the old GRP-Facl list serve

[Jon_Jenkins]

Dear all

can we go back to the old GRP-FACL listserve while this is worked out?

Jon Jenkins

[Hege_Hermansen]

I would like to second this suggestion!
Thanks,
Hege

[Andi_Roberts]

I would third it (if that is possible :p)

The world seems to have stopped spinning in the IAF forum :confused:

Andi

[Carol_Sherriff]

It is with some trepidation that I say that I could never use the old ListServ, I could either never find my way back into the system or had my email inundated with stuff I didnt want - never seemed to get the balance right. Lets hope this sorts itself out - or perhaps its like owning a dog eventually it trains you and you think what a well behaved dog it is :eek:
Very best
Carol

[Gary_Rush]

Hi,

Well, to answer the question about going back, it can't happen. The IAF didn't own the list serve - we were sponsors and it no longer exists. Our budget has been moved and spent on the forum for the next few years.

This forum works very well. The only feature that is problematic is the email notification - a remnant of the list serve. Most of the people have found a way to log on and view this on-line - just like they do the IAF website and the Methods Database. So, it seems that the easiest thing to do is to check out the forum once a day (like I do) and see what new posts exist and participate in the discussions that you want to. The email feature was only a minor convenience (although I'm happy not to have my inbox filled with additional emails) and mostly to help those who have difficulty getting to the internet. The rest is adjusting to change - instead of having it sent to you, you check it out here. Once you get used to it, it is much easier than the list serve and we can do a lot more - such as uploading documents, looking at multiple threads, allowing the forum to store the threads instead on your my email, and viewing the calendar all in one place. Plus, we can start discussion groups on a special subject of interest.

The list serve was great and served it's purpose. Just as it replaced older technology and provided new conveniences, this forum is replacing the list serve - try it and enjoy it.

Ciao,
Gary

[Jon_Jenkins]

Dear all

It was June when I received my last email from the community. Looking at the traffic in the forum at this point, I would hope that a innovative and quick way of keeping the community together and functioning would be seen as having some use. Perhaps I am wrong but I see less participation, fewer topics and fewer responses.

I am not suggesting that we abandon the Forum or its technical improvements. My concern is not about technology or hanging on to the past. I am concerned about the community that existed because of the old list serve. Neither, in my opinion, the IAF website nor the Methods Database are the focus of communities. They serve different purposes.

It seems we could use the existing yahoo groups site or the google groups site as a tempory measure. We can choose to be notified in a number of ways via these groups.

While people can log on regularly to this site and many do, it is a pain for me. I had the feeling that the majority of participants in the list serve used this feature. I do log on to the forum to help contribute to the survival of the community. Some people liked to get daily digests. Some liked to see every individual email, like me. I found it helped me participate in the community. Some people did not get any email, they simply wanted access to the archives. The old site allowed for a wide variety of ways to use the site.

I am not suggesting that this is a final solution. It may not work although I belong to lots of groups in Yahoo and Google that seem to work fine. Perhaps there is a better solution than what I am suggesting. Let's look for one.

What do others suggest?

best

Jon

[Hege_Hermansen]

I would be very happy if we could try out a google or yahoo group as a temporary measure. OK, perhaps I am old-fashioned, resistant to change and lagging behind in the technological revolution, but the option of getting emails into your inbox as they appear worked much better for me - I feel the same way as Jon. It seems like that is also the case with many others, considering the drop in participation on this list. Since yahoo/google groups can cater to both user preferences (those who want instant, separate emails, and those who want daily digest notifications as we get them now for the forum), would it be worth trying out as an interim solution?
Hege

[Andi_Roberts]

Hi Jon, Hege and all,


I agree with what has been said.

I understand the transition has been difficult and not worked as well as planned and as a consequence the number of active members & messages has dropped a bit.

I am happy (technologically speaking) to use any communication technology - forums, this group, list serv.

More than the medium, the community, is far more important to me. It is hard to create community, how ever, if people are not able to use easily what ever technology is chosen. I am sure that many, like me don't log in as often as the could because simply not a lot is happening. This in itself creates a vicious cycle so that even less happens :(.

