Members of the group were spread out over a distance of 100 miles. A presentation had to be created by this team of 5 in less than a week. One member proposed using Skype as a coordination tool and the rest of the team agreed. This took place just 2 weeks ago in my college course and this is what happened…
Only 2 members showed up for the 1st conference call. One person didn’t know anything about Skype and wasn’t prepared to participate. Two of us were caught in traffic and didn’t have access to a computer. It was a disaster!
We eventually recovered, but it didn’t have to be that difficult. All of us could have participated if we chose to use the lower-tech telephone conference capability.
A charity walk I am involved in started using an online scheduling service to support planning activities. It was my idea. Many of the members have said it is a tremendous help. However, yesterday I talked with a member of the team and discovered she has not been seeing any of the meeting reminders being sent out via email from this service. I don’t know yet if they were ignored because the sender of the email is a service or if the emails are being trapped by a spam filter. Regardless, it was another reminder that careful consideration needs to be used when selecting and implementing technology in support of charity walks.
Technology can be extremely useful in support of things like charity walk planning, walker registration, and fundraising. However, before implementing a new technology solution consider the following:
- Assess the user friendliness
of the technology. This includes not just how easy it is to use, but also how accessible it is to your team. - Is adequate training & support available? If not, guess who will be providing it?
- Provide a low-tech/no-tech option in addition to the more tech savy one. This can help prevent alienating some members of your team (and some potential members). It will alo provide a backup when problems come up.
When you are ready to select technology solutions for volunteer management and registration/online fundraising for your charity walks, go to the charity walk resource page at http://www.CharityWalksBlog.com/walk-resources/.
Thanks,
Technology can be quite the asset to have and a pain for those who don’t know how to use it. Skype is a great tool for internet telephone conferencing if everyone has it and knows how to use it. Plus other ways to get in touch with others, would be to just create a chatroom that everyone could join in. If all that fails, there is always email (but as you stated, spam filters can block access to the user), or the ever so friendly telephone that just about everyone has.
Peggy ~www.3minutecharity.com