Sorry for the belated response to your in-depth response to my in-depth response! (Here's another disadvantage to being an outsider vs. an insider -- if an insider, there's a self-expectation of "Hey, this is communication about an org I'm part of, it needs to not drop far down the RL priority list" vs. as an outsider the potential of "I'll get around to it after these other things I want to do.")
Thank you very much for your response and points.
Long, somewhat rambling, possibly annoyingly prescriptive, but well intentioned thoughts ahead:
Black box syndrome & official vs. unofficial space communications I've used various e-mails etc. to send in about 10 or so support requests or suggestions/feedback re AO3 or OTW using the form over the last few years. No more than 3 of those have gotten a substantive -- that is, more than the automated "Hi, we'll get to this real soon now!" -- response.
I've also commented a handful of times at OTW or Archive blog posts on the website, or on the DW and LJ journals. I do sometimes get responses there, rarely fast.
The shining exception is Fanlore. When I've e-mailed (usually using the support form I think) I've gotten substantive responses from one or more people on the Wiki- and/or Gardeners Committee within a week, often much faster, almost every time. The response rate on Fanlore Talk pages is often less fast, but Fanlore editors know that many Talk pages fall between the attention cracks; I believe that's one reason why Fanlore recognized the need for getting a forum set up.
The (relatively) high level of response and interaction at fanlore is so out of the norm for OTW-related blogs that I don't mentally consider it part of OTW official communication channels at all because there is actual, frequent, publicly visible interaction there between committee and users.
This is a nice thing about Fanlore, but reflects pretty sadly on at least one PR-savvy person's subconscious perceptions of the rest of OTW's communications channels.
"That's why in many cases the only timely response Support can give is that they've passed it on to the appropriate places. There are concrete things we're working on to improve this, though, including a public Support Board and making the Feature Requests list and process public, both of which I'll cover in my followup post."
A public forum/support board where anyone can see (and chime in with their +1s or -1s on) all current support & feature requests/feedback comments is crucial. I think it should be one of the very top (like the other 10 things) priorities to get set up by the end of this calendar year at the latest. As in, priority over upgrading Yuletide coding.
Because the lack of transparency in what happens to your e-mail and how it's being followed up on/who's discussing it and the inability of other users to see and chime in with "that's a great idea!" or "no, you don't realize how archives work, let's not do that" is one of the reasons that unofficial spaces are de facto trying to function as forums or support or brainstorming boards for OTW projects.
Your users will not start using the official channels when all they seem to lead to most of the time is dead air, while talking in the unofficial channels gets them responses, answers, insights, and more.
The latter may not be 100% accurate, but they are something. You (the OTW) cannot expect people to start using official channels instead of or in addition to the unofficial ones unless you immediately, urgently prioritize making those official channels welcoming, responsive, and much more transparent.
This means that until your official channels (including Boards & Forums) exist/improve, the org really, really should be reading and taking into account what's being said in the unofficial channels -- not expect people to document things for the org in the org's spaces instead.
This is an element of Crisis Communications mode, which you are in, and have been, even if it may not have been recognized internally as such, since at least the last election season.
(It's actually also an element of regular Communications/PR programs and the social media aspects thereof, when it's called "paying for a clipping service" or "having a Jr. Account Coordinator collect clips and social media mentions and summarize what's in them for the rest of the PR team and the company execs.")
That means that reading OTW-related threads relevant to their department from unofficial channels every week ought to be mandatory for all committee staffers. Or Communications should task itself to write up digests every week and send them out; reading those would be mandatory. (And/or an official OTW volunteer or two could officially offer to help gather links for unofficialotwnews so that it stays a reliable, timely and complete source for the next year or so, and reading that feed & its links is mandatory.)
Once welcoming, responsive, transparent alternate channels of publicly viewable and respondable-to communications are up and running, widely promoted, and gaining significant traction and adoption, then reading and taking into account what's being said, proposed, and criticized in unofficial spaces could become voluntary instead of mandatory.
