Are WBCCI Exec’s Email Averse?

[dy2]

42% of the WBCCI Executive Committee has no listed e-mail addresses. The 2007 Membership Directory, Blue Beret, and wbcci.org website were consulted. The following results were found:

President - Jerry Collins – no
1st VP – Jerry Larson – yes
2nd VP – Tom Collier – no
3rd VP – Norman Beu – yes
Recording Sec. – Dona Garner – yes
Treasurer – Lester Schmidt – yes
Past President – Don Shafer – no

If you look at the positions of Pres, VP’s and PP it is 60% with no listed e-mail addresses.

In the October 2007 Blue Beret “Welcome New Members” page, only 15.5% of new members had no listed e-mail addresses.

According to a Radicati Group study from the first quarter of 2006, there are about 1.1 billion email users worldwide.

In 2007 business large and small, non-profits and membership organizations are making great efforts to communicate with their customers and members. They want and need 2 way communications and one of the ways they get it is with email.

Email has become a very quick, reliable and easy form of communications for mobile people who are frequently on the road. Forwarded US postal mail could take weeks to catch up to our “on the road” leaders.

Any comments or recommendations to improve WBCCI communications?

dy2

[Janet H]

Interesting finding.... and probably a generational difference. sigh....

[azflycaster]

I think 2007 was the first year that e-mail addresses were published in the membership directory. Mine did not make it, but it was included in my application. I think many units did not know and did not submitt them. Let's see what the numbers are in 2008.

[dwightdi]

JUst because there are none listed for them, it does not necessarily mean they do not use email. Some may not want to hear directly from all the membership. Many people are selective with who they share their email address. You can always email to our the people at Jackson Center. It is likely that they have ways to get in contact with all the officers and leaders. However, the post of liason representative was eliminated this year for reasons only known to the president.

[thecatsandi]

I beleive you have a technology adverse and generational gap. I wanted to to join the free wheelers intra group. no email. So I didn't that just did not amek any sense to me. They just do not get it. if they want new members ie younger members you have to behave in a manor that will attract yonger members.

[RedSHED]

There's a Bugs Bunny/Yosimite Sam episode where they are both trying to woo Granny. At length she says

Originally Posted by Granny

Nothing like this has happened to me since the boys got back from Gettysburg

http://www.nonstick.com/sounds/Granny.html

Now just why I should be thinking about that when reading of WBCCI leadership I leave as an exercise to the reader. :-)

[bryanl]

In 2007 ... non-profits and membership organizations are making great efforts to communicate with their customers and members. They want and need 2 way communications and one of the ways they get it is with email.

Email has become a very quick, reliable and easy form of communications for mobile people who are frequently on the road. Forwarded US postal mail could take weeks to catch up to our “on the road” leaders.

you would be amazed at how idealistic this sentiment is when contrasted to reality.

My experience is that very few volunteer run nonprofit organizations make effective use of I'net technology. I find it interesting to note how many leaders of organizations domain names use hotmail accounts (google is the latest fad) for association business.

Then there is the problem with spam and other malicious email that has made email unreliable and costly. Add to that the AirForums phenomena - who wants hate mail, anyway? - (and that form of misuse is also, sad to say, not all that unusual) and you have a communications media that sounds real nice in theory but not so much in practice.

Let's also not forget the common practice of sending attachments that blow out an email mailbox, unusual file formats, the HTML email that looks like a grade school exercise, the mass email discourtesy, and other fairly common violations of accepted practice and you have a real mess.

With postal letters, people learned how to format business correspondence and address envelopes and other such things. With email, it seems that any effort towards a similar level of expertise with e-mail is unthinkable - but much needed.

The legal side should also not be ignored. There is growing pressure for greater transparency and accountability in nonprofits and that means properly archive email messages may be in the mix. There is also the can-spam laws that outlaw sending unsolicited faxes and email in many circumstances.

Even in the corporate world where policy is often defined by knowledgable and experienced professionals and can be enforced, email procedure violations are a big big headache.

The spam load is in excess of 80% right now and climbing. That puts a severe load on the upstream message handling and downstream visibility. It is getting worse. The trend I am seeing in forward thinking organizations is to use other means of communications or private intranets.

