Thank you for the follow up, and analysis.
To play devil’s advocate, if we can blame confusion about max depth, as well as failure to clean up properly on inadequate training, I would think the same cause would be noted for failure to use the TALK tool (and, for that matter, the wiki tool, where these same process are posted), rather than the tool itself…
I understand mistakes happen with a new process and learning curve, but every user should understand setting surface and max after every bit change. Chris harps on it time and again in training and you must do it in your test out or you won’t get access. Sad to hear someone still didn’t grasp that concept as it is probably the most stressed concept by Chris.
Andrew, to be clear I wasn’t blaming Talk the tool … just observing that as currently utilized I cannot depend on Talk postings to reach the audience I need to reach when changes happen. It is another example of the current handicap that exists throughout DMS when something important needs to be communicated to the members. To get on a soapbox just a bit, IF it is true that many of the 85-90% of members don’t use Talk because they don’t want to see the drama that explodes periodically, then those asking for posters to write differently just may have some validity. Sometimes our demand for liberty and freedom has consequences that justify an opposing demand for civility.
Ryan, the user understood Max Depth is important. He had just gotten the reason for it misdirected as being about the material, not the bit. New users can get an early wrong impression for whatever reason and then hear all that follows in the wrong context … as in once I tell the computer what the maximum depth I want cuts to be it uses that info for all cutters. Once you realize you had gotten on the wrong page about something, it’s that palm slap to the forehead realization of “Of Course, how did I ever get that so wrong?” Bet we have all done something just like that on some topic or another.
Anyway, this is a non-profit educational entity … I did a bit of teaching to a student who was appreciative and willing to learn. All good. Damage was fixable.
I don’t think talk, or toxicity is nearly the barrier that it is being made out to be. But rather basic human behavior and lack of interest is the barrier. In municipal communications, it appears that there is about 80% of the population that simply won’t process the communications you send them. My gut feel is that it simply is not part of their daily routine, and they are so bombarded with junk mail, door spam, Facebook and other online messages, that none of them reach through to their day to day consciousness.
A city can have a potentially controversial zoning change request, that may be good for the city overall, but a nuisance for the immediate neighbors. You can insert flyers in their water bill, you can post notices on the city web site, Facebook page, and twitter. You can put official notices on the front door of all the adjacent houses. You can post official notice in the official newspaper of city record, and you can even put signs on the street corners. For a project that may have 50 directly neighboring residences, maybe two homeowners will show up, and once it is decided and underway, the bulldozers being a difficult to miss indication of change, you will finally get 5 to 10 homeowners who show up and chew out city staff and council members for not giving them a heads up about the project and hearing.
So, I’m really not sure what each committees bulldozer is, but my experience says that unless you identify your bulldozer, and make it visible before the decision, you may need to realize that talk reaches an unusually high percentage of our population, compared to many other options.
I want to be sure I understand what you are saying and let me use an analogy to convey:
If you consider Talk to be a constantly refreshed newsletter that publishes on a 24/7 schedule with 2200 potential readers and only 250 ever look at it at all during a 30 day period, that qualifies as an unusually high participation?
That’s what the data seems to show and I want to be sure we are using the same information.
How many people on average read the local newspaper? As I understand it the local paper is still a legal means of notification.
Do you have an example of as large a population, with as diverse a range of interests and activities where a higher level of effective communication actually works?
It is one thing to see the rate of information consumption and know it is sadly deficient. It is quite another to have evidence that it can be done better.
Talk nearly always has people pointing out that more signage doesn’t help, as nobody reads them.
Youth soccer has a much more effective communication, as it has a very focused activity, and directly affects parents pride and joy, and from anecdotal evidence, it is still far from perfect communication.
The HOA I am (unfortunately) in, things can be in the newsletter, and the unofficial FB page, and still get a ton of why weren’t now we told messages when things actually happen.
Again, do you have examples of such a diverse group of interests, where communication actually works better?
Beats me, but even the homeowner example given, 4% cared enough to show up before the event and only 10 to 20% showed up after the fact with a complaint. I can’t tell from that whether the other 80% never saw the information, didn’t care, or something else entirely.
For my little part of DMS, trying to get new info to users numbering over 400 via Talk and then learning barely half that even use talk and many that do aren’t Multicamer’s is rather sobering.
My takeaway is for me to find another route because this isn’t a path to success on the Multicam.
One thing laser has done quite well is put their pre and post checklists as the desktop wallpaper on all their PCs. You could maybe go a step further and add a section on the top with recent notices and drop shortcuts to the full info next to each recent notice.
No, but I’m going to find something for my problem that does work. It won’t be Talk now that I have data showing me it doesn’t work well enough. If I’ve learned anything it’s to stop repeating failure. Move on and experiment with alternatives.
Good luck with that. You have a captive audience while they are waiting for their job to run.
What a luxury. Laser has PC’s. Infrastructure (edit: not Logistics) absolutely refuses to allow that for the Multicam.
Our is a dumb terminal connected to a Raspberry Pi. And don’t ask … I cannot explain that logic at all.
I would suggest that you won’t find just one path. Those of us who read talk, hope to see as much here as possible, so we arrive ready to roll. So please keep the communication going here, in addition to whatever’s else you do.
The other stat that I am surprised has not come up in correlations to this is that back when we were sitting around 1500 members, only 300 of them had badged in during the last 30 to 90 days. (Can’t remember the time frame cited for sure)
So this begs the Venn diagram, how does the small set that is active in talk intersect with the small set that actually steps through the door? You might actually have closer to 80 or 90 percent coverage of active users through talk. Though at a guess, that intersection probably gets you up to 50% of active users effectively seeing your communications.
Eh, I will ask some questions about this and see what I come up with. I don’t think logistics controls who gets a PC and who doesn’t.
Good point. I wonder if infrastructure can force a wallpaper if that Pi is the client of a given session?
Oops Infrastructure, not Logistics. My bad.
For my edited post above, how the )+)*$) does Auto bastardize change had to hadn’t. Only 300 of 1500 were actively badging in at that time.