My attempts to volunteer I was brushed off very nicely, I will say that. I tried to volunteer in November of last year and again earlier this year, before the hiring freeze. Response in November was "We'll get back to you next year" and when I pinged again several months into 2012, I was told (nicely) that my interest in helping with Communication or VolCom (and I think maybe also Outreach or DevMem) for an hour or two a week wasn't useful/enough time and that 10-15 hours a week for at least the first several weeks was required.
(Which, frankly, is crazy. At other non-profits I've volunteered or recruited volunteers for, you start 'em off slow, with a 2-3 hour max training class at the very start if needed, and then you ramp them up to 10-15 hours a week, often over quite a bit of time. Helps with retention and committee/chair/board recruitment too.)
Apparently the only place in the org that had/has a place for volunteers with few hours a week is Tag Wrangling (or Coding, Testing, or Translating -- not my skill-sets), and this post, the letter, and the causes thereof again show me that not trying to join Tag Wrangling was correct -- in that I suspect that trying to work within the current Tag Wrangling environment would have made me unproductively frustrated rather than productively so.
In general, I've seen comments from board members/staffers that the idea of having microvolunteering projects has been considered, but doesn't work well because of how the org is.
What that screams to me is: the org needs to change immediately to start accepting as many microvolunteers as possible. (And the org needs to recognize and enforce that everyone, especially at the staff, committee, and board level, needs to spend 10-20% of their OTW work-time documenting the stuff they do in the other 80-90% of their OTW work-time so it becomes much easier and faster to onboard new -- micro- and not -- volunteers using existing documentation, and/or to transition someone new into a staff or board position if someone unexpectedly has to leave.)
Possibly up to and including pinging back everyone who's tried to volunteer in the last year and telling them something like: "We're working on making our Volunteering Procedures more efficient. We know this is overdue and we're sorry about it, but now we really want to make it better as best and fast as we can. You said you were interested in [not on fire thing], is there any way we can get you to help with this project, for as little as an hour a week to as many hours as you have? For example by helping with Volunteer Documentation, checking/adding links on the internal wiki, translating Volunteering information, helping track how many e-mails VolCom has sent out each week and inputting that data, helping collect information on what's needed for Volunteer Documentation from other committees, and a host of other tasks! If yes, please e-mail back and we'll let you know the next 3 available times for our one-hour 'intro to helping VolCom project' overview chat sessions that will get you set up with everything you need to know to start helping. Thanks!"
(Bonus benefit besides getting more peon-type hands to work on the VolCom project: anyone who signs up, does some of the work, and doesn't fuck it up too badly becomes a prime candidate for being moved to another volunteering position, possibly with more responsibility, either in VolCom or another area, in part because they'll have started getting more insight into how to volunteer.)
I've also seen some comments of frustration that some (micro)volunteers who offered to help the org with particular projects didn't follow through on things they said they wanted to work on.
Another thing of which I'm not sure everyone in the org who should know it is aware of: A good (albeit not fun) general rule of thumb is that around 40% of volunteers will drop out every year. If more than 60% of volunteers return year-over-year that is fantastic and gravy and wonderful, but do not count on it.
So plan for 40% loss and prepare for it by actively seeking out two to three times as many volunteers as you think you'll need for any project. If you end up with excess, either find a way to make more hands make light work on that project, or convince some of them to work on this other project you wanted to do but didn't think you'd have the volunteer resources for.
Related: In all but very well managed organizations, more than half of all proposed and approved projects will not be completed (or not for years after they were supposed to be). So try to plan for that too by building in redundancy, and by training up as many really good volunteer managers as possible.
Communications & the TW letter As an organization in Crisis Communications mode and not likely to get out of it soon, (another) one of your top five priorities as a board should be to increase the size of and resources allocated to your Communications Team pronto, so they can better deal with or have insight into more of the internal and external communications items they should be aware of/have oversight of/be pro-actively and reactively communicating with other parts of the org about.
