Hi All,

Siobhan Cluskey, one of the Councils reps elected at the AGM last night, raised the matter of communicating or disseminating information around the various members, Branches, Council and Executive within the Association. This is something I wholeheartedly agree needs to be looked at urgently. My own recent experience suggests that we do have serious problems in this regard. Dave's post on CFRAM's, again puts us under the gun to get info out the membership, in a very short timeframe, if we're going to have any chance on having an impact at these venue's next weekend. We do seem to be using a largely19th century system and its terribly, terribly slow.

Soooo.....bearing in mind that not every member will have e-mail or a mobile phone, anyone got any suggestions as to how we can start to get info flowing around and about the Association...??

M(W&W)F



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 22/04/2012 18:29 by Mick Farrell.

Agree Mick. There are issues but it may not be as big a problem depending on time of year or the matter that needs comms. Some issues like next weekend are much more time sensitive than others.

With today's electronic media email & SMS exist but there is a sensitive borderline between urgent communications justifying these mediums and spam/privacy violations. There is also our website, this forum and perhaps Facebook. Most of our members do not read this forum but it is a good 2nd place to the website. Setting up dedicated IWAI Facebook sites per hot potatoe issue may be something worth looking at (ie draw public attention). Then there is the excellent IWN mag which is read by all our members. This has the best penetration but can have a four month time lag (ie time gap between production + quarterly issue.

Then there are branch meetings which reach a small minority of branch members and the excellent council which doesn't always filter back to branches. This is one of our biggest current comms gaps which is easily fixable. There are 42 branch council reps but typically only 50-60% attend. The Derg branch always received detailed reports at branch meetings from their council reps and acted on or discussed matters arising in depth. I know some of the other big branches that are effective this way. One possible suggestion is a council report eZine that could be put up on the website and emailed to all members twice a year. IWN currently gives council reports. Now an eZine is not just techical minutes but an impartial and informative news piece complete with content associated with issues raised and photo content (pic says 1000 words, etc). Now that takes skill, effort and time - another dedicated and reliable volunteer needed, or perhaps combined with an already busy IWN production team.

Let's see what ideas come from the newly elected council members.

Ps. I still think we should look at putting IWN on limited retail book shelves, but not subscription beyond membership.

OceanFroggie



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 22/04/2012 08:12 by OceanFroggie.

Mick: communicating or disseminating information around the various members,

Improving this aspect of the IWAI will help us a lot

we may need to be thinking of communicating to all who want communication within a period of 24h not weeks and months

Do I hear IWAI/SIG/Communication in the wind

1. A communication channnel for members who wish to be involved in issues and events as they happen
2. Direct inter-branch communication
3. Direct Exec-Council-Banch-Member communication

If we get it wrong we could have a big mess, but we will not know unless we try

Donal

Just on a slightly different note we need more doers and less talking shops.

OceanFroggie

Maybe Maybe Noel if we communicated a little better we might get more doers ?

Hi Noel,

I think I might be a little more despairing of the situation than yourself. We undoubtedly have processes which were designed to get info to and from the members, and on to and back from council, but there are a couple of very week links in these processes. Members have to go to branch meetings to involve themselves and branch reps have to go to council meetings to involve the branch and their members. From my own experience at Dublin Branch meetings, the members just are'nt coming. I can only assume this is down to some lack of relevance to their interests. From what you say in your post, some branches now also seem to be seeing little relevance to their, or their members interests, in going to council meetings. So we now seem to have a situation whereby the vast majority of members are just out of the loop, both in terms of knowing what's going on, but more importantly, in terms of their ability to effect change.

It is of course incumbent on members to involve themselves to whatever extent the wish, and indeed if they're happy to hand over the few bob and let others get on with running the business, then who am I to say they're wrong...? The big problem I'm seeing is, that every so often things crop up, which do piqué member's interests, but when they go looking for information, from the Assoc's processes, they mostly get advised to, "Go to your Branch". In the context of a world in which we can "Google" anything in fractions of a second, being told to wait a month for a branch meeting, and then another 3 or 4 months for a Council meeting, and probably another month for the next branch meeting to give you Councils reply, is just absurd. I suspect that this has more to do with declining membership numbers than recessionary factors, or even, any more general lack of relevance to their particular area of interest. The simple fact is, if we want to keep people involved with the Assoc., then WE need to involve them...!!

Onto some of your specifics. A Council eZine has merit, but at only twice per year, will only have half the relevance of the IWN. Indeed, I do recall Greg trying to get one up and running a number of years back, but I dont think there was ever a 2nd edition. Anything less than monthly is likely to be a waste of space, but even at that, unless there's some channel through which issues can come back up from the members, it will fall flat on its face. Pictures are always worth a lot of words when telling a story, but rarely succeed in asking a cogent question.

Personally, I'm looking for some method by which we can pass Association wide issues, up and down the food chain, without impacting on the Branches primacy on local issues. The Branch is undoubtedly the best method for local stuff. We also need an ability to get time sensitive stuff out to the members at the push of a button. We do however need to do it without ending up bombarding members with reams of info in which they have little interest......a tall order perhaps, but when was anything worthwhile ever easy.....??

Ohhhh.....and bye the bye.....you are seeing ideas coming from one newly elected council member....sorry they're a bit wooly at the moment, but that's why I put it on here, to try and get some feedback from the less vocal members....!!

M(W&W)F

PS....I'll finish on a gag.....I've already been christened.....(Cllr. Mick "The Stroke" Farrell, Your No.1 for No2's....!!)

Test Case

We have a call out from Dave to attend a meeting in Athlone next Friday
The Reason we are going is to protest over a preposal to lower the water level in Lough Ree (MY INTERPITATION)

Now the information we have to date

1. Daves email data
2. Web site of the engineers conducting a flood study of the Shannon

Questions

Is this an official call by the IWAI or just something Dave would like us to involve ourselves in ?
If we go is it personal or as members of the IWAI ?
Are there documents / facts avalible to support Daves (the IWAI ?) understanding that the level of Lough Ree will be lowered.

Noel you might want to help out here, If this is an IWAI call to its members to attend at Athlone on Friday how do we get the facts in time ??

Regards
Donal

The matter was raised and the issue communicated at the AGM last Friday under AOB. There was a request that IWAI members please make an effort to attend the public sessions next weekend if they could. If my memory is correct there was no specifics on the mode of representation. The general consensus seemed to be that folk available might attend and represent their views on lowering of water levels. It seems an agriculture v tourism issue without over simplifying. One side could portray agriculture interests who wish to reclaim land in an 10,000 year old flood plain to arable use, versus natural behaviour of a flood plain and tourism interests affecting pleasure craft usage on the Shannon navigation. It was a bit wider than that, but folks who were at the AGM are upto date.

OceanFroggie

It was a bit wider than that, but folks who were at the AGM are upto date.


Like many I was not at the AGM

Is this an official call by the IWAI or just something Dave would like us to involve ourselves in ?
If we go is it personal or as members of the IWAI ?
Are there documents / facts avalible to support Daves (the IWAI ?) understanding that the level of Lough Ree will be lowered

Regards
Donal

Hi Donal, suggest you phone Dave. Sorry rushing and no time to type here this AM.

OceanFroggie

Many thanks for your reply's Noel

Reards
Donal

Donal, I suppose I made the call as the lobbying officer for the IWAI. So yes its as official as the IWAI is. My primarily reason for bringing it up was to alert people to the process and the risks.

Dave

Many thanks for the reply Dave