Digital Presence

Launching http://richmond-annex.org/

We have acquired the richmond-annex.org domain name, and are in the process of setting up the web site. Currently some parts are not filled in yet, but they will get filled out over time.

The website runs on a system called WordPress, which has been designed to be usable by non-technical users, so the idea is that volunteers working on council initiatives will be able to maintain their sections of the website themselves.

Official email addresses

We have set up official @richmond-annex.org email addresses and mailboxes for all the elected roles like president, vice president, etc, as well as an [email protected], which will get forwarded to all of them. We can also create other email addresses for other purposes if we need them.

Setting up mailing lists

Currently the monthly General Meeting reminder is sent using a hand-maintained contact group via a gmail account. There are several issues with this approach:

• As the group gets larger, it gets increasingly likely that the mailing will get classified as spam.
• It is easy to forget to send the emails via BCC, which ends up sharing everybody’s email address with everyone else.
• There is no easy way for people to unsubscribe.

We plan to move the mailing list over to a commercial bulk email provider, which will have a lot of advantages:

• As a bulk email provider, they already have all the tools we will need to ensure that our mailings are less likely to get classed as spam.
• People will be able to one-click unsubscribe from the mailing list if they want to.

Digitizing membership and dues

Currently members pay their dues by writing a check at one of the General Meetings. We would like to offer members the option of paying their dues online with a credit or debit card. We will also digitize the membership list, so we can better keep a track of who is a member and who is not.

Don’t worry – people will still be able to pay by check if they prefer!

Streaming council meetings online

There are many reasons why local residents might not attend the General Meetings, and one of them is that they may not be able to attend, perhaps due to disability or family care commitments. We are thinking of investigating the feasibility of streaming meetings online, although as there may be privacy concerns from members physically attending, we would need to get member approval before then.

Streaming the meetings online would also allow us the opportunity to save those recordings for people to watch later – again with member approval, of course.