You'll still get criticism and there will still be things that get backlash and cause unhappiness, but a smaller percentage of them will come as surprises. And with more resources (people, etc.) the Communications Committee could also work to prepare more of the org for how to more effectively (from a PR standpoint) deal with and respond to (and prepare for) criticism and backlash and occasional stumbles on the path of trying to get out of crisis mode, instead of mainly tactically focusing on the (also very valuable) interview requests and requests to write and distribute official communications, etc., which is what I imagine occupies much of their time now.
no subject
Sorry for the belated response to your in-depth response to my in-depth response! (Here's another disadvantage to being an outsider vs. an insider -- if an insider, there's a self-expectation of "Hey, this is communication about an org I'm part of, it needs to not drop far down the RL priority list" vs. as an outsider the potential of "I'll get around to it after these other things I want to do.")
Thank you very much for your response and points.
Long, somewhat rambling, possibly annoyingly prescriptive, but well intentioned thoughts ahead:
Black box syndrome & official vs. unofficial space communications
I've used various e-mails etc. to send in about 10 or so support requests or suggestions/feedback re AO3 or OTW using the form over the last few years. No more than 3 of those have gotten a substantive -- that is, more than the automated "Hi, we'll get to this real soon now!" -- response.
I've also commented a handful of times at OTW or Archive blog posts on the website, or on the DW and LJ journals. I do sometimes get responses there, rarely fast.
The shining exception is Fanlore. When I've e-mailed (usually using the support form I think) I've gotten substantive responses from one or more people on the Wiki- and/or Gardeners Committee within a week, often much faster, almost every time. The response rate on Fanlore Talk pages is often less fast, but Fanlore editors know that many Talk pages fall between the attention cracks; I believe that's one reason why Fanlore recognized the need for getting a forum set up.
The (relatively) high level of response and interaction at
This is a nice thing about Fanlore, but reflects pretty sadly on at least one PR-savvy person's subconscious perceptions of the rest of OTW's communications channels.
"That's why in many cases the only timely response Support can give is that they've passed it on to the appropriate places. There are concrete things we're working on to improve this, though, including a public Support Board and making the Feature Requests list and process public, both of which I'll cover in my followup post."
A public forum/support board where anyone can see (and chime in with their +1s or -1s on) all current support & feature requests/feedback comments is crucial. I think it should be one of the very top (like the other 10 things) priorities to get set up by the end of this calendar year at the latest. As in, priority over upgrading Yuletide coding.
Because the lack of transparency in what happens to your e-mail and how it's being followed up on/who's discussing it and the inability of other users to see and chime in with "that's a great idea!" or "no, you don't realize how archives work, let's not do that" is one of the reasons that unofficial spaces are de facto trying to function as forums or support or brainstorming boards for OTW projects.
Your users will not start using the official channels when all they seem to lead to most of the time is dead air, while talking in the unofficial channels gets them responses, answers, insights, and more.
The latter may not be 100% accurate, but they are something. You (the OTW) cannot expect people to start using official channels instead of or in addition to the unofficial ones unless you immediately, urgently prioritize making those official channels welcoming, responsive, and much more transparent.
This means that until your official channels (including Boards & Forums) exist/improve, the org really, really should be reading and taking into account what's being said in the unofficial channels -- not expect people to document things for the org in the org's spaces instead.
This is an element of Crisis Communications mode, which you are in, and have been, even if it may not have been recognized internally as such, since at least the last election season.
(It's actually also an element of regular Communications/PR programs and the social media aspects thereof, when it's called "paying for a clipping service" or "having a Jr. Account Coordinator collect clips and social media mentions and summarize what's in them for the rest of the PR team and the company execs.")
That means that reading OTW-related threads relevant to their department from unofficial channels every week ought to be mandatory for all committee staffers. Or Communications should task itself to write up digests every week and send them out; reading those would be mandatory. (And/or an official OTW volunteer or two could officially offer to help gather links for
Once welcoming, responsive, transparent alternate channels of publicly viewable and respondable-to communications are up and running, widely promoted, and gaining significant traction and adoption, then reading and taking into account what's being said, proposed, and criticized in unofficial spaces could become voluntary instead of mandatory.
My attempts to volunteer
I was brushed off very nicely, I will say that. I tried to volunteer in November of last year and again earlier this year, before the hiring freeze. Response in November was "We'll get back to you next year" and when I pinged again several months into 2012, I was told (nicely) that my interest in helping with Communication or VolCom (and I think maybe also Outreach or DevMem) for an hour or two a week wasn't useful/enough time and that 10-15 hours a week for at least the first several weeks was required.
