re: MUG Use of the Internet
re: MUG Use of the Internet
- Subject: re: MUG Use of the Internet
- From: Jim Foster <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2004 14:08:23 -0400
On 6-Oct-04, at 1:43 AM, Trish Huffman wrote:
Here's the question:
Do you mind describing how your MUG uses the Internet and your group's
website to broaden your membership and provide information to your
members?
Hi Trish,
Here are some comments I sent to Warren the other day but which did not
make their way to the list.
"Use of Internet:
- First, our MUG tried desperately for many years to arrange a way to
access the Internet from our previous meeting location. Unfortunately,
we were never able to do so until an opportunity arose to move our
meeting location to a new site where we have the use of the site's DSL
Internet access.
So the point is that we try to use the Internet itself to demonstrate
various aspects of our presentations at meetings. This can range from
something as simple as highlighting a particular vendor's web site to
highlighting new features of our MUG's own web site, to using other
"tools" which rely on the Internet, such as iChat or Software Update.
It's often very helpful in responding to various questions from the
audience.
We really think that our inability to access the Internet at our
meetings in past years was a significant loss for our club. We think we
lost several years of "teaching" at a critical point in time, which we
are only now recovering from at a slow pace.
- Our club uses a topica.com mail list as a Help Resource for our club
members. Only paid up Club Members are eligible to register for this
list, which allows each registered member to post messages and/or
respond to messages posted by other members.
- Our club also maintains two mail lists of its own. One is for all
Paid Up Members and the other is a list of non-members whom we keep
posted on upcoming meetings and events in hopes that it may entice
folks to come out and become members. We call this our PR mail list.
We use these lists to send out monthly meeting announcements and other
time-sensitive notices about club events.
- Our club has its own email address and we feature this address
prominently in any of our club literature dealing with ways to contact
us.
- We do maintain a club web site.
Use of Club's Web Site:
- Our club's existing web site was originally designed as
"brochureware" targeted at the general public in order to give them
basic info about the club in hopes of attracting new members. As such,
it originally was not updated very often. For example, we might only
update it once a year to reflect changes in the Executive at each
year's elections.
- With the advent of new software tools like MacroMedia's Contribute,
people other than our original webmaster have learned how to easily
update sections of the club website. This has resulted in a moderate
increase in the rate of information updates on the site. For example, I
maintain a Latest News page which I try to update at least once a week
or several times a month.
- The site is still largely targeted at the public rather than our
members.
- Our goal for the web site in 2005 is to effect a fairly significant
overhaul aimed at refocusing the thrust of the web site, making it
primarily a resource for members and secondarily a resource for
non-members (i.e. the public) to find out info about the club.
- This will involve first of all setting up a section of the site
called Member Services, which will contain detailed information on all
services which the club offers to its members and advice on "next
steps" which members may want to take to avail themselves of those
services. One objective of this area of the site is to help answer the
oft-asked question, "What does my membership in the MUG get me, that a
member of the public cannot get?"
- We will also drastically change our Home Page. Today, it is designed
to introduce our MUG to the general public by explaining what a MUG is,
showing a map of our meeting location and the area we service, etc.
This page has remained static for many years. Our NEW Home Page will
focus on what's happening today and in the next month, with links to
the kinds of info that a member of the public not familiar with our
club would want to see but keeping the Home Page mostly relevant to our
existing members.
- A potential 2005 initiative would be to try to video tape all or
portions of our regular monthly meetings and then make these available
from our web site. This will depend greatly on whether we can get a
number of members to volunteer to work on this project."
Jim Foster
President
Macintosh Users East [MaUsE]
http://www.mause.ca
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