[clancy_boy]

I guess the real question here is "Who is dy2?" and "How can a NEW MEMBER with their first post and list 'any town' 'any state' in their profile question a group of VOLUNTEERS on the issue of being directly contacted by their organizational membership?"

OOOOPS, where are my manners: First off - welcome to the AirForums - but I am sure this is a duplicate account and you have been a member for a while.

What is your beef with the WBCCI? Is the phone line to the national headquarters not open? Every time I call I get an answer and an email address is provided to the person who can answer my questions. That way the head of the organization does not get a full account every day from spamers.

Before you question those who volunteer to make up the leadership of an all volunteer organization and question their openness with the membership, remember - you know their name, where they work, their spouses name, home address and in most cases their phone numbers and other contact info - you hide behind a 3 letter forums "handle" and throw facts that are way off base with reality.

[dpandorf]

Most all of the reasons you've mentioned is why public entities are using Google mail and their other collaborative services. Google has one of the best spam filters out there.

Here's a link to just some of the organizations using their services:

Google Apps

There are several ways that the leadership could use this technology and the existing WBCCI site to accept emails from the members without being flooded with non business correspondence.

They could have a forms page and already have several subjects pre identified and a requirement the sender fills in their WBCCI # along with a visual security code to avoid spam.

Then the leadership could easily prioritize the incoming correspondence and properly respond.

Not hard, but most in the leadership are at the age when they were employed or running their own businesses this technology never existed and trying to deal with like Microsoft Outlook on your personal computer can be very trying and dangerous to boot.

[azflycaster]

Good post CB!
Some people might call the post a troll.

An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who intentionally posts controversial or contrary messages in an on-line community such as an on-line discussion forum with the intention of baiting users into an argumentative response

[moosetags]

WBCCI seems to believe that the Internet is just a passing fad. In my opinion, anyone who believes that needs to go ahead and get themselves a room at the nursing home.

Brian

[azflycaster]

I think the WBCCI is headed in the right direction with the new unit web sites. They are offering a free web site to every unit along with email and calendars for the members. The Four Corners Unit site is looking good, but not 100% doe yet. Jerry (airstream25) is our webmaster and is doing a great job! The club may have been slow getting out of the box, but this is a big step forward.

[Kevbo10]

Originally Posted by dy2

\\ MASSIVE BORING SNIP //

Email has become a very quick, reliable and easy form of communications for mobile people who are frequently on the road. Forwarded US postal mail could take weeks to catch up to our “on the road” leaders.

Any comments or recommendations to improve WBCCI communications?

dy2

PICKUP THE PHONE

OR

USE A DIVING ROD

kevbo VP of communications

[eubank]

Actually, I can sort of understand their not wanting their personal email addresses distributed too widely. One time a public school administrator in Texas distributed my email address (rather than a simple URL) to nearly every teacher in Texas; it concerned a particular kind of admissions to a graduate program. I paid the price for it in a major way, including receiving virus-directed emails from what seemed to be a gazillion people.

Lynn

[wahoonc]

Eventually (if it survives) the WBCCI will enter the 21st century It is a matter of the old school will die off and be replaced. I still deal with smaller companies in my daily business dealings that can't do email, I consider myself fortunate that they have fax machines . I also have some larger companies that I deal with that can't get a grasp on the fact that some of us don't happen to have T1 lines in our job trailers either and large attachments bog down cell modems...

Aaron

[norsea]

Originally Posted by Leipper

you would be amazed at how idealistic this sentiment is when contrasted to reality.

My experience is that very few volunteer run nonprofit organizations make effective use of I'net technology. I find it interesting to note how many leaders of organizations domain names use hotmail accounts (google is the latest fad) for association business.

Interesting.

My experience is exactly the opposite. Wonder why? Easy to explain - upwardly mobile people who work in hi tech industries and/or lots of folks from the university/college education area were members. Keep in mind that the Internet is relatively "new" to the aveage man on the street. For those at universities and national laboratories and telephone companies this means of communication was available via the Internet long before it became commercialized.

Originally Posted by Leipper

Then there is the problem with spam and other malicious email that has made email unreliable and costly. Add to that the AirForums phenomena - who wants hate mail, anyway? - (and that form of misuse is also, sad to say, not all that unusual) and you have a communications media that sounds real nice in theory but not so much in practice.

