So after my rant yesterday, what can we all do to make communication better? I know that the NAFA Board wants to be open to a certain extent; after all, they did create the leadership chat, which very few people participate. What can they do better to keep their participants informed? How can they tell us how they feel about different issues and still maintain their objectivity?
For those that don’t know, all NAFA board meetings are open to the Flyball community. The date, time, and location will be published on the NAFA web site. I encourage everyone that can to attend these meetings if one is held in your area.
Responsibility
I talked about responsibility yesterday and more that anything else it was out of frustration. I want to keep this forum open to discussion for the benefit of everyone in the flyball community and we have people that want to abuse this gift. You can still maintain you anonymity without using a fake email address. I am not a big fan of rules but in this case, I need to put some in place when making comments.
1. You can use any name you would like in the name field as long as you don’t try to impersonate someone else. Use your dogs name if you want I really don’t care.
2. Use your own email address and don’t make something up. If I find that you have entered a false or invalid email address, I will delete your comment(s).
3. This one falls on me. I will make this promise to you that I will not reveal your identity and your email address will remain confidential.
4. Make valid comments. Don’t trash anyone on the blog and keep your comments non-personal and I will do the same. If you see something that is offensive please bring it to my attention and I will either delete the comment or strike the offending words even if I’m the offender.
My Goal
I created this blog to keep everyone better informed of Flyball issues and it is a permanent record for everyone to look back on. Please try not to abuse this gift.
As you may know, I allow other contributors to make post on this blog to allow for a broader perspective of the issues in the Flyball community and also that you hear from someone other than me. I would like to do more in the training, nutrition, and conditioning area so if you know someone or you yourself, that has good knowledge in these areas and would like to make post about these topics please let me know.
Larry
7 comments ↓
On the subject of better communication, I wish that there was a way NAFA could notify people of upcoming chats, meetings, etc. other than just on their website. *Bear with me, I’m not a technology queen – but is there a way people could ‘sign up’ for e-mail notifications of upcoming meetings, chats, events, etc. and get a reminder say 24 hours in advance or something like that? I don’t know what that would entail on NAFA’s end – but I know I am on other sites that send out ‘reminders’ of upcoming chats.
This would really benefit people like myself who (unfortunately) have to work a full time job to afford to play dog sports, plus run a household, make dinner for the family, do the laundry, care for 3 dogs, etc. The next thing I know I log onto the NAFA site to check say tourney results and there are the chat transcripts, meeting minutes, etc. and I say to myself “Oh yeah, I forgot all about that…”
Basically, life gets in the way and I wish there was a way for NAFA to ‘remind’ people of upcoming events, etc. I think that could be a viable way to keep people who are interested involved because let’s face it – for many (if not most) of us, flyball is a ‘hobby’ and I’m guessing most of us have to work in order to afford all of the expenses associated with our flyball hobby (entry fees, travel costs, etc.).
Perfect example – while checking tourney results the other day I noticed that the next NAFA Board Meeting is scheduled for February 9th. However, location, time, etc. has yet to be determined. I saw the notice and said to myself “Hmm, I wonder where it’s going to be and if it’s anywhere near where I live.” I can tell you with great certainty that a week from now I will have forgotten all about it. While I Captain a team and love the sport – I also have a lot of other things going on in my life and the pending location of the next meeting is more than likely not going to be my #1 priority as the holidays approach, etc. *However, if I got an e-mail reminder/update when the location was finalized… that would make it fresh again in my mind and I would at the very least check out where it was going to be and possibly even throw it in my blackberry if it were ‘local’ (within a few hours driving distance).
Maybe it isn’t the ideal solution – but hopefully it will get people thinking.
I do not know what the NAFA web site was like before Lisa upgraded it.
While I feel she did a good job for the time, it is time it was updated again.
The current site might be updated for more intuitive navigation and a general “face lift”. Less a hit on what it is now, more of a “new” face for the public to see.
While I have been able to find stuff on it related to NAFA activities, I end up “finding” it each time I want to look at it again.
For example, try walking someone through reviewing tournament results. There is not a link to “Tournament Results”. There is a link to the database (a different site), where you search through the tournament list, after which you click on the tournament date. That is how you get to the tournament results. And never once is there a link or note informing the user that tournament results are available online, or that you click the date in the date column of scored tournaments to see tournament results. (And results do not display a teams’ racing height.) I “discovered” this by clicking hyperlinks to see what I would see.
My point? Communication. I am hoping to be showing another example on how the NAFA site might be more informative and intuitive.
Oh, Announcements. If you click the link to the front page “announcement”, you can easily miss the other December announcements. The link to the list of announcements from the front page is called “News” at the very top of the page.
I can see your frustration about communication but Lisa usually DOES post reminders about chats and also posts announcements when something new is added to the website. Watch for her signature — xterrier@gmail.com
Unfortunately few messages seem to come DIRECTLY from NAFA… one did, years ago, and it helped fuel the split and create U-FLI… since it was not really a *NAFA approved* message (G).
The other *solution* — check on the NAFA website frequently.. I keep it in my bookmarks and one click lets me check the front page for news.
My point is unless you ‘patrol’ the NAFA site on a daily basis you risk missing things. I know Lisa posts reminders, etc. and trust me… the NAFA site is in my ‘favorites’ on my home computer and work computer. But when I’m super busy I don’t always have time to ‘surf’ but I do generally check my e-mail to see if anything important is in my in-box on a daily basis and if there were an auto-email of anything new going on with NAFA I’d at least have a heads up. Even if I didn’t have time to go on the NAFA site and read what’s going on – the next time I checked my e-mail the ‘reminder’ would still be there.
As for the site itself, I have no problem navigating the NAFA site and I have nothing but praise for Lisa and her efforts. I maintain a much smaller, less compicated website and it’s a major undertaking and a daily ‘chore’ for sure. I’m in no way bashing Lisa’s efforts – I’m merely responding to the question of ‘communication’ and ways/ideas for how to make the communication between NAFA and its members better.
It is not my intent to bash Lisa’s efforts. I do not think she is getting paid to maintain it. (I do not know) It would be more helpful to her if I emailed the flyball contact email directly.
I am not sure the whole site should a job for just one person.
Keeping up with the NAFA (or any) web site over a poor phone line connection from my house does get tedious. Hence, my comment.
And I do appreciate the “xterrier” posts.
I think email notification is a great idea and could be easily set up, and there are probably free programs out there that NAFA could use.
I have a free program from my site host that called PHPList, which is mailing list software that sends out newsletters and other notifications.
PHPList
During the initial revamp of the site Lisa was paid to create the new site. I am not sure if she is still paid or not.
Lisa has tried to make sure she posts about new things being added but she is only one person.
The site itself has a lot of stuff and unfortunately I don’t think everything can be a quick link to what someone wants to see. Maybe a poll of some sort could be setup by NAFA that would let them know what participants actually would like to see as quick links.
Reminders from NAFA would be nice but we can’t expect them to do everything. I would suggest if you see something of interest put it on your personal calendar with a reminder.
NAFA does need to work on communication. It seems to go through spirts of being good about notifying us and not notifying us. Sometimes they are good about responding to emails and sometimes they aren’t – point– I sent an email on 12/4 and still not received a response.
Sometimes I think NAFA and U-Fli would be better off if they would actually pay someone to maintain more things instead of just volunteers. If someone was paid I would hope they would be more likely to post, respond, etc…
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