This is the first of 2 or 3 ideas I had out of the Town Hall last night.
I have mentioned before that I believe we would benefit be convening a small group of 4-6 members who have strong IT backgrounds (one or two in web design, one or two Jeremys, etc.). Since we are essentially an e-company, technology is foundational to all our operations. This would be a group that would meet on some regular basis, with each individual working individually to research and come up with solutions to a specific technological challenge that we face. Then, they would bring it back to the team to make a decision.
So, why am I pushing this now? Because it is becoming increasingly important that we be able to mine the data that we have and continue to collect on our members. We need to be able to easily track certain performance indicators, as we have discussed. At the macro level, I understand that we are limited because of the Ning platform. But, if we are to be poised for the future, we need to prepare for growth. Not being able to easily extract information that our members have given us will be more and more of an obstacle.
I recommend putting together a tech task force to forecast exactly the functionality we will need down the road and the apparent "gaps" at this point. I would want to be on the task force, because of my customer service background--I can see all kinds of potential if we were just able to easily mine the member data we have today.
Thoughts?
Replies
I agree it would be nice to have some dedicated volunteers for the tech stuff. As you know now, Dorene, I had some conversation with Jeremy on our needs, including someone we could send inquiries when people run into trouble signing up (one of the main tech issues potential members run into) and including finding help for us to evolve away from Ning some day. I've just copied you on a synopsis of our Ning/WordPress integration issues and the challenge of exporting any of our archived data from Ning so you are aware of it.
Meanwhile, maybe we could ask Jeremy if he would be willing to head up our Tech team and we can start populating it slowly. As you'll recall, Viola Chen suggested she might be able to help with that, so if we put them together and Jeremy has colleagues he can turn to as he suggests, we may have a virtual team up and running in no time.