Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: community communications: how to do it

[Chris ScottHanson (emotionsflow]

Sharon,

As usual, this contribution you posted is thoughtful, generous and valuable. 

Chris

On Oct 31, 2010, at 7:29 AM, Sharon Villines wrote:

> 
> 
> On 30 Oct 2010, at 9:39 AM, Jude Foster wrote:
> 
>> How has your community worked out its business, personal, team communication
>> system?  
> 
> When anyone actually works out communications, let me know. I think this is 
> one of the most difficult problems in diversity. Diversity includes widely 
> varying communications ability, preferences, tolerance, capacity, you name 
> it. 
> 
> And everyone has proof that the whole problem with communications is this 
> medium or that.
> 
> The one thing we did at Takoma Village that has helped enormously was to 
> establish one bulletin board in the frint hall of the CH as the place where 
> all current and emergency information that is relevant to everyone can be 
> found. Items there are limited to THIS WEEK. RIGHT NOW. That means it changes 
> often so it attracts your eye. It is never the same old, same old.
> 
> At the very top, above eye level are the annual schedule for membership 
> meetings and board meetings and a small white board where people write their 
> guests' names.
> 
> At eye level, a large white board with (1) the week's schedule of events, (2) 
> reminders for this and that, and (3) Thank You's. Alicia is our detail person 
> with perfect handwriting who transfers this information from the online 
> calendar (we now use CalendarWiz) and other sources to the whiteboard. 
> 
> Beside that are various things thumbtacked up. Results of the most recent 
> workday, agenda for a meeting, thank you cards from  a guest, found keys and 
> earrings, why the internet is down (again), etc.
> 
> That has been a major success since it's inception 8-9 years ago. In an 
> emergency it becomes command central. Alicia recently quit for two weeks 
> because someone (we hope a teen exercising their new found freedom to behave 
> independently) was randomly erasing parts of it. Not having it caused 
> dislocation system wide.
> 
> Passwords are currently driving me nuts partly because we have transitioned 
> into new web services and I'm the person who maintains most of them and helps 
> everyone get connected. The same username and password are used by everyone 
> for most of the following but not all.
> 
> 1. Website — a public and a members-only section.
> 
> 2. Google Wiki — the newest and I think the best reference and storage idea 
> ever. It is fabulous. We keep our user manual there. It started as a 
> Facilities Team resource but is expanding. It will soon become the Wikipedia 
> of Takoma Village.
> 
> 3. A guest room calendar that was designed by a former member that sits there 
> by itself with all the features we need — queue and time limits on 
> reservations but that's all it does. And if it breaks, it's dust.
> 
> 4. Calendar Wiz for reserving CH room and for announcing any off-site events 
> as well. This has tons of features we haven't fully explored yet. It doesn't 
> have a queue feature or allow you to limit reservations to 4 months into the 
> future so we still have two calendars.
> 
> 5. Cubbies for each unit. We discourage wholesale copying to put flyers in 
> each cubby but these are used for individual passing back and forth of things.
> 
> 6. YahooGroups email lists for all members and for each team, plus special 
> interest lists. Some teams use their lists actively, some rarely. Special 
> interest lists ebb and flow. Parents with children in residence, exercise 
> room, landscaping, etc.
> 
> Our 12 year old YahooGroups list is now a sea of impossible-to-search 
> messages. tens of thousands. I have to contact Yahoo and ask if it is time to 
> just start a new list. I get anxious that it will disappear. I can no longer 
> trust that when I search and announce, "these are the only 10 messages on 
> this topic we decided in 2003" that that is true.
> 
> PROBLEMS IN COMMUNICATIONS
> 
> Mastering a medium is less of a problem than 10 years ago but the transition 
> to a wiki, for example, and the different passwords necessary are a nightmare 
> for me because I'm the one who helps people with access problems. Google wiki 
> requires that everyone have a google account. We set up a general account for 
> people who just read but it has no entry privileges because we need to know 
> who entered what. That requires an individual account and password, etc. 
> Fortunately the skills and interest in entering are usually accompanied by 
> the ability to figure out the username and password.
> 
> We have some "email should be absolutely banned from the face of the earth 
> and is the source of all evil" and some "email should be required because it 
> is inclusive and is the reason we are able to tolerate diversity at all" 
> people. The evil power that is ascribed to email is matched only by the 
> glorification of face-to-face. The contradictions in the logic I find 
> mind-boggling. 
> 
> Communications comes down to people contact. How much can people tolerate? 
> What purpose does it serve? How much diversity can be accommodated? Tower of 
> Babel. 
> 
> And values. Is face-to-face more important to you than inclusiveness? We have 
> people who are becoming more and more exclusive. They don't care right now 
> what is happening at the other end of the community and they don't want to 
> hear about it. This cycles for all of us, but in a residential community it 
> affects communications of information necessary for living as well as of 
> personal information. 
> 
> The desire to withdraw can extend to not sending that email about the 
> purchase of a blah-blah that is supposed to be available to everyone and 
> isn't because they don't know it exists. Segregation was maintained for 
> decades by simply restricting communications, so this is a big issue if we 
> want inclusive communities.
> 
>> multi-generational (with all that implies)?
> 
> Multi-generational is big and a whole other topic. It affects communication 
> but not in the way it did a few years ago — "over 60 can't do computers." It 
> is big because people with young children in residence consider them to be 
> the center of community life because they are the center of their own lives. 
> As I approach 70, there are three generations of children below me and 
> everything is about children.
> 
> Sharon
> ----
> Sharon Villines
> Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
> http://www.takomavillage.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
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