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Best communications for Soaring Club



 
 
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  #1  
Old March 26th 19, 03:53 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
[email protected]
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Posts: 133
Default Best communications for Soaring Club

My US based club has a messy system of making announcements and shared discussions. We are in the torture of reply all emails. The good news is we want to go to something else.

What communications systems work for other clubs?
We would like to be able to make announcements of what days we operate which vary due to the weather and availability of instructors, tow pilots, and towplanes.

Maybe it should include scheduling features.

It might be good to be able to have sublists of users:
1. Just board members.
2. Just tow pilots.
3. Everyone, including interested former members and potential new members the most open public list.
4. Just voting eligible club members.
etc.

Ways to share images, and polls/voting in addition to stories might be good.

Several members expressed a strong dislike of Facebook due to privacy concerns.

so examples of possible solutions:

Mail Chimp,
Constant Contact
Google Groups
Yahoo Groups (appears to be suffering a long painful death by lack of fixes)
Forums such as phpBB that XCSoar uses https://forum.xcsoar.org/index.php


I would hope it could work well with mobile phones. Maybe it should also include the ability to send and receive SMS text?

Please share what works for any club you are part of.
Chris
  #2  
Old March 26th 19, 04:19 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
JS[_5_]
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Posts: 624
Default Best communications for Soaring Club

Been thinking of changing to
https://groups.io/
Perhaps they have most/all you're looking for.
Jim
  #3  
Old March 26th 19, 06:22 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Clemens Ceipek
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Posts: 12
Default Best communications for Soaring Club

We use Google Groups with email lists for the following subgroups:

- All members (used to share stories, send out invites to club meetings, etc.)
- Board members (used for communications among board members)
- Tow pilots (used e.g. by members to ask if a tow pilot is available if no-one is on the schedule in our online flight log system)
- Instructors
- Ship managers

It's not perfect but works reasonably well.

We have about 150 members in total (just to give you sense of scale)

Hope this helps

Clemens

  #4  
Old March 26th 19, 06:33 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
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Posts: 29
Default Best communications for Soaring Club

On Monday, March 25, 2019 at 8:53:25 PM UTC-6, wrote:
My US based club has a messy system of making announcements and shared discussions. We are in the torture of reply all emails. The good news is we want to go to something else.

What communications systems work for other clubs?
We would like to be able to make announcements of what days we operate which vary due to the weather and availability of instructors, tow pilots, and towplanes.

Maybe it should include scheduling features.

It might be good to be able to have sublists of users:
1. Just board members.
2. Just tow pilots.
3. Everyone, including interested former members and potential new members the most open public list.
4. Just voting eligible club members.
etc.

Ways to share images, and polls/voting in addition to stories might be good.

Several members expressed a strong dislike of Facebook due to privacy concerns.

so examples of possible solutions:

Mail Chimp,
Constant Contact
Google Groups
Yahoo Groups (appears to be suffering a long painful death by lack of fixes)
Forums such as phpBB that XCSoar uses https://forum.xcsoar.org/index.php


I would hope it could work well with mobile phones. Maybe it should also include the ability to send and receive SMS text?

Please share what works for any club you are part of.
Chris


My club uses a combination of Slack slack.com, Click n' Glide clicknglide.com, and Mail Chimp for its newsletter. We are phasing out Yahoo Groups.

Slack is great for regular communication. It has the ability to divide conversations into various topics like xc, safety, airfield, youth, including locked conversations for the executive and instructors. It has an iphone/android app and web interface. We use the free service that only allows so many messages and photos/documents before they are deleted.

Click n' Glide is great for scheduling flying days. It has the ability to email to members in a group but you must use the website to reply. If you are used to Yahoo Groups it is not very intuitive.

One of our members uses Mail Chimp to make a weekly newsletter during the flying season. It is great but does require some effort for someone to put together content.
  #5  
Old March 26th 19, 06:50 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
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Posts: 62
Default Best communications for Soaring Club

Our gliding club is small - and thus communication between the members is critical. We have two WhatsApp groups - a general one as well as one specifically for committee members. The general one is related mostly to the weather outlook for the weekend, and who is planning to fly etc. The committee one is more about the administration issues for the club. Most people have their cell phones with them all the time - and WhatsApp does not need to be specially logged in to view messages etc. It works for us.
  #6  
Old March 26th 19, 01:31 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Tom (TK)
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Posts: 34
Default Best communications for Soaring Club

Discord
https://discordapp.com/

It was designed for gamers but many organizations are using the text function for communications. You can set up different "channels" for tow pilots, instructors, board, etc. Users have privileges to gain access to information.

