All communication and responsibility-of-membership issues aside, there is an important 3rd issue we need to seriously look at:
First : We need to keep track of what we have done – Yes or No?
Second: If we need to keep track of what we have done, HOW should we do it?
Third: We need to keep track of what we are doing – Yes or NO?
Fourth: If we need to keep track of what we are doing, HOW should we do it?
What we have right now is:
a member-modifiable Log page (https://squawkrpg.tripod.com/report/log.html),
and a member modifiable planning page (https://squawkrpg.tripod.com/report)
It is MUCH BETTER THAN NOTHING, yet IS IT SUFFICIENT? I believe that it is more than sufficient, IF we use it, and if we do NOT use it, (AND WE AREN'T CURRENTLY USING IT,) we need something else that is sufficient.
My personal opinion: the Log is more important than the planning (or 'report') page. In fact, believe it or not, beyond basic organizational planning to help people know what direction to go in, I am against extensive planning.
On my mission, most of the stuff on my "smurf" or "blue planner" was filled out AFTER I did it, NOT before!! Yes, SOME things were filled out before, especially IMPORTANT things like teaching appointments. Instead of having ultra-anal plans, my companions and I had PRIORITIES, so that those empty spaces in our schedule could be filled to what was appropriate according to our current needs (relaxation) and our long term interests (finding people to teach and teaching them,) instead of being side-tracted by a side-quest of getting high door-knocking numbers. The statistical reality was double the average number of baptisms (with missionaries who needed to have a 25 year old baby sitter watching them. I think God made me hate tracting because this is the way he wanted the work done.) Filling out our blue planners AS we did the work, instead of simply only BEFORE we did the work, gave us DOCUMENTATION of what we actually did, so that we could A) justify our actions, and B) make better decisions in the future. We did a LOT of both! (In my experience, missionaries are litterally more likely to find someone interested in joining the mormons by eating in a restaruant in their uniform, then they are by knocking on peoples doors. When people tried to get after me about this sort of thing, I had my smurfs to back me up.)
At Seattle Indymedia, there is this one person who keeps bringing up these 30- page planning documents, that volunteers who are no longer involved developed 2 or 3 years ago. It is VERY distructive, because it keeps the volunteers who are there NOW from doing what they need to do. Those old volunteers invested all this time into decideing what OTHER people should do in the FUTURE, and then SPLIT! What the HELL is that?
I like solid, brief, strategic planning, that is updated regularly. I like to keep track of what's going on. Right now, if I were visting my parrents house, and one of our investors started giving me a hard time, (like Dad for example,) I could bust out the Log page and say "look here, Dad, as you can see, we HAVE been making games. If YOU want us to go any faster, what can YOU do to make it easier to do the kinds of things we have been doing?"
But that's just it, in reality, we are ALL investors, making the games we want to play, and THAT's why the Log is so critical. When we hear about concerns WITHIN our team that are like "I don't know if we can really make a game at all," it's a problem, because it's the sound of one of our INVESTORS pulling out!
I like having all our planning materials on one web page. It's keeping it brief, which is critical. But I do have a concern: Plans should be made by those who will be doing the work. If you are not regularly updating the report page, then there is automagically a problem, because either you are going to be doing a lot of work that isn't planned, or you are going to be doing a lot of work that you weren't involved in planning, or all your plans are special secrets you keep to yourself, OR you just aren't going to be doing alot of work.
The problem with special secrets you keep to your self, as far as being the main focus that trives your work for this project, is it seriously inhibits communication. For my thoughts on communication, please check out https://squawkrpg.tripod.com/benjamin/communication.html
This has all been simply MY opinion. Here's what I want to know:
How do YOU think we should keep track of what we are doing, and what we have done?
Back to my homepage: https://squawkrpg.tripod.com/benjamin