[CRUSH-build] team e-communication options

[Bill Bennett]

Continuing that topic of team communication tools - this is important for team members to read and adhere to:

We have the following team email lists, with the associated purposes. We can create more if someone has a suggestion for other needs, but we also want to keep the number reasonably small, since people already have a hard time keeping straight about which one to use for what. 

all at crush1011.org - this is generally used for team activity announcements, updates about what's going on or coming up, newsletter distribution, etc. It is received by virtually everyone who has any interest in team activities, something over 100 people. It's important to understand that a message to "all" consumes a lot of time when you consider that so many people have to deal with it. Some people are very sensitive about the number of unnecessary emails in their inbox. Please make sure that if you're sending to "all" it's something that everyone (students, mentors, parents, school administors, sponsors, friends of the team, etc) should know about. If it's about team day to day business, or just chat among team members, this is not the right place. 

build at crush1011.org - this is intended to be the "build" team, meaning active team members that are interested in the robot build process. This is probably all students and most or all mentors, since building robots in the end is our main activity. This is a subset of "all" - everyone on this list should also be on "all". 

code at crush1011.org - this list is for the programmers and often has programming questions, comments, or ideas. Usually only the programmers are on this list, though sometimes builders who don't program are still interested in some of the discussion that goes on here. This list is a subset of the "build" list since all programmers have to also know what's going on with the hardware.

core at crush1011.org - this is the administrators on the team, mainly mentors, teachers, and school administrators. After we get a student organization solidified (officers, student meeting schedule, division of roles, etc) the leadership of that organization will be added to this list. 

Note that on all of these lists, you can't post if you're not a member of the list. So if you try to post something to a list you think you should be on and it bounces back to you, let me know and we'll get you added to the list. 

In addition to this, we have a nice bulletin board style system that has gotten little use in the past, but which I would encourage the team to consider using. It holds and displays messages on each topic someone starts, so you can review the history of a dicussion and add your thoughts to it. It does not come to your email - you have to go looking for new messages. Because of this, we can be much more liberal about the type and volume of interactions posted - it doesn't bother anybody who doesn't want to be bothered.

To use the bulletin board system, you have to register a name, and I have to activate it. This keeps the spammers and other bad guys out. Get yourself registered like this:
start at http://crush1011.org
click "Team Information" at the top
click "Forums" at the top
under "CRUSH Forums" over on the right, click "register" above the "log in" link. 
(If there is no "register" link, it's because someone left themselves logged in on that computer. Click "log out", then try again.)
Fill out as much of the registration form as you want to, but at least the lines marked required with *.
Click submit at the bottom. 

I'll receive a message about your attempt to register and approve it. Use any userid you want, but your real name, otherwise I won't know you're really a team member. 

After I approve your forum registration, you can explore the forums and post a hello somewhere. This would be a good place for example to have an ongoing discussion of trash and trinket ideas, and things of that nature. Anything that's likely to be lots of messages over a long period of time on the same topic is a perfect candidate for a forum discussion. There's a bit of a chicken and egg situation here - the forums are very useful now, and won't be until they are used. Once people begin using them for good purposes, it will draw in team members and activity. So a few of you have to decide to get this started if it's to be worthwhile.

OK, thanks for reading this far (assuming you didn't just jump to the bottom). See you in the e-mail and forums.

Bill Bennett
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