Blogs vs Mailing Lists

How do we, as a group of 60+, communicate with each other? Or more importantly, how do we aggregate and keep up with all the ways we communicate with each other?

At this point we have the Edu-Wiki & Google docs, which hold more "permanent" or informational kinds of communications, and we have the Google groups list-serve and our blogs for the more interactive conversation.

There's been some great interaction on the mailing list and I'm sure there are conversations going on between blogs already, but short of reading all the feeds every day, I won't know about them and they will take longer to develop. I don't think that detracts from their value, however, either to the evolution of the group as a whole or to each of us as individuals.

I do find the mailing list is where the "juice" is for me right now, and that's where I am getting the sense of who people are. One thing that's a bit frustrating is that we can't tag or link to list conversation in our blogs, so there's a bit of a gap. Also, just using subject lines as the thread organization is a bit hit-or-miss. I would actually find a forum better suited to this part of the conversation, so we could aggregate and find information more readily.

But I'm finding the whole flow fascinating, and intrigued to see how it all evolves!

Comments

[leighblackall]

One thing I think is worth questioning is the idea that we have to all be in a discussion with one another anyway. Last time I was in a room of 60 people I think I only discussed things with maybe 3 :)

[Amy Lenzo]

Hi Leigh! It's great to see you here!

I'm with you on the small group discussion, that's my preference on the personal connection level as well, but what I find just as important is having some way of knowing what's emerging in the group as a whole.

A small conversation is great in terms of depth and quality, but if I want a bead on the knowledge circulation passing within the whole system, the small conversations (unless they're done in some organized way & "harvested" for everyone to access) don't give that overview, or collective knowledge I'm looking for.