Re: Question
Re: Question
- Subject: Re: Question
- From: Jim Foster <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2005 14:21:10 -0400
On 25-Jul-05, at 9:00 PM, Maria O. Arguello wrote:
How do you pass on these deals to your group?
On occasion, we highlight the current Vendor Offers at our regular
monthly meetings. This is to give the topic some publicity, but it is
not a very thorough approach since not all club members attend all
meetings and we just do it by projecting info onto the screen,
without any kind of takeaway document for the members.
In the past, we have TRIED to edit the monthly Bulletin into a
version which is suitable for club members, and then use email to
send that edited version out to each paid up club member.
This edited version of the Bulletin contains more than just the
Vendor Offers, of course. As received, the Bulletin usually contains
a segment which is targeted at User Group Executives and another
section that is targeted at User Group Members. This second segment
contains both Vendor Offers and any other information which the
authors felt was appropriate for User Group Members. The Bulletin
contains a Table of Contents for both the Executive and the Member
portions of the document at the very beginning of the document, so
producing an edited version for Members is not as simple as just
copying and pasting the "second half" of the Bulletin into a new
message. I find I have to use the Forward command and then remove the
various discontinuous sections of the Bulletin which were targeted at
User Group Executives, leaving behind a document which is hopefully
suitable for members.
This seems just a bit of a tedious effort. I question why the
Bulletin is designed this way since it means that someone in every
single MUG is having to do exactly the same editing job each month.
It seems to me it would be simpler if the Bulletin authors just
issued two versions of the Bulletin each month, one for Execs and one
for Members. Then there would be no need for editing at the local
level and each MUG could handle the Member version in whatever way
they deem best. I understand that the Bulletin editors would still
have to send the Member version of the Bulletin out to an Executive
of each MUG, not directly to MUG members, but it seems to me that
doing so would eliminate a whole bunch of repetitive editing work
that is being done by dozens or hundreds of MUG Execs and would
probably lead to better overall redistribution of the Bulletin on to
MUG members.
The reason we send our edited member version out via email to all of
our members is because we do not have a web site which has a
protected area just for club members, and our MUG discussion list is
an opt-in scenario which also does not cover EVERY club member. Email
gives us the maximum coverage of our members. We do have a very small
number of paid-up members who do not have email addresses. These
folks pretty much are left out in the cold except for the odd time
that we may feature the Vendor Offers in our monthly newsletter
(without codes), since we do snail mail out the newsletter to these
members.
One problem with this email approach, however, is that it demands
that the person who is doing the editing of the Bulletin, and
presumably then the sending of it to members, has access to an up to
date list of paid-up members and their email addresses. In our MUG,
only the Membership Chairman has the very most up to date membership
database, and he then supplies me (the MUG President) with an updated
copy of the MUG Membership database (Filemaker file) each month or
so. We have historically NOT asked our Apple Ambassador to do this
email job because it would mean that one more person in the club
would need to be provided with an up to date membership database each
month. My experience is that it is not a great idea to have multiple
copies of the club membership floating around.
A possible way around this, though, would be to have the Ambassador
do the Bulletin editing job but then have him or her pass that edited
document on to myself or the Membership Chairman for emailing to
members.
While our MUG has the best of intentions to do this member
notification process every month, I have to admit that from time to
time it simply does not get done. Sometimes this is just because the
Bulletin email does not get acted on immediately and falls out of
mind. Other times, the person who is supposed to do the editing
procrastinates because he or she knows they don't have an up to date
listing of paid up members and email addresses to use in sending the
email out.
Currently, we are investigating ways to highlight the Vendor Offers
on our web site. We would do this, obviously, without showing any
confidential codes or URL's. Our MUG is small enough that we could
simply issue instructions on the web site for members to contact our
Apple Ambassador or other Executive if they want to pursue any
particular offer. In other words, we may be able to set up a process
which does not rely upon the Bulletin being forwarded out to members
at all.
I would have no objection if the UGAB was to host a web page that
would do exactly this. It would list all the current Vendor Offers
but without the special codes or URL's needed. It would advise MUG
members to contact their respective MUG Executives to obtain this
confidential info if they had not already received it through their MUG.
Cheers!
Jim Foster
President - Macintosh Users East [MaUsE]
&
Apple User Group Regional Liaison - Canada
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| | >Question (From: "Maria O. Arguello" <email@hidden>) |