(Which, frankly, is crazy. At other non-profits I've volunteered or recruited volunteers for, you start 'em off slow, with a 2-3 hour max training class at the very start if needed, and then you ramp them up to 10-15 hours a week, often over quite a bit of time. Helps with retention and committee/chair/board recruitment too.)
Apparently the only place in the org that had/has a place for volunteers with few hours a week is Tag Wrangling (or Coding, Testing, or Translating -- not my skill-sets), and this post, the letter, and the causes thereof again show me that not trying to join Tag Wrangling was correct -- in that I suspect that trying to work within the current Tag Wrangling environment would have made me unproductively frustrated rather than productively so.
In general, I've seen comments from board members/staffers that the idea of having microvolunteering projects has been considered, but doesn't work well because of how the org is.
What that screams to me is: the org needs to change immediately to start accepting as many microvolunteers as possible. (And the org needs to recognize and enforce that everyone, especially at the staff, committee, and board level, needs to spend 10-20% of their OTW work-time documenting the stuff they do in the other 80-90% of their OTW work-time so it becomes much easier and faster to onboard new -- micro- and not -- volunteers using existing documentation, and/or to transition someone new into a staff or board position if someone unexpectedly has to leave.)
Possibly up to and including pinging back everyone who's tried to volunteer in the last year and telling them something like: "We're working on making our Volunteering Procedures more efficient. We know this is overdue and we're sorry about it, but now we really want to make it better as best and fast as we can. You said you were interested in [not on fire thing], is there any way we can get you to help with this project, for as little as an hour a week to as many hours as you have? For example by helping with Volunteer Documentation, checking/adding links on the internal wiki, translating Volunteering information, helping track how many e-mails VolCom has sent out each week and inputting that data, helping collect information on what's needed for Volunteer Documentation from other committees, and a host of other tasks! If yes, please e-mail back and we'll let you know the next 3 available times for our one-hour 'intro to helping VolCom project' overview chat sessions that will get you set up with everything you need to know to start helping. Thanks!"
(Bonus benefit besides getting more peon-type hands to work on the VolCom project: anyone who signs up, does some of the work, and doesn't fuck it up too badly becomes a prime candidate for being moved to another volunteering position, possibly with more responsibility, either in VolCom or another area, in part because they'll have started getting more insight into how to volunteer.)
I've also seen some comments of frustration that some (micro)volunteers who offered to help the org with particular projects didn't follow through on things they said they wanted to work on.
Another thing of which I'm not sure everyone in the org who should know it is aware of: A good (albeit not fun) general rule of thumb is that around 40% of volunteers will drop out every year. If more than 60% of volunteers return year-over-year that is fantastic and gravy and wonderful, but do not count on it.
So plan for 40% loss and prepare for it by actively seeking out two to three times as many volunteers as you think you'll need for any project. If you end up with excess, either find a way to make more hands make light work on that project, or convince some of them to work on this other project you wanted to do but didn't think you'd have the volunteer resources for.
Related: In all but very well managed organizations, more than half of all proposed and approved projects will not be completed (or not for years after they were supposed to be). So try to plan for that too by building in redundancy, and by training up as many really good volunteer managers as possible.
Communications & the TW letter
As an organization in Crisis Communications mode and not likely to get out of it soon, (another) one of your top five priorities as a board should be to increase the size of and resources allocated to your Communications Team pronto, so they can better deal with or have insight into more of the internal and external communications items they should be aware of/have oversight of/be pro-actively and reactively communicating with other parts of the org about.
You'll still get criticism and there will still be things that get backlash and cause unhappiness, but a smaller percentage of them will come as surprises. And with more resources (people, etc.) the Communications Committee could also work to prepare more of the org for how to more effectively (from a PR standpoint) deal with and respond to (and prepare for) criticism and backlash and occasional stumbles on the path of trying to get out of crisis mode, instead of mainly tactically focusing on the (also very valuable) interview requests and requests to write and distribute official communications, etc., which is what I imagine occupies much of their time now.
Sincerely,
A loving critic