(A Project of the Communications Committee)
This blog will become an "official" tool in CUCC's communications toolbag around May 20. It will serve as a complement to the newsletter (printed and online), e-mail, and the CUCC website. The purpose will be to improve internal communications among members. So some explaining is called for to clarify why this particular option is being introduced.
The web site is primarily for one-way communication (webmaster posts, everyone else reads). E-mail is not bad for communications between a handful of people, but it is unsuited for large groups. (Mailing lists can help a bit, but that offers a very imperfect solution.)
Young folks have pretty much abandoned e-mail altogether. The under-30 generation has moved to various forms of text messaging for one-on-one contact and social networking tools (MySpace or Facebook primarily) for group communication. Note that both of these forms of communication are bi-directional for all participants (all individuals can provide information and receive information).
A blog represents an "intermediate tool" that is ideal where multiple people may want to transmit information that is not confidential to a large but perhaps ill-defined group. For those who want to be notified when there's a new "posting" to the blog, news readers provide that service.
Once this blog goes public around May 20, there will be a link to the blog on the CUCC web site. (The blog will always be accessible at its own address, http://cuccinfo.blogspot.com.) Prior to May 20, I will be inviting numerous CUCC members who occasionally use e-mail to distribute information widely within the church to test out the blog as an alternative. Feel free to try a few "trial" postings prior to May 20. Anyone who posts to a blog retains the ability to delete the post. (Did you ever wish you could retract an e-mail you had sent? You can do that with a blog. Or you can modify something you've posted.)
If you receive an e-mail inviting you to join the blog, it will request you to open a free Google account if you don't already have a Google account. One nice thing about a Google account is that the same ID and password are used for all Google tools, and that arsenal is growing almost daily (Google Docs, Google Notebook, Google Mail, Picasaweb, Blogger, etc.).
So give blogging a try. Even if you don't anticipate needing it now, who knows when you might want to remind church members of an upcoming event? Try out a news reader if you haven't already. They're not for geeks. They're simply for people who want to be notified when certain types of information become available and who don't have the time (or don't remember) to go out looking for all the information themselves. (Google Reader, which works inside a web browser, is such a tool.)
If you would like to be a contributor to this blog, contact me and I'll generate an invitation to you. Once blogging becomes a more common practice within the church, smaller groups may want to establish blogs for their own internal use. (For example, the Deacons or Council might use a blog to archive its minutes.) Problems such as spam and viruses that plague e-mail stem from the fact that e-mail is an old, old tool developed for an entirely different Internet than the one that exists today. So view this as an opportunity to occasionally step into a newer medium that is designed for communications within a large group.
This blog will become an "official" tool in CUCC's communications toolbag around May 20. It will serve as a complement to the newsletter (printed and online), e-mail, and the CUCC website. The purpose will be to improve internal communications among members. So some explaining is called for to clarify why this particular option is being introduced.
The web site is primarily for one-way communication (webmaster posts, everyone else reads). E-mail is not bad for communications between a handful of people, but it is unsuited for large groups. (Mailing lists can help a bit, but that offers a very imperfect solution.)
Young folks have pretty much abandoned e-mail altogether. The under-30 generation has moved to various forms of text messaging for one-on-one contact and social networking tools (MySpace or Facebook primarily) for group communication. Note that both of these forms of communication are bi-directional for all participants (all individuals can provide information and receive information).
A blog represents an "intermediate tool" that is ideal where multiple people may want to transmit information that is not confidential to a large but perhaps ill-defined group. For those who want to be notified when there's a new "posting" to the blog, news readers provide that service.
Once this blog goes public around May 20, there will be a link to the blog on the CUCC web site. (The blog will always be accessible at its own address, http://cuccinfo.blogspot.com.) Prior to May 20, I will be inviting numerous CUCC members who occasionally use e-mail to distribute information widely within the church to test out the blog as an alternative. Feel free to try a few "trial" postings prior to May 20. Anyone who posts to a blog retains the ability to delete the post. (Did you ever wish you could retract an e-mail you had sent? You can do that with a blog. Or you can modify something you've posted.)
If you receive an e-mail inviting you to join the blog, it will request you to open a free Google account if you don't already have a Google account. One nice thing about a Google account is that the same ID and password are used for all Google tools, and that arsenal is growing almost daily (Google Docs, Google Notebook, Google Mail, Picasaweb, Blogger, etc.).
So give blogging a try. Even if you don't anticipate needing it now, who knows when you might want to remind church members of an upcoming event? Try out a news reader if you haven't already. They're not for geeks. They're simply for people who want to be notified when certain types of information become available and who don't have the time (or don't remember) to go out looking for all the information themselves. (Google Reader, which works inside a web browser, is such a tool.)
If you would like to be a contributor to this blog, contact me and I'll generate an invitation to you. Once blogging becomes a more common practice within the church, smaller groups may want to establish blogs for their own internal use. (For example, the Deacons or Council might use a blog to archive its minutes.) Problems such as spam and viruses that plague e-mail stem from the fact that e-mail is an old, old tool developed for an entirely different Internet than the one that exists today. So view this as an opportunity to occasionally step into a newer medium that is designed for communications within a large group.