Before I begin, I want to point out that I am test-case for the challenges that our team is going to have in the future. I am the first team member to say, get married and start having children, for example. Living an hour away from the rest of you, I see our biggest future problem as being communication.
I have talked to most of the Galbraith Games members about what their online communication preferences are. In GENERAL, E-mail is unpopular, GAIM (instant messanger) is not as unpopular as e-mail, and forums are also unpopular but not-as-bad-as-E-mail. In GENERAL, the two most popular forms of on-line communication are web pages and pignet, with pignet being much more popular than web pages. (It’s important to note here that the idea of having a web page members are required to update is actually unpopular. Having a web page members are simply encouraged to update is currently NOT working: https://squawkrpg.tripod.com/report )
Pignet is the most popular way for us to communicate. However, it REQUIRES ATTENDANCE. IF you miss the meeting, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to get as good of a sense of what happened in the meeting from the transcripts, as if you were there, because the Pignet transcripts don’t say how much time elapsed between comments. And that’s only in the unlikely case you even GET the transcripts from the meeting, which lately we have not been getting often (probably once in the last three weeks.)
I for example did not attend the last meeting, and inspite of my inquiries, have gotten literally NO information about ANYTHING that transpired in that meeting, or who attended. In fact, I have only deducted that the meeting actually took place, no one has actually straight-up litterally said “yeah, we actually had the meeting.” That meeting is my ONLY link to the team, (with me anyways,) because it’s the ONLY way this team communicates regularly outside of face-to-face contact. I’ve been locked out of the office for a week.
This is actually normal human behavior. Humans are intended to communicate face-to-face, biologically speaking. I think that IF we had office space somewhere, and the income neccesary to justify our time away from our families in that office space, I think our communication problems would be solved. Of course, that does require attendance.
Is their ANY way this team can communicate without having an office space and income? If there is no office space and income, then I assume we are getting jobs or going to school, which implies we would not be able to meet face-to-face often. Furthermore, I would assume that trying to get to ANY kind of meeting is going to be a challenge: already some of us have jobs that prevent us from attending online meetings. In my opinion, in order for us to effectively communicate without income and office space, we need ways to communicate that DO NOT REQUIRE ATTENDANCE. (Even GAIM requires some attendance.)
What ways to communicate do not require attendance?
If you disagree with me about our communication problems, I want you to take a look at a situation for a moment. Imagine that you are generating a character for Hack-and-slash. This character is going to have family obligations– not siblings, but children and a spouse – and a job (perhaps being a student.) Now, imagine, as a player, trying to figure out when this character is going to have a couple of hours every day in his schedule to go out on the town and to PC stuff. You get up in the morning early, and go to work. You get home and try to spend time with your family, and then it’s time to go to bed. On the weekends, it’s filled primarily with family activities. If you are a Mason, you meet LATE AT NIGHT in SECRET LODGES. You communicate with other masons largely by e-mail, even though they only live a few blocks away. (This was litterally the case with the Masons I knew in Pittsburgh.)
MY RECOMMENDATION IS THAT WE START HAVING MONTHLY FACE-T0-FACE MEETINGS THAT ARE CAREFULLY PLANNED TO TAKE PLACE AT A TIME WHEN ALL TEAM MEMBERS CAN ATTEND, AND ARE COMMITED TO ATTEND INSPITE OF WHAT OTHER OBLIGATIONS MAY ARISE, in addition to having what-ever pig net meetings we are having. However, this is just a bandaid over a bullet hole, it might hold the blood in, but it probably won’t stop the bleeding. I think we have marriage-is-the-end-of-this-team communication problems. If this team is going to survive a few more of us tie-ing the not, we need to either start generating income and get office space SOON, OR we need to develop a way to communicate online, that does NOT require ATTENDANCE.
Of course, one question we have to ask is, are we as a team commited to communication in the first place? Do we as team members even HAVE responsibilities? Does it mean anything at all to be a member of Galbraith Games, are their actually responsibilities of Membership? (If not, I can see the communication problem already: Galbraith Games members do not NECCESARILY communicate, because they do not NECCESARILY do ANYTHING at ALL.) See my section of my web page on “responsibilies of membership” for further discussion on this issue: https://squawkrpg.tripod.com/benjamin/responsibility.html
Go back to my home page: https://squawkrpg.tripod.com/benjamin