Let's also not forget the common practice of sending attachments that blow out an email mailbox, unusual file formats, the HTML email that looks like a grade school exercise, the mass email discourtesy, and other fairly common violations of accepted practice and you have a real mess.

Again interesting.

The only reason you receive this "stuff" is because you do not know how to remove it at the source (your ISP) before you get download your email. Controlling the size/volume of attachments is also rather easily done at the server level.

But, this does mean that you really need your own domain and an administrator who knows what s/he is doing in order to deal with these issues appropriately. If these issues were that big a deal most businesses would not use the medium; they have the resources and people with the ability to deal with it and it is not a problem. It is a part of doing business in the Internet age.

Originally Posted by Leipper

With postal letters, people learned how to format business correspondence and address envelopes and other such things. With email, it seems that any effort towards a similar level of expertise with e-mail is unthinkable - but much needed.

The legal side should also not be ignored. There is growing pressure for greater transparency and accountability in nonprofits and that means properly archive email messages may be in the mix. There is also the can-spam laws that outlaw sending unsolicited faxes and email in many circumstances.

Even in the corporate world where policy is often defined by knowledgeable and experienced professionals and can be enforced, email procedure violations are a big big headache.

Once more interesting; especially the last paragraph.

The second to last job that I had before I retired had me working at one of the national laboratories - you know, one of the 10; some of which do lots of weapons research, etc.

Any rate, the one that I worked with did nothing associated with national defense and as a result did not have the level of security that the other labs had on their network simply because they did so much collaborative work with universities and business institutions. They needed to have open access to the network. All this did was push the security issues away from the network group and onto the end user organizations. They did some interesting things to track network information.

I am not aware of any reason from a technical or business perspective that makes "a big headache" of dealing with this stuff. Administratively, for the people who are managers who must insure that the employees are complying with the dictates of the organization I can see no difference with using email than I can with using the phone. It is very easy to track that which employees and/or the email system users are doing with their email, to say nothing of what web sites they are visiting. I used to love it when I would send out the monthly report to the department heads with all the computer identities (that were linked with the employees) with the info about who had been visiting web sites that were not allowed by the lab. It was the supervisor’s responsibility to deal with the wrong doer, as it should be.

Yes, this smacks of "Big Brother" but everyone signed a document stating that they would abide by ALL of the dictates/procedures for the organization when they were hired. It is no different for a social organization.

Originally Posted by Leipper

The spam load is in excess of 80% right now and climbing. That puts a severe load on the upstream message handling and downstream visibility. It is getting worse. The trend I am seeing in forward thinking organizations is to use other means of communications or private intranets.

I manage my own domain for our web site. As part of this I also manage our email. Does some spam get through? Yes. But only because I am using public domain (free) software to deal with spam at the server where our domain is located. What gets through is not that big an annoyance and my email program can deal with the vast majority of what does get trough.

I can see nothing that should prevent a business or any other entity for that matter from taking advantage of the communication that the Internet offers. Email is but just one item that allows for this. On line conferencing is a great item that can drastically reduce travel expenses.

But, having said all of this, I have found that those who did not take a typing class in high school are terrified of a keyboard. And, with some older folks the concept of using a keyboard is, to them, something for a clerk or secretary and they feel that it is beneath their dignity to use. I learned this the hard way when in the telecommunications industry and we began mechanizing processes in our offices in the late 1970's.

So, yes, generational differences are a great impediment to the use of technology, IMNSHO.

Jim

[bryanl]

My experience is exactly the opposite. Wonder why? Easy to explain - upwardly mobile people who work in hi tech industries and/or lots of folks from the university/college education area were members. ...

The only reason you receive this "stuff" is because you do not know how to remove it at the source ...

I can see nothing that should prevent a business or any other entity for that matter from taking advantage of the communication that the Internet offers.

perhaps finding out about things before jumping to conclusions might yield better results? Making assumptions about others' experience is a path that has many risks. Much better to ask and clarify first, I think.

The 80% spam load I cited is from the trade literature - need citations?