What is the IAF "official" response & time line for getting a system that supports member interaction in a way that is "easy" to use for the majority of the members?

I would be happy to try a google / yahoo group and I have set one up on google which could be used if required (currently empty with me only as a member :)).

Thoughts / Ideas???

Regards from Spain, Andi

[Andi_Roberts]

I also see that this group was set up but is not being used....
http://groups.google.com/group/grp-facl

[Ramon_Tate]

It is obvious that the new system presents a new paradigm of interaction that does not, at the moment, encompass the old, and therefore it fails to meet our needs. This is NOT a "minor" inconvenience, it is a major deficiency and needs to be corrected ASAP (if is at all possible). The other group forums mentioned (Google, Yahoo!) seem to have understood better how people prefer to communicate, and I would be in favor of trying one of them out if possible.

A tangential issue: my original - and lengthy - reply to the preceding comments was rudely rejected, and lost, when the system apparently timed out my login while I was composing my reply. Has anyone else noticed this behavior?

[Andi_Roberts]

The list serve was great and served it's purpose. Just as it replaced older technology and provided new conveniences, this forum is replacing the list serve - try it and enjoy it.

I get it and I am happy to use it!

My issue is the lack of action - but hey, perhaps it is because it is August and mainland Europe is on holiday ;)

Perhaps over time it will build up again in terms of numbers.

Questions I might be asking are

How long might it take to build it up to previous levels of discussion?
Will it do damage to the IAF in terms of subscriptions and/or enthusiasm of members?
What can be done short term (< 3 months) to mitigate what has happened?I have about 6 forums that I pop in to on a daily basis, it's easy if is a habit, but for many GRP-FACL list serve members it clearly isn't a habit yet :( and may never be and that for me is a shame :confused:

Just some thoughts, Andi

[Gary_Rush]

Hi,

It's funny that there has been a flurry of posts about the list serve - on this forum.

It's impossible to go back and the effort of setting up a Yahoo or Google group wouldn't help - you'd have to contact and coordinate with almost 900 people from the list serve to make it work.

Once you get used to the habit of checking the forum, it is quite easy.

With the list serve, there were slow times, too. Part of what we can do is post here and stimulate discussion. We have two new administrators coming who are eager to do just that. That should build up participation.

As for the email fix - it's hoped that by the end of August it'll be fixed. The instant email will not be used - there were too many problems with the "out of office" variations that cause infinite loops (we don't know all of the variations people will use). What was decided is that a daily digest with the ability to reply to individual posts will be provided. It takes programming and time.

I don't know what this will do to the IAF, although the majority of list serve members weren't members of the IAF, so it may not hurt at all. We don't want to lose anyone - member or not - so we'll work to make this more active and hopefully attract more people - and many of the list serve participants back.

Change always comes with new benefits - sometimes at a cost.

[Gary_Rush]

Oh, by the way, if it is assumed that this forum is "dead", you might look at the fact that it has:

88 threads,
470 posts,
432 members, and
73 active members.

Not bad for a new forum. The threads cover topics such as:

open space
SWOT
numbers of facilitators
public engagement
principles and values
Knowledge transfer
hosting
MBTI
continuous improvement
problem-solving
cultural awareness
conferences
CPF

and other topics - just on the public forums. That seems pretty good for a start.

[Ramon_Tate]

Andi Roberts said, in part:

"I am happy (technologically speaking) to use any communication technology - forums, this group, list serv."

More than the medium, the community, is far more important to me. It is hard to create community, how ever, if people are not able to use easily what ever technology is chosen. I am sure that many, like me don't log in as often as the could because simply not a lot is happening. This in itself creates a vicious cycle so that even less happens :(.

