Perhaps I am overarchitecting this, but it occurs to me that the Monday Munchies are missing some sort of communication mechanism. Some of us are kinda-sorta connected via blog and e-mail and IM, but there’s a fair amount of “sign in and see what’s going on.” That’s not bad in and of itself, but it actually limits our flexibility and capacity to plan and manage expectations.
Would there be some value in establishing some sort of simple communication forum for the group, to pass on suggestions (or schedules) for things like:
- TF plans.
- Hostess Heroes vs. Devil’s Food
- Newbie nights
- Scheduling something outside of Mondays
Again, I’m thinking something really simple, along the lines of:
- An e-mail list.
- A Google calendar
- A forum
One of the above (or something similarly straightforward). Nothing huge and elaborate, but a way to “spread the word” about something. So …
- Is this actually a problem that needs solving?
- Is one of these the right solution?
I like the way you think! I don’t know if we need to go about setting up a new forum or such for it, though. I wonder if there couldn’t be a more concerted effort to, say, use this site for that kind of stuff, or Doyce’s Hostess Heroes wiki. Otherwise, I’m good with an email list!
Sounds like a plan.
An email list sounds good to me.
Thoughts:
1. I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy, and an e-mail list (subscribable) would work fine by me. I could easily set something like that up.
2. A Wiki is a thought. But I’ve found more ad hoc discussion on such to be less effective than other sorts of venues.
3. I’m more than happy to allow use of this blog, though not to open it up to public posting (which means either using a single thread to discuss stuff in, forum style, or else I get to initiate all conversation. Bleah.)
4. Setting up a forum is pretty easy (I already have the software set up on my machine). The advantage there is that it’s easy to point people to it without any sort of subscription or anything.
Okay, I’ve set up a mailing list:
http://hill-kleerup.org/mailman/listinfo/monday-munchies_hill-kleerup.org
Once subscribed, you can send mail to the group via monday-munchies@hill-kleerup.org. Let’s see how this works.
You can also send an e-mail to monday-munchies-request@hill-kleerup.org with “subscribe” in the subject and body.