forms on the Info Page (
>http://cohousing.org/cohousing-L )
>
>o Other occcasional tasks include --
>1) editing list related web pages
>2) archiving subscriber list (I do it monthly)
>3) reviewing procedures, writing "canned responses" to recurring requests
>4) posting to the list related to discussion process. This is rare --
>   Cohousing-L subscribers are  about the most civilized, thoughtful
>   mailing list participants one could ask for.
>
>
>
>_________________________________________________________________
>Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
>http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/
>
>