I am also very familiar with server side as well as client side message filtering, Bayesian filtering methods, and the various other techniques used to attempt to segregate between desired email messages and undesired messages. It is interesting to me to see the war in progress and the change in the tactics being used by spammers to get through and spam detection to detect it.

Google's OK but mainly in the idea that somebody else is doing it - and that seems a common technology thing - let somebody else do it.

If you "see nothing that should prevent" I can understand this. I deal with a lot of people who don't see things even when it costs them a lot of aggravation, frustration, money, and wasted effort. To me, if nothing is seen it means I need to look a bit harder.

So, yes, generational differences are a great impediment to the use of technology, IMNSHO.

I look at the number of grandparents who have picked up email, instant messaging, and similar technologies to keep in touch with their grandchildren and what I see is not a generational difference impediment but rather a motivational impediment.

What I find is that people of all stripes, genders, ages, or whatever will pick up and use a technology if they perceive it as something that will help them do what they want to do.

As for making excuses and assuming things to rationalize an uptake rate that doesn't meet personal idioms, I have been watching this for near 30 years in public education. It is just now that I am starting to see some discussion about the fact that maybe, just maybe, all this high tech computer stuff hasn't done much for schools because it doesn't contribute much to what schools are there to provide.

As noted, if you want to talk to WBCCI folks, upgrade your com medium and get on the phone or, better yet, get to a rally and do some face to face commeraderie.

I think it is really important to learn and understand before taking off and making assumptions that we elevate to axioms.

[safari57]

I would like to suggest a moment of thought on this issue:

Isn't it interesting that a "New member" named DY2, with no address or any other information, on their first and only post, raises questions that would make the executive of WBCCI look badly to a group of obviously high users of technology?

One post from DY2 - and look at how it got everyone going again!

I consider this a significant disservice to those of us on this Forum. That individual is obviously nothing more than a problem and if they have more than one account they should be removed from this forum.

Think about it - comes on with one blast at the WBCCI, then nothing, and unwilling to even share any information about them. Go ahead, look at the Members Profile on that individual. Talk about hiding!!!!!!!!

Someone like that does not have the guts to pick up the phone and call WBCCI without quaking in their boots.

I would like to know that the fine folks who manage this Forum were able to find out who this individual is and if it's someone who is already a member, banish them. If it's someone who is truly interested in making WBCCI, or the Forums, a better place to be, then get back engaged, fill in your Members Profile - and quit hiding and complaining.

Sorry for the rant folks, but look at what that one foolish individual has done to once again get everyone railing against the WBCCI executive! It is embarrassing.

Barry

[Boondocker]

Originally Posted by safari57

I would like to know that the fine folks who manage this Forum were able to find out who this individual is and if it's someone who is already a member, banish them.
Barry

Barry,
For what it is worth, a tremendous amount of unseen effort takes place on a daily basis sorting out the drive by posters and spammers. The same goes for getting posts to the appropriate thread, clipping double post, helping folks get pics up ect. For every cyber jerk that gets past, many are caught on the front end, and those that slip by tend to get clipped quickly.All of this is done by volunteers. As far as outpost on the cyber frontier go, the forums are pretty well managed.

[2airishuman]

safari57....

sorry friend but i think the troll detectors are off base this time...

it is FUN to call them out though, isn't it!!

yes the topic is loaded, but the post is too bland to qualify for fishing.

or at least the bait isn't that appealing.

a few stats. a link, and a question or 2, ho hum....

give him/her/it some time and lets read if the baiting gets better...

2nd account?

perhaps but i think the mods have been catching and cleaning up on this issue recently.

it's only been a week and so few replies...

if anything this suggests a continuation of declining interest in all things wb'

besides everyone KNOWS is you really wanna contact one of the beret bobble heads...

GET A CB!!!

they haven't voted yet to let phones into the club...

let me kick ya one more time, now that yer down...

the issue of 'filling in a member profile' was beat to death a while back,

but perhaps it needs another beating...

have you glanced at mine by chance?

http://www.airforums.com/forums/f48/...red-19576.html

perhaps someone wants to bump THAT thread and continue the 'member profile exchange' without dragging...

those poor wb' ibt cb'n saintly tireless volunteers into the muck again (see that's how to bait folks! )

and it WAS the birthplace of the bunny!

cheers
2air'