Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Communications

[Dale Grover (dgrover]

We rely heavily on email for announcements, though timely/important 
notices often are also put in people's cubbies.  Out of about 60 
adults, everyone who wants has email I believe, and all but a handful 
read it regularly.  Since our formation, we've used email a great 
deal, so it's very much part of our community norms.

"Business" announcements at dinner are generally not encouraged if 
they can be done in another way, but of course social announcements 
are welcome.

Committees email minutes of their meetings (as well as post to the 
"wiki"), and announce upcoming meetings and topics at business 
meetings.  We recently expanded our committee reports during business 
meetings to allow committees to talk more about what they've been 
doing.  This seems to be helpful--not everyone likes reading through 
the committee minutes, and it helps folks keep up to date with what 
committee are working on.

Information that wants to persist and be organized is added to a 
members-only "wiki" website.  Any member can easily modify or add 
pages using a normal web browser.  So job descriptions, budgets, 
policies, committee minutes, recommendations for doctors, property 
tax information, emergency contact info, and so on are preserved in a 
nicely organized fashion, rather than scattered through emails or 
updated infrequently on web pages through a "gate-keeper".  Our 
member-oriented web pages before were not used much, but now it is a 
major community resource.  This has been very helpful, and reduces 
email traffic that is just requests for information.  (Our cohousing 
neighbors heard about the wiki and are testing their own out.)

"Off-topic" events and hard copies of proposals for architecture or 
landscape changes are posted to a bulletin board, as are hard copies 
of job assignments.  (All but the events are also posted to the wiki.)

Meal scheduling is transitioning to online, with cooks, cleaners, and 
menu currently available, and online signup to come.

One problem is that we do not yet have in place a formal mechanism 
for information exchange between our community and our next door 
neighbor (Sunward Cohousing).  It will probably be through email.

Some folks do have trouble keeping up with all the information; we've 
tried to reduce the volume of emails to the general membership so 
important information doesn't get lost.  We rejected the idea of 
splitting our email traffic into "announcements" and "talk"--some of 
our members run many email lists and they didn't feel it would help 
us.  In theory it would allow a person to ignore all but the 
important emails.

--Dale


> Posted for eleanor [at] takomavillage.org Please respond to her or to the 
> list and I will forward the messages:
>
>
> Takoma Village Cohousing (TVC) is an urban community of 43 units and
> approximately 75 people of all ages. We would like to know what ways other
> communities have found most successful in disseminating information among
> community members.
>
> We use email, bulletin boards, and posting meeting minutes online and in our
> common house. Informally we exchange news at our common meals but not
> everyone is able to attend these. Many of us are too overwhelmed to keep up
> with heavy email traffic and/or to read minutes of all the meetings. Some of
> us make incorrect assumptions that things are just not getting done when in
> reality alot is happening. We're anxious to hear whether other communities
> perceive that an information gap exists in their communities and what other
> communities may have done to assist their members in knowing what's going
> on.
>
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