NCCC Forum

I know a lot of people are not Facebook fans, but one thing I do  like about Facebook is the group pages. The information and event sharing seems to be a lot easier. Maybe we can explore that at the next business meeting . Here is a example of a cycling clubs Facebook page.   https://www.facebook.com/CalderClarion/

Thanks for bringing this up, Nigel. This is about the third time this point has been raised over the past half dozen years. Here are some PROs and CONs relative to using Facebook over the NCCC Forum as a primary social media channel:

PROS in favor of Facebook:

• Facebook is much more fluid and dynamic and easy to use
• Faceook layout, interspersing photos and videos with threads, is very attractive compared to the NCCC Forum
• Most everyone has Facebook on their phones, available to post and attach photos, and even videos, mid-ride
• Although possible to post and attach photos mid-ride to the NCCC Forum, noone ever does it as the interface just isn't as slick as Facebook. Posting and sharing videos is not allowed in the NCCC Forum.
• Facebook notifications will keep people informed of NCCC activity. Note that the NCCC Forum also has a great notification system, but most of the members either don't know about it, or find it confusing - even though it is well-documented in the Help (http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Notifications).
  
• Only about 30-40 NCCC members really use the Forum as the login logs show and, of those, only a handful regularly contribute and, lately, these are primarily from the Long Ride group

CONS against using Facebook:

• Facebook is very difficult to search for posts on a particular timeline as you can only scroll down the timeline, uncovering relatively recent posts, which can be difficult if many are posting to different threads. This is a known deficiency (https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=10205342021456914). On the other hand the NCCC Forum has a strong search engine. Just entering a keyword or two from a post you might have remembered from, say, six years ago, will quickly locate that post and whittle down the possible matches if the keyword(s) isn't too common.
• It is annoying to place information in multiple places. If we create a NCCC Facebook page, we need to stick to that for our primary dynamic mode of communication. This might obviate the NCCC Forum altogether or we could restrict the NCCC Forum to the Boards other than "Club Rides & Events"
• Noone has ever volunteered to set up an NCCC Facebook page and administer it. As Carol Carr said many times, "Every good idea needs someone to step up to execute it."

So, after 8+ years running the NCCC website, this is my personal feeling on this and it is an evolution: I believe the search deficiency in Facebook is a big one, but I may be in the minority as not everyone is as anal as I am to have everything archived online and easily searchable for perpetuity. And, who knows, Facebook may fix this someday, but the issue has been around so long, it seems doubtful. I really believe the NCCC Forum doesn't touch the core membership very well, having watched the activity fpr 8+ years and looked at the online logs for which our Forum keeps fastidious records. I really do like the dynamic fluidity of Facebook and we use it for some other non-NCCC organizations quite effectively.

So, I would vote to seriously consider setting up a Facebook page for our NCCC organization (a little different than a personal Facebook page) and asking people to use that in lieu of posting to our Club Rides & Events. Although it may be more difficult to dig up things way in the past, it is more important to have more people "in the conversations," I think. If that is the majority opinion, then the NCCC Board should confirm it and someone who is actively riding on weekends (in my opinion) should step up to administer it. This is a separate function from maintaining the website, which Rob and I spend a fair amount of time to keep under control. Fortunately, Facebook administration does not require the skillset to understand and administer hosting services, server side scripting, database maintenance, markup languages such as HTML and XML, and coding such as php, perl, python, etc - not to mention software packages such as Joomla (software that controls the pages you see), SMF (the software that runs this Forum), aMember (our membership software), PayPal, ... Any Facebook afficianado can do it, which is part of the beauty and, hopefully, it will always be FREE.

What about a Google Groups page? Some of the other cycling clubs/groups I belong to use that as their official message board. It seems to work quite well. Also, these same groups have a Facebook page, and there seems to be a minimal amount of activity compared to the Google page. I agree that having a Facebook page may help to get more members involved, especially considering it is easily available on smart phones, which may help to get out last minute ride changes, etc. It may also have the added benefit of drawing new members to the club. If we are going to make a change, I personally would prefer to move to Google Groups rather than Facebook. It's the lesser of two evils, and I think most people have a google account of some sort these days. A possible alternative is Livejournal. I think they have a phone app now, and it's easier to search and tag posts.