To which I respond:
"The medium is the message" [my emphasis], and, by extension, shapes the character of the community as well. This really isn't about technology but about the constraints and capabilities the technology imposes or permits. What appears to have happened is that the technological means chosen to replace the LISTSERV (it is a proper name, by the way) forum doesn't implement those LISTSERV features that contributed to the sense of community (and usefulness) that characterized this forum for me and apparently for others as well. The most important of these features for me were, and still are:

1. the ability to receive a periodic email digest of postings [daily is fine];
2. an easy way to way to designate which threads I wish to include in these digests, including new threads as they appear [not possible now except by making a post to an existing thread].

Virtually all the other features are just "icing" - tasty, but not really worth it without the "cake." I am hopeful that we will see these capabilities realized soon.

Peace,
Ramon

[Jon_Jenkins]

Dear all

I am terribly sorry if I seemed to be suggesting that we go back. I am not. I am suggesting that something active be done to strengthen the community dimension of the group.

I accept the statistics about the forum. I don't agree with the interpretation. They confirm my concern about the community. Ah, the ladder of inference is a wonder, no?

What Ramon says about community and how difficult it is to maintain resonates with my thinking. Technology does effect the community and how it interacts. Apparently there are ways of sending emails to members of the community. At least we should be getting updates about what is happening.


The reasons I liked the individual emails are
I want to respond to a specific postings.
I have been a quite active member of the LISTSERV for a number of years although a more a lurker this past year and I find that individual emails are conducive to my preferred way of participating.
I am a member of about 20 groups and most of the others I use a form different from email.
I want my emails to dribble in over the course of the day.
I find this mode of interacting more like a dialogue than the digest or the logon forms.I am surprised that "out of office" replies are a problem since so many other platforms have seem to deal with this. I am reminded of the difficulties we had when the website was set-up.

I think other modes of receiving the postings are great and should also be available. I use them all with other groups. Of course, I can adapt. I would think that we would want as many ways to enter into the dialogue as possible.

I suppose that part of my irritation is the fact that the last 4 times I tried to join the forum my internet explorer froze up. By closing all other applications I finally got on. Oh well I can get used to it over time.

I do hope this is a useful discussion to the community.

best

[Andi_Roberts]

Based on the comments in this thread a key question pops up in my mind over and over again........

"How can we (IAF and members/non-members) rebuild this community to be a dynamic and flourishing one?"

Ideas, thoughts.....?

Andi

[Gary_Rush]

The best way is to post interesting threads - comments and provoking ideas and have people respond. If there are threads worth participating in, people will participate and the word will spread - just as it does in other forums. That's the only way that people will join in.

[Allan_Mees]

After the 2007 IAF European Conference we set up some Facebook Groups to see if conference attendees would be willing to carry on the networking which was so successful at the conference.

About 75% of the conference attendees signed up - a few contributed and after a while the Facebook group stagnated. Facebook has a lot of features including the notification of updates to discussions etc. Individuals can tailor how they are notified of any changes.

When I look at how IAF members are using Facebook it is interesting that many of those that joined after the conference are very active in maintaining their "social" networks many have joined other groups but they don't seem to be interested in the IAF group.

It seems to be the usual issue about waiting for somebody to post something interesting and then I will respond rather than being willing to start a discussion.

I have been here before many years ago both using Listserves and Lotus Notes for company related knowledgebases and the most frequent response I got when I asked why people didn't use the various fora was that they logged in a few times and there was nothing of value. They didn't seem to understand that they could add a lot of value from their own experience but for some reason they were waiting for others to do that for them.

I admit to being a networking addict with Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, and various Yahoo Groups that I contribute to. I probably use Facebook the most because it allows me to keep in touch with all my social, family and work related contacts all in one place. So one login is all I need.

I pop in here when I get an email telling me there is a new post. I'm retired but still interested in the IAF so will probably read and respond rather than initiate new discussions.

Oh and I wish it would stop raining in Scotland!!

Allan

[Allan_Mees]

A tangential issue: my original - and lengthy - reply to the preceding comments was rudely rejected, and lost, when the system apparently timed out my login while I was composing my reply. Has anyone else noticed this behavior?

