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electronic communication

Started by dwb, April 03, 2006, 05:43:44 PM

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dwb

I'm curious to know how much electronic communication people use at various echelons in CAP.  For squadron folks, do you have a web site?  A mailing list?  An RSS feed?  Podcasts?  Blogs?  Forums?

If yes to any of the above, what percentage of your members actually use any of those resources?  How many members have Internet access?  Do you even know?

My squadron has a web site - http://syracusecap.org - but I'm not really sure how many members look at it.  As you can tell by the front page, it's geared towards members of the unit, featuring news relevant to squadron members (as opposed to a web site aimed at people who don't know how to spell C-A-P).

I setup an RSS feed, mostly because I wanted to learn how to set up an RSS feed.  I didn't put it on the site through, because I don't think it's worth the bother for the three people that would probably use it.  Since I do all the markup by hand, I'd have to manually update the RSS feed every time I added news, and I don't need an extra step in the process.

I spent a lot of time on the web site recently, converting every page to use proper XHTML with CSS, updating copy, removing old pictures, dead links, etc.  It got me thinking about how many (or few) people actually look at the site besides me.

My squadron used to have a Yahoo! Groups mailing list, but we hardly ever used it, and I let it get deleted for inactivity.  I can't even imagine how unpopular forums would be if we had them.  The squadron forums I've looked at had less than 10 posts.  What a waste!

Have y'all had any success using electronic communications like this?

Al Sayre

I am trying very hard to get the squadron members to update their email addresses on e-services (or get an address) so I can quit killing trees to produce the squadron news letter etc.  I really prefer electronic communication.  I can get info to a lot of people in a hurry(if they'd only check their e-mail more than once a month...  >:().  Web site is next...
Lt Col Al Sayre
MS Wing Staff Dude
Admiral, Great Navy of the State of Nebraska
GRW #2787

Nick

I have a CMS-based website (www.captx007.org) that provides one-way downward communication to all squadron members (and visitors), and a forum to provide two-way communication for all members.  I also do mass email when I need to get out important announcements.
Nicholas McLarty, Lt Col, CAP
Texas Wing Staff Guy
National Cadet Team Guy Emeritus

pixelwonk

When I was maintaining WIWG's site, I implemented an RSS feed for our wing news, which could be aggregated into Squadron websites (ie: the Joomla'd www.foxcitiescap.org.)
I also enabled Squadron PAOs with accts to send in their news, but for various reasons that did just not take flight.  Still, the feed makes it possible for the current webmaster to post info in a relatively easy way, and then have all their posts show up the same way on the site, rather than have to update index.html manually.

WIWG and my squadron also uses several  "mailman" email lists as the main form of getting the word out.