President's Notes (10/02)
President's Message
Infrastructure
by Phil Sorrentino
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.
This is when I find out if anyone is actually reading the
"Presidents Message", or if I’m here on page 4, all alone.
Social Networking sites have become very popular over the last few years.
Myspace was one of the first to become popular and now Twitter has become
very popular, at least from what you read in the papers and see on TV.
Popular movie and music stars use it to keep their fans informed of their
every thought. Even politicians are using it to dispense their ideas and
...whatever. I’ve discussed these in previous columns, and now I’m thinking
it’s time to see what SPCUG members are thinking. I am wondering if Twitter
can be of any use to SPCUG. Twitter is a communications medium, much like
e-mail, but it’s mode of communications is one-to-many, meaning information
flows in a hierarchical way, from the top to the bottom. Well, this seems
like a very good medium to use to get SPCUG information from the Board of
Directors, down to the SPCUG members. We can look at this as another
addition to the SPCUG infrastructure. Infrastructure? you say. Well, yes. An
infrastructure allows things to move around. The city infrastructure allows
people and things to move around the city. Think of roads, highways,
sidewalks, and bridges. The country’s information infrastructure is an
electronic infrastructure which today is mainly the Internet. So, our SPCUG
infrastructure allows the Board to get SPCUG things and information to its
members. Think about the components that we use. First of all, there is a
"mailing address". This is how we currently get the Monitor to each member.
Also, there is the "telephone number" that is used when immediate
information is necessary, (like if an educational class is postponed at the
last minute). And there is the "e-mail address," that has become our major
avenue for inter-personal communications. We also use bulk e-mail for last
minute notifications when necessary (but this is an expensive way of
communication to the whole membership). Our website is another component of
the SPCUG infrastructure; it allows everyone to see what’s going on, at
their leisure. So, Twitter could be another component in the SPCUG
infrastructure. But how would it work? I’m glad you asked that.
As I said above, Twitter is a one-to-many form of communications. Many
organizations are using Twitter as a means of allowing the organization
leadership to disseminate information and instructions to its members. When
you sign up for a Twitter account, you can elect to follow any other Twitter
account. You can follow Barack Obama or the Tampa Bay Buccaneers or even
Susan Boyle. If we tried to use Twitter, it might work like this. We would
establish a Twitter account with a name such as SPCUG_Board and then after
each member has established their own Twitter account, they would "follow"
SPCUG_Board. Whenever SPCUG_Board sends out a "tweet" (as is the 140
character message used by Twitterers), the member would receive the
information in their account. The catch here is that each member would have
to go to their Twitter account and check for SPCUG_Board tweets
(correspondence). But we have to do that with e-mail, also; members have to
go to their e-mail account to see if anyone has sent them any information.
With such a tech-savvy membership, such as ours, this would probably work
for non-time-critical information and directions. Let me know if you think
this idea has any merit and/or if you would like to participate in a trial
program if we should put one in place. Send and e-mail to
president@spcug.org with your
thoughts and ideas about this type of communications.
Return to Phil Sorrentino's
Index
Return to
Columnist's Index
Copyright 2010. This article is from the February 2010 issue of the
Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota
Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL
34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit
computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and
our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication
the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For
further information about our group, email:
admin@spcug.org// Web:
http://www.spcug.org/
The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,100+ members
and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User
Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are
members of the America Online Ambassador Program.
See http://www.spcug.org for all reviews from the Sarasota PC
Monitor, go to the Newsletter Section.