That just happened to me as well - I am a two finger typist and it takes me a while to think type and edit. I was timed out on my post after about 10 minutes fortunately hitting the back key rather than logging in again allowed me to copy the contents of my last post and then login in create a new reply and submit it.

This would definately put me off contributing on a regular basis.

If I want to say something - do I need to create it in Word and then copy paste into the forum.

It shouldn't time out!!

[Scott_Simmerman]

Yeah, this is not working for me either.

Over the years, I have posted a lot of messages but I am just not engaged by this format at all.

Reminds me a little of when ASTD took Master Control over its Networks - groups of affiliated people interested in a topic and told us that they would make their administration of it work better than the users did. Ours was functioning beautifully and was one of the reasons I went to the conference 12 years straight.

Gee, I'm no longer a member of ASTD and do they even have Networks any more?

I'm an (in-)active member of a lot of groups with a listserve kinda like this one now...

I think we need to push messages and threads out to (users) more effectively than this is doing.

[Jay_Wisecarver]

Oh, by the way, if it is assumed that this forum is "dead", you might look at the fact that it has:

88 threads,
470 posts,
432 members, and
73 active members.

Not bad for a new forum.
.....snip....
That seems pretty good for a start.

Sorry Gary but when respected members and people who I like to hear from, like Scott, post what they do (that it's not working for me...), I would have to say this is a BAD start. Especially since it is not a start of some new list, but a change of technology. As a long-time "potential" as Ed Hampton called us mostly lurkers on another list, I only come look when I get a notice something new is here. If someone had not made a comment on another thread that pulled me to the board to express my dissatisfaction, I would not have seen all the new posts.

Holidays in Europe and US may be part of the drop in traffic July-August and now Sept, but maybe go back to the archives of previous years and compare.

I do appreciate the service. I some years pay dues (even at cut rates sometimes have trouble scraping up the dues fee) as I like the group and the resources available, but looking at the results of the change and the fact I feel out of the loop that was inclusive before the change.

Sorry for the rant....

Jay

[Barry_Savage]

Hi all;

I've been around for about 10 years, and the new format does not work for me - I agree with the folks who would like to see the messages pushed vs. getting an e-mail that a new message was posted.
I find that I now rarely check the IAF site - getting a daily e-mail digest, as Trdev still sends, is the easiest way for me to keep current. Am I missing something?

Thanks,
Barry

[Gary_Boettcher]

All,

Please hold on just a little longer. The email functionality may be operational very soon. The server is being migrated to a different server as I write, and should be up this weekend. The "Techs" are working very hard on these issues. As Gary Rush intimates, I think you will like the new system and its ensuing functionality once it is fully operational.

Best regards,

Gary Boettcher
IAF-Forum Administrator

[Gary_Rush]

Well, the forum email issue is being fixed. The daily digest will be available Thursday and the email issues will have been worked out. The instant email option will also be available on Thursday - go to your profile and set it up if you want it. The daily digest will allow you to respond to specific posts - i.e., you can do what you did with the List Serve, now with the forum - plus all the things that the forum adds.

[Andi_Roberts]

Excellent, THANK YOU Gary and the rest of the supporting team :):):)

Best regards from a sunny Spain, Andi

[John_Miller]

Aaahhh.

Hello everybody.
Long time no see.
Today is my first visit to iaf-forum.org and this is my first posting.

I just read through this thread and confess: I miss GRP_FACIL list serve too, for 2 reasons:
1)


---
Understand?

While there is no "right" way to communicate,
a) there are rather successful examples in the social networking realm (facebook, etc), and
b) this format isn't doing it for me either.

For me this issues are about:
- the openness/closedness of the feel of this service (I find this format is not friendly or familiar)
- how we communicate as a rule (I use email all the time so a daily digest from GRP_FACIL was enough to swallow on my own terms)
- whether or not a lot of lively new voices interconnect with one another (no offense guys, but we are talking to the same people here -- hi friends).

I just read a note about social networking that claimed that Canadians are the "most penetrated" (not my words!) market for accessing the internet through computers whereas other places like Australia are more cell-phone interconnected. I don't know how true that is, but it impacts the structures we put in place.