-Robert

We need to be careful here. If we make too many options, it will spread our information across multiple portals, making it nearly impossible to both keep things under control and for people to find the information they want or need. The argument for the NCCC Forum has always been that we have complete, centralized control and that's the only place that people have to look.

Google  Groups is primarily good for "pushing" information, but not so good for sharing thoughts, photos, videos, etc. We have a Google Group for the NCCC Tuesday rides, and perhaps Google Groups for Regular and Long Roadies and Cruisers rides might be good, but administering is possibly tough. When someone joins NCCC, how do they immediately get connected with the right group? Another advantage of our NCCC Forum is that we have a software plugin (cost $40 and I'm sure most members aren't even aware of it) that automatically gives active NCCC members only the privilege to post to the NCCC Forum (non-NCCC forum members have restricted privileges). That happens automatically without any manual intervention by either the user or the Forum administrator (me and Rob). Bringing in any other social media portal to do the same would be a difficult matter to keep control of strict member access and it could be chaotic. In the very old days there was an NCCC Roadies yahoo group (before google) and it was mildly useful for awhile, but then was dominated by just a few individuals, then died a slow death.

There are many things to consider here. Change is OK, but it needs to be thought through with care. Website administration currently requires several hours each month and this should be done without any burden to our current setup. As I said, we can do this but someone needs to volunteer and we really need to work through what we really want.

Karl

Because of reasons 3 and 5 that Karl listed, I would be in favor of having a NCCC facebook page. However, if not that many people have an account it won't be too useful.

Thumbs down on Facebook Group...~Peg

Since Peg's opinion carries a lot of weight, perhaps we can tweak things to make this NCCC Forum touch more of the membership. I can look at the technical side, including making it simpler for posting photos and videos to the NCCC  Photo Gallery.  It also may be the case that most are happy with just riding our bikes and they don't give a s----. I'm open to suggestions. If someone has a proposal, I would prefer they have a technical solution for tying  it to our membership database, which we already have in place for our current NCCC Forum.
Karl

No one source will work for all and since this is a volunteer club, minimizing burden, to me, is quite important.  I don't have a problem posting here, my facebook for those I'm friends with and sending an email out to those I have accurate addresses for when I need to communicate something.  Type it one and copy/paste to other communication forums you prefer.  The only change, if possible, is if the membership database could link a person to the group(s) they ride with the majority of the time.  If that were the case then, I assume, when I ask for an email list it could be sorted by group.  I'm so bad with names (and not the most talkative person), I don't recognize the names of the folks I ride with to add them to my "Long rider" group addresses. 

Could identifying riding group(s) be added to the sign ups and it be added over time as their memberships expire and they have to renew?

Thanks,
Anthony

I would add that riding group is a field in our membership database, but it is free-form and most put Roadies, Cruisers, or Spokey Dokes, not distinguishing Regular and Long Roadies. We could start by adding that field to the roster that Lou puts out annually, and if that isn't good enough, we can put in some checking on the form to be more uniform and even require saying Regular, Long or Both as there are people that ride both.

I am happy to provide a spreadsheet to the ride leaders with this field filled in. I will get one to you, Anthony, as a starter. The issue is that our membership is dynamic, with a couple of additions and expirations weekly, always maintaining a membership of ~200 riders. The NCCC Forum automatically tracks that through its membership plugin, but any other connection would be manual for now, so lists would tend to always be "slightly" out of date.

Karl

Thanks!  Close is better than nothing, even if it were up-to-date on a daily basis, I wouldn't update my "Long rider" group each week since I would \n't have the time to invest in it.  The route page on the website directs folks to the forum if the weather might be hot or wet, if folks don't look then it is on them, they're adults.
Anthony

Nice. Been really enjoying the dialog going back and forth on this subject. Its nice to see are passion for cycling being expressed on the forum pages