Stop emailing me and meet me in my tent
This week the Parent Bloggers Network is asking parents what they’re doing to get their act together in 2009. Recently I made a promise to myself that I was going to try and organize all of my paperwork and correspondence. I’ve gotten a nice start on organizing the paperwork by taking control of the paperwork that overruns my house, courtesy of the NeatReceipts Mobile Scanner that I recently reviewed on Val’s Views. This isn’t really what I’d call a New Year’s resolution, it’s just a promise I’ve made to myself that I need to take action on in order to make my own life easier.
I’m an Executive Board member of the Special Education PTA in my town, as well as the Chair of the Web Committee. There are times when we have a lot of email going back and forth. It gets hard to keep up with who said what and who’s referring to what. Some people don’t reply all. Some people don’t include part or any of thread being discussed with their reply, which sometimes leaves me wondering what in the hell they’re talking about.
I’d never heard of Big Tent until the Silicon Valley Moms groups informed us that we’d be moving from Yahoo Groups to BigTent. Big Tent is an online site that hosts groups. The site is free to use and would be useful for anyone who needs to organize, manage and facilitate communication within a group of ten or more people. It’s all internet based, which means you can access it from any computer with an internet connection. Big Tent offers a lot of features that are ideal for managing an online community including calendars, email templates, polls, rsvp’s, subgroups and document sharing. I could even upload the PTA paperwork that I’ve scanned so the whole group could use them as a reference. It’d be a great way to eliminate some paper usage.
I have created an account for the PTA and will be experimenting with it over the next couple of weeks. If it can help me as much as I hope then I’ll roll it out to the rest of the Board in January. I think an online group like this would be much more effective than communicating by email. Having everyone under the big tent looks like it might be the next best thing to actually having a real meeting.
Have you made any promises or resolutions for 2009? What are you going to try to keep them?
I’d be for it… not sure everyone is technical enough to handle it though - that’s kinda sad but reality.
hellokittiemama/MTs last blog post..Best Gifts for my Child with Autism
I know, that’s why I figured I’d test it now that svmoms is live on it. My mother is one who’d most certainly have a problem using it. We have got to use less paper. If we could move more online it’d save so much time, effort and energy.
Great idea! A mentor once told me that if an email thread reached three or more in length, it was time for a phone call or face to face meeting. I’m not always good at following through, but I do use her philosophy.
Daisys last blog post..Coping with the Storm