Bottom line:
I have seen no promotion of the IAF-NA conference for months (scary).
I rely on 1-on-1 communication among colleagues.
I have started to pay a bit more attention to Linked-In, Plaxo, Facebook, and the more functional, integrated, and familiar online community spaces.

Maybe those established social networking sites are where PARTS of the discussions go in the future and leave the more "institutional" discussions in this more closed IAF-specific environment?

:o Other than that, it's great to be back in touch with you-all.
And hey -- it works despite my nit-picking.

...john

[Anna_Green]

Well, the forum email issue is being fixed. The daily digest will be available Thursday and the email issues will have been worked out. The instant email option will also be available on Thursday - go to your profile and set it up if you want it. The daily digest will allow you to respond to specific posts - i.e., you can do what you did with the List Serve, now with the forum - plus all the things that the forum adds.

I have checked in my profile and can't see a way to set up the email option. Is it functional yet?

Anna

[Gary_Rush]

Hi Anna,

Yes, it is working. Go to your profile and look for "edit list" or "edit forum subscriptions" = with the list, you select which threads you want instant email. With "edit forum subscriptions", you select what type of notification you have for the forums (none, daily, etc.).

Hope that helps.

[Bill_Harris]

All,

Please hold on just a little longer. The email functionality may be operational very soon. The server is being migrated to a different server as I write, and should be up this weekend. The "Techs" are working very hard on these issues. As Gary Rush intimates, I think you will like the new system and its ensuing functionality once it is fully operational.

Best regards,

Gary Boettcher
IAF-Forum Administrator

Gary, I'm sorry. I know folks are trying, but this has been going on since, what, April or May (the first launch was in May, right, but there was a beta before that and perhaps design work being done before April?). I've designed and implemented a successful system similar in spirit to this (the technology wasn't as evolved in about 1996, when I did it, but our system contained more functionality in the sense of semi-automated tracking of project action items and the like in a database and in the sense of using CSS to format those forums differently for online and print viewing). Two of us designed it, implemented it, and had running in production within a week, working only part-time (I'm guessing we put about 2-3 people-days into it total). We used an action learning cycle to adjust it to meet people's needs better; that took either one or two more weeks (my memory after over a decade is a bit fuzzy on that detail), working just a small fraction of our time on this.

Based on my prior experience as a software manager and software quality manager, I would have estimated that migrating the existing GRP-FACL to a new system would have taken about a week in calendar time (with perhaps some planning work done ahead of that) and that the hardest job would have been moving the GRP-FACL archives so that the entire archive would have appeared to be seamless. I was so wrong.

As I responded to Gary Rush this morning (we'll see if my email response makes it to the list), this design is fundamentally flawed IMHO: even if the implementation begins to work, it has show-stopper design defects that will keep me away, and no one seems to care (or perhaps even listen).

BTW, the experience of typing this response in the forum reminds me of one additional reason to want GRP-FACL back: I miss my environment for generating text terribly. I presume all of us have configured our systems to meet our productivity needs. I've standardized on Emacs for writing (been using it since 1986, I think), and it's the most productive method I've found for putting words into electrons. I'm not interested in starting an editor war, for I know others prefer other approaches and have customized those approaches for them. Speaking only for myself, typing here is painful compared to composing text in Emacs.

Three final comments:



If you want a free, private system you control, check out mailman and nabble. That could come close to replicating the functionality we had before, AFAIK.
If you don't even want to host the list, check out Google Groups or perhaps Yahoo Groups. I'm not an overwhelming fan of Yahoo Groups functionality, but it and Google Groups work, and you can have them running in a hurry. I don't think that would replicate GRP-FACL as well, and I'm not sure if you could incorporate the old archives.
I suspect there's little to be done; the months we've lost community may have destroyed something that used to live and flourish (it was one of my top two or perhaps three learning communities). I've chatted with others I used to watch for in GRP-FACL who said they've not been here in months, and I've noticed some old standbys here saying much the same thing (they've apparently just expressed their frustration, heard people not listening to them, and left). I suspect that the old community is dead; it remains to be seen if a new one arises and whether any of the old community decide to join it.

