Association between Users in a Chapter

[kariab...@gmail.com]

Hi All!

I'm working on Issue #441 https://github.com/railsbridge/bridge_troll/issues/441

PROBLEM:
In order to send out e-mails to members of a given chapter, I need to figure out a way to associate the two together. Currently, when a user registers, they select the regions in which they are interested. Currently, there is no direct correlation between the region and the chapter.

OPTIONS:
1. Events are associated with regions as well as chapters, so potentially I could go from chapter, to event, to region to user. The problem with any region-based approach is that this would cause users to automatically get e-mails from ALL chapters within their region(s) rather than specific chapters they are interested in.

2. RSVPs on events could be utilized to determine which chapters a user is associated with, but this approach would cause users who have not yet registered for any events to not get any of these chapter e-mails.

3. Create a new way (possibly on the user edit page) for users to manage their membership to chapters. This could be done dynamically based on the region that the user selects. This means that it may still be useful to associate the chapter with the region.
- Seems to be the best solution, but certainly includes additional work in creating this new way for users to manage their chapters.

HELP:
Please let me know if there is something I am missing and if this association already exists in some way. If not, opinions on the potential options would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Kari

[Doug May]

tl:dr  This relates to a larger problem of custom-tailoring community and (potential) volunteer communications. I've been working on it, but need wider engagement and feedback.

Kari --

I've been working on an approach to the general problem of allowing users to easily configure their communications profile, since the raw permutations (of what i perhaps do and do not want sent to me) make the potential UI pretty messy.

I've been noodling on a survey to try to find out what our various constituencies (students, teachers, organizers, curriculum hackers, back-end hackers, alumnae, gender-balance activists, other under-represented groups, hosts, sponsors, child-play supervisors, boards, and other allies and volunteers, possibly by language/tool, whether local, regional, or global) might want. In particular, how do they describe it to themselves or those around them, in terms of what should be in, and what should be out (since we'd ideally have matching language for how we characterize an outgoing message).

I figure there are a bunch of common patterns, and we can steer people in likely directions based on how they come in, and offer them a sensible set of changes they could make (like when a student first becomes a vol). it would also give us a way to gradually expose new participants to the various aspects of the organization (the work), to help them sort out their engagement, and occasionally invite everyone to rethink their participation a bit (so we build in self-reflection and learning, because we kind of believe that those are habits worth solidifying).

Sarah Allen asked me to pull together some info on what the marketplace currently offers around this (constituent communications profile management), but i was trying to get our requirements (user stories) clearer first, so i could assess stuff relative to what we need. i've done more than a bit of research on salesforce.com's "non-profit starter pack" since that's sort of the higher end of contact and relationship management, plus it has a bunch of donation and sponsor stuff built in, and it's available to us at least in part for free (even if it is not open source). 

so i've clearly barely dented the problem, and it's only obliquely related to the referenced issue and Kari's question, but i felt compelled to attempt to tie the conversations together, and open my internal noodling to broader engagement, since i'm clearly not making timely progress, and i think that we actually care about our fellow volunteers, and want all of us to be able to stay on top of what's happening, in the way that we want to (and that works for us). and we want to contribute in the ways we are called, and not have to waste much time saying no to stuff that doesn't fit. secondarily, i think we can expand our impact, by making more volunteer opportunities available, and we can serve our community's desire to make a difference, by structuring ways for them to constructively engage, that fit their talents and interests. mapping those to each other (including mapping chapters to regions), is what will better unleash the talent and commitment of our community toward our shared goals. this probably qualifies as an attempt to hijack Kari's thread, so i'll apologize, but keep the conversation open for engagement, pending a clear signal to fork or desist.

respectfully submitted,

Doug May

random old white guy, and ally

p.s. i pitched the problem to my local team for the just-completing round of the ideo.org "design kit" human-centered design mooc. we're doing our retrospective, celebration potluck, and what's-next conversation this Thurs. there's a significant potential in the Sonoma County, CA community of designers, hackers, makers, and web/interactive media project people, to start busting out a series of collaboration experiments, which i hope we can find some alignment with (and maybe build some back-end for, or vice versa).

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[Lillie Chilen]

Yeah, I think the larger problem is tangentially related, and your point about messy UIs is well heard, Doug, but I'd like this thread to stay on-topic in helping Kari work out how to work on the very specific feature she's trying to build.

Kari, I think we were originally picturing solution #2 that you proposed (going through RSVPs to figure out chapter-allegiance), but you make a very good point about people not getting announcements if they haven't attended an event yet. My main concern about option #3 is the proliferation of checkboxes on a profile page — it seems like it could get really messy really fast.

I think starting with option #1 could be an interesting first step, since that relationship exists explicitly. We could see how it goes, and find out how frequently people want to opt out of hearing from particular chapters in their region. I think starting with something that's a little more blunt and refining it over time could be sensible, even if it's not perfect for everyone up-front.

But then again, #3 could be cool if we could get the UX to be reasonable.

(Thanks for thinking through this and presenting the various options so clearly, Kari!!!)

--

Lillie Chilen
@lilliealbert
('li-lee shuh-'leen)

[kariab...@gmail.com]

Great! Thanks for the help!

I'm going to go with #1 to start with because I am not a UX expert, though I have some ideas for how we may be able to implement it, if we desire. I'll see how it goes!