From a recent Facebook post by Inger, our Cascadia Commons ambassador
Hot hot weather since a week now. Lovely to swim in a lake. Lovely area in Zeeland, SW Netherlands.
Monthly Archives: August 2020
CCA (Not Tribal) Knowledge
In the interest of communal harmony, the language and imagery of the original article have been altered. The stricken text remains, so that the original sin of the author is laid bare to the reader. If any Packers’ fans are offended by the replacement image for this article, please feel free to express your sentiments in the comments section. – ed
Imagine that you are standing at the front door of the Common House at 6am, with an urgent need to enter the building and the keypad lock isn’t responding. Do you know where the Common House key can be found? A light isn’t working in the south side parking lot. Whom should you inform and how? You’re not on the current meal rotation. Is it OK to take leftovers from the Common House fridge? The answers to these and a multitude of other questions are part of the tribal Cascadia Commons acquired (hereafter CCA) knowledge accumulated here over the past twenty years.
A small fraction of that tribal CCA knowledge is contained in the members manual, most of it resides in someone’s noggin, the rest can be found on a paper calendar, or document, by searching the mailing list message archive, or Google Drive.
Because we don’t know what we don’t know, it’s often difficult to formulate the questions we should ask. It would be helpful to have a proper owner’s manual for Cascadia Commons.
I’ve spent a week and a half, putting some of our tribal CCA knowledge into a Groups.io wiki. It’s really cool. And, the exercise of organizing and understanding the fraction of our collective wisdom available in print and on Google Drive has been personally illuminating. Particularly, I’ve become aware of the gaps where we have not formalized unwritten codes of conduct and tradition. We are very dependent on the knowledge that is often locked away in the brains of our fellow residents. Thank heavens for the mailing list. Otherwise we’d be constantly knocking on doors which, in this particular era, is probably something we should try to minimize.
While my first post on this topic focused on the nifty messaging features of Groups.io, I’m equally impressed with the Wiki and easy access to Google Drive files. Having a single site, where all of our digitized knowledge can be managed and accessed, is much less stressful than navigating between several different platforms to find what you are looking for.
A No-Brainer Proposal
I’ve been thinking for a while about our Cascadia Commons mailing list which is, by today’s standards of social media and online group networking tools, truly archaic. Even for a mailing list platform Google Groups is bare bones basic. It hasn’t changed much since its inception.
Groups.io has a take on dealing with some of the limitations in traditional mailing list platforms. At its basic level it works just like every other mailing list. Messages posted to the list show up in your inbox. What’s cool is that you decide which messages are sent to your inbox by filtering messages with hashtags you designate. So, if you don’t want email on topics such as #pandemic, #dirtyjoke, #dumptrump; you can mute them and manage the inflow from the list to your inbox as you wish. Handy links appear in the footer of each message letting you mute further messages on the thread or all messages with that hashtag in the future.
There’s lots more great stuff on the server side too. You can create an album of vacation pix and post a link to it, or use a single album to store all photos that you share in messages on the site. And, like Google Groups, you can also have a web only account. Unlike Google Groups, the web features are so good that you will actually want to use it.
Requests for help can be mildly problematic as people often respond privately and we don’t know if the issue was resolved or not. The chat feature handles these scenarios beautifully. I send out my chat message to the list: “Need a ride to the airport Sunday AM.” In the footer of the message is a link to the online chat. Anyone can check the chat to see the status of the issue. No need for any more messages to the list on the topic.
There’s an integrated calendar that will send notices of upcoming birthdays and events to the list. Yes, you can mute those too if you don’t wish to receive calendar reminders. And, it has a simple poll feature for questions like: “What night would you like to watch my “Best of Ernest Borginine” film marathon:
- Monday
- Wednesday
- Friday
- Not in a million years
While it might not fully replace Google Drive because of the 1GB file limit on free accounts, the essential files can be stored on Groups.io and even links to Google Drive files and folders as well. Oh, and a feature that I appreciate, the list can subscribe to The Cascadian blog feed, sending notices of new articles as they are posted.
Finally, as the storehouse of Cascadia Commons tribal knowledge, there’s a wiki. Who knew we needed a wiki? Want to reference the Pet Policy and read comments on outstanding issues? It’s in the wiki. Confused for the umpteenth time about which plastic lids go where in the recycling, just check the wiki page. As a repository for communal knowledge, wikis are the jam.
You’re probably asking yourself now “How can I behold this eighth wonder of the world and see the great pyramids of email for myself?” You can subscribe to the list on it’s Groups.io home page and you’ll be all set for when and if we migrate from Google Groups. I think it’s a no-brainer 🤓.
Look for an official proposal and demo at the next HOA meeting.
Hat Contest
For Sue’s retirement party a hat contest was held. Here are the entrants.
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