Coho Tech Meetup Minutes | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Tom from Gather (gather.infosassafras.coop) | |
Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2019 10:24:25 -0700 (PDT) |
- The meeting took place from 5:15-6:00pm on Saturday June 1 2019, at the 2019 Cohousing National Conference in the Senate Room. It was not an official event on the program but it was advertised during the conference in guerrilla fashion :D - There were about 20-25 people in attendance. - After a brief intro by Tom Smyth, we discussed future communications. The group agreed not to create yet another email list for coho tech topics, but to use Cohousing-L instead to communicate about these topics in future. We noted there is a good amount of tech-related discussion on that list already. - We then went into a go-around in which folks gave their name, location, and community, and told of 1) a tech success story in their community, 2) a pain point that either results from or could perhaps be resolved with tech. - - Several people mentions old documents not being updated or disorganized. One group said they switched to Google Drive for this. - One community tried Slack but too complex for some members. - Tom mentioned Discourse as a solution in between Slack and email. - One group mentioned using Groups.io for email. - Several groups mentioned a desire to get off Yahoo Groups. - Several groups listed managing submission of and management of reimbursement requests as a common pain point. Another person noted they use Quickbooks and are trying to go paperless for this process. - One person mentioned having installed a new projector on the ceiling of the common house. - One person shared about problems with misconfigured devices taking down their shared network and how they switched to Google wifi - There was some discussion about shared networks versus each unit having its own ISP (e.g. Comcast) subscription. Maybe a quarter of the communities represented in the room said they had a shared network. - One group mentioned using Basecamp beginning with their efforts to manage the construction project. Folks wanted to know more about Basecamp. It was described as a project management system but they use it for much more than that. - One group mentioned using Team.up for reservations/calendar. - One person suggested recording tutorial videos for residents on how to use community tech. They noted Camtasia (expensive) and Snagit (cheaper) as useful tools for this. (Tom's note: I know ScreenFlow is another popular one. There could be an opportunity for us to share a subscription to one of these things.) - One person said they were attempting to use Google Groups but it wasn't working well. - One woman from UC Merced and is interested in how groups use technology. - One person described a custom software solution developed for meals, reservations, work, etc. at Swan's Market. - One person described a group agreement to manually tag email subject lines [in brackets] so that people could filter emails. - One person listed tracking volunteer hours as a pain point that could have a tech solution. - One person mentioned using a Google Form for new sales leads. Another added these can be good for surveys on community issues. - One group is looking for good web host for their community site. - One group shared that they have fiber to every building! - One person describe their forming senior community in which half of folks don't have cell phones and some don't have computers. - One group listed their old website as a pain point and is currently redoing it. - There was a lively discussion about agreements around email etiquette and moderation. - - One group described clear boundaries between tech and conflict resolution. Tech just provides the tools, conflict resolution is responsible for etiquette guidelines and handles conflict when it happens on email. Tech sets a member to temporary 'moderation status', so they can't post, per request of conflict resolution. - Another group described their guideline this way: Emotion is ok, aggression is not. - Another policy was described as: self monitored, nothing confrontational, controversial, business information only. If someone missteps, they are sent a copy of the policy. - Another group was considering two email lists, one for business and one for personal. One person warned this could lead to fewer boundaries and conflict on the personal list. - In closing we noted that there was a lot of energy around coho tech in multiple areas: - - Software - Hardware and networking - Common house audiovisual, including assistive technology for meetings (e.g. mics) - We agreed there need to be sessions around these topics at future conferences!!! -- Tom for the Gather Team https://info.gather.coop
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