Plus the voice chat function makes it easy to have a safety meeting or other meeting without craming everyone in the clubhouse or the Golden Corral.

Plus Plus it also is available as a phone app with all of the same features so you do not even have to have a computer!

  #7  
Old March 26th 19, 01:43 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
David Hart
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Posts: 14
Default Best communications for Soaring Club

We are a small club of 35 members and use google groups for most club communications, along with click n glide for scheduling.
  #8  
Old March 26th 19, 07:24 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
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Posts: 6
Default Best communications for Soaring Club

On Monday, March 25, 2019 at 8:53:25 PM UTC-6, wrote:
My US based club has a messy system of making announcements and shared discussions. We are in the torture of reply all emails. The good news is we want to go to something else.

What communications systems work for other clubs?


In order to prevent issues from "falling through the cracks", my club tried Slack because one person used it at work and wanted the club to try it.Â* He set up different discussion channels for board members, tow pilots, IPs, etc.Â* In the first month, he and maybe three others used it.Â* By the second month, when the novelty had worn off, only he used it.Â* We quickly abandoned Slack and kept on using email, flawed as it is.

Another member proposed another collaboration tool that HE used at work. We said no, thanks, to that.Â* I think the club reluctantly concluded that effective club communication and collaboration/work depend much more on motivation and focus, not on any "collaboration" tool.Â*

I'm reminded of Sharepoint use in the military, when I worked there.Â*Â* With theÂ* innumerable functions it offered and the recurring Sharepoint training we all received, relatively few people in any office consistently used even the simplest functions, like downloading and uploading documents.Â* When something really needed to be done, people just used email or even spoked to each other (!)

Not being a Luddite.Â* Just observing that fancy tools require a learning curve, a dedicated effort by the group to adopt them, and usually someone to administer/maintain the tool(s) (another thing that could fall through the cracks).Â* The specific communication technology probably won't address the root causes of poor communication, if there are such causes.
  #9  
Old March 27th 19, 02:58 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
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Posts: 774
Default Best communications for Soaring Club

Also not trying to be a Luddite, but what works for communication between members boils down to what the members are comfortable using. Having to subscribe, join, enter passwords etc. is a completely useless method of replacing face-to-face or even "primitive" methods of communication like the telephone.

A text based/Internet forum seems like a viable method, but, just as "a picture is worth a thousand words," a simple verbal communication by voice transmits about a thousand times the data that a typed input affords in the same amount of time. I just spent eight minutes typing this, whereas I could speak it out loud to you in about 36 seconds. You could respond, I could reply, etc. etc.

Sure, a bulletin board on the Internet is handy, because messages can be reviewed at any time, but, as RAS shows. anonymous and random postings quickly erode the quality of information offered.

You want to set up a quick, easy and directed communication with your members?
Do it with a simple email list. Any member can "Reply" or "Reply All."

Asking your members to subscribe, join, sign a Loyalty Oath or otherwise jump through some ill-defined hoop to remain in touch is counterintuitive and most likely a waste of your time, not to mention theirs.
  #10  
Old March 27th 19, 06:48 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Ramy[_2_]
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Default Best communications for Soaring Club

Email is still the preferred and most commmon way of communication between people. Everyone can and knows how to use email.
However for a larger group a mailing list is best, and both yahoo groups and google groups doing the job well, most of the time. It only requires a one time small effort to subscribe and you are done. They are also relatively easy to maintain. I maintain multiple yahoo groups for my club and it is still fine, but occasionally emails get delayed. If I was starting fresh I would probably go with google group instead.
All the other options may be more modern, but either require an app which you otherwise don’t need, or going online to the web to check for messages and reply, or a learning curve, and as such will not work for some folks. Email and email lists are the lowest common denominator.
Someone mentioned phone calls. While this may still work between two people that happen to be free to talk at the same time, I can’t imagine how a phone call can be used for daily club communication.

Ramy
 




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