Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Looking for folks to have a community technology/ People who won't use email

[R.N. Johnson (cohoranda]

We are on our second or third incarnation of online information. Current 
residents generally ignore it completely- interested potential buyers are the 
main audience at this point.  Some of us communicate a lot by email, although 
like other communities we gave up on the yahoo groups a while ago. At New 
Brighton, most information is transmitted at Sunday dinner and via email.  We 
do our best to make 
sure our 2 resident non-emailers are informed, but have had to formalize the 
process a bit, or they were often simply left out, with hurt 
feelings, long meetings and slow decision making as a result.

No matter how wonderful a system you set up, there will always be a few who 
don't use it. You can put a lot of time into trying to convert them, very 
likely annoying them considerably in the process, and with very little result. 
The other option is to accept that multiple medias are necessary, and put a 
reliable person in charge of printing the email out to tape on the Luddites' 
doors/ calling them etc..., as well as a gracious offer to show them how to use 
their computer email/ use the common house computer.  I have to say that as 
much as I communicate on email, I don't have a home computer (gasp) and go days 
or weeks without checking email if I am not at work.
Randa Johnson
New Brighton Cohousing
Aptos, CA