In the spirit of advocacy _and_ inquiry, what am I missing? Where am I wrong?

And is anyone listening to those of us who have problems with the new forum? That is, can anyone give me evidence of inquiry from those who are advocating for the new technology?

Bill

PS: Don't count my presence in statistics showing this works; I'm only here to turn off all list email, for, as my earlier emailed reply to the list (Gary Rush's article) said, the forum has show-stopper defects that mess up my automated address book.

[Barbara_Streibel]

I am a past member of Grp-facil list serve, and have not been participating on the iaf forum site because I find it difficult to do, and difficult to find the threads, etc.

Also, although Gary replied that emails are not being pursued because they require programming and are difficult, I am STILL getting bombarded with 'out of office' emails (the same 'out of office' repeating many many times); so I don't understand why getting useful emails is so much more difficult, or why you cannot stop the repeating 'out of office' emails. Barbara

[Gary_Rush]

Hello,

I'd like to state that we have all been listening to every comment. We are not going back to another technology and we are not going to change technologies. We looked around and selected the forum format and have been working to make the email work the same as it did with the List Serve - it now works pretty much as the list serve did. It has a glitch or two (our first "out of office" glitch in a couple of months was today - only one), but when that happens, we work to fix it as fast as possible.

The switch over wasn't so simple - there were 900 people to move over, threads to set up, forums to establish, features to test, etc. We have been working very hard to provide new features while maintaining as much of the old as possible. Apparently many people who had difficulty working the forum did manage to post - albeit to trash the forum rather than engage in a positive conversation. So, the difficulty getting to the forum hasn't stopped or slowed the complaints and suggestions to use another technology.

My suggestion - enjoy the forum. If you have suggestions for improvement, we'd love to hear them. The List Serve isn't coming back - it's up to the members (everyone) to make this a thriving community by posting and responding just as you did with the List Serve.

[Mary_Jackson]

Wow, I'm feeling somewhat insulted. Expressing a preference for one system does not mean that someone rejects all change.

Different people process information in different ways; that's a fact. If the current design works for you, that's great -- but it can be perfect for you and not perfect for someone else with a different set of synapses!

Those who drove the change did so because you found something lacking in the old design. Please respect the fact that the new design may be a poorer fit for those who were most active in the old listserv.:(

[Mary_Jackson]

And by the way, speed is still a problem. From my office, with my high-bandwidth connection, it takes 1.75 minutes to load a page -- I timed it three times. That's 5.25 minutes of wait time to read to the end of this thread.

I work in the IT department of a company that was just named to the InfoWeek Top 100 among companies with revenues in excess of 5 billion USD -- we have a very fast Internet connection.

[Sean_Rush]

And by the way, speed is still a problem. From my office, with my high-bandwidth connection, it takes 1.75 minutes to load a page -- I timed it three times. That's 5.25 minutes of wait time to read to the end of this thread.

I work in the IT department of a company that was just named to the InfoWeek Top 100 among companies with revenues in excess of 5 billion USD -- we have a very fast Internet connection.

At what time do you go online? I'm curious to know because I have tested the speed of this site on multiple locations (corporate offices, internet cafes, home) and have not run into any speed issues. In fact, the forum loads every page instantly for me and I have a standard internet connection.

Thanks.

[Hege_Hermansen]

"At what time do you go online? I'm curious to know because I have tested the speed of this site on multiple locations (corporate offices, internet cafes, home) and have not run into any speed issues. In fact, the forum loads every page instantly for me and I have a standard internet connection." - Sean Rush

I also have problems loading forum pages, in the same way as Mary (and other forum members) have described - the latest time it occurred was today at 2.15pm GMT+1, but it happens most times when I try to access the forum. I have a high speed connection at my office, and don't have any consistent problems with other web pages.

Thanks,
Hege