A New Way of Notifying People

 
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XXX Public Links - A New Way of Notifying People

Last edited by Keith Swenson 01/02/2009(Effective date 01/02/2009)

Public Description - A New Way of Notifying People

This page describes the essential aspects of notifying people using Web2.0 techniques, and most notably avoiding the use of email for that purpose.

The Old Way

Since time immemorial (or the past 10 years at least) when a member of a community has wanted to notify others about something that is going on, or some occasion coming up, an email message will be composed and sent. An experienced member of that community will gather all the information together into a document, and attach the document to the email message. This will be sent to everyone in the community, and they will all be informed of the event.

This is behavior we want to change, but not because we don't want to know about such things.

What is wrong with this?

  • Everyone who receives a copy of the document has to store it if they want to refer to it later. Assume 100 people in the community, then one person sends it, and 99 people save it someplace. It is not that this takes up space on 100 computers (disk space is cheap) but because it takes time and effort to decide where to store it so that you can find it again.
  • If any details change about the event, the document must be updated and sent again. Now those 99 people get it again, and save it again, hopefully, but not always, in the same place. If this time it is stored in a different place, you have two copies, one right one wrong.
  • But events dont appear fully formed. First there are proposals, and discussion. Some suggestions are made and passed back and forth. In the end you may get many copies of the draft proposals before the final is produced. Storing the entire discussion for retrieval can be a chore. Even if you leave it in your mailbox, it adds to the clutter to make it harder to find other email.

The New Way

It takes some practice, but here is how it might work if can learn to do it.

  • When you are first considering an event or activity, you start by creating a web page (a wiki page) about the potential event. It is not a fully formed idea, but that does not matter.
  • As you have discussions about the possibility, you start to add details. The date initially was unknown, but when decided, it is changed to the proposed date. When the venue is decided that is added.
  • This page is linked into the other pages by the group. It takes a little effort to link things right, but the advantage is that only one person has to do this. If one person links things well, 100 people benefit.
  • Email has to be sent
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