[Businessmtg] Welcome Messages

[Gerald Hunter]

Biz-Pals,

The way this is worded suggests not that the topic shares are flooding inboxes, but that, when the "Please welcome Jane Doe" letter gets posted, a gush of "Glad you're here notes" drown the new member. If this is the case it would be similar to a dozen or more people surrounding a newcomer at a f2f meeting all talking at the same time. Mix in 40 topic shares and, boom, instant overload.

At the moment I can think of only one good solution: instead of posting each individual welcome, greeters could post a [weekly?] list of new members, perhaps without their email addresses, but possibly with. There's no assurance this would cut back on welcomes, but it could. The only sure solution would be for us to not post new member notes at all, or maybe assign a few "mini-greeters" whose job it would be to write a short personal note, or some such thing.

Ah, the ideas are flowing... We could create a [Newcomers Meeting] for newcomers so they are subscribed there first. Presumably all ASP members would not choose to attend, so fewer messages while also easing newer folks into this online culture. Could be a First Step meeting. Could include suggestions for managing the flow of the topic meeting shares once they are subscribed to the [ASP] meeting. After a few days or so they could be fully subscribed to the topic meeting.

Even those who have been around a while often find we have to manage the volume. We could compose a suggestion list from our shared methods. This would let newcomers know that not reading every share all the time is perfectly okay. Through the years I've come up with a set of "filters":

~ If a share uses curse words stronger than "damn" I read no further and delete.
~ If a share uses those new-fangled words without vowels cz phn shrs r ezr tht wy - I delete.
~ Sometimes I don't want a meeting so I delete all incoming  shares for that day's topic.
~ Then I occasionally come across a member whose shares are particularly disagreeable to me for one reason or another - delete without reading.
~ Other days I choose to look for particular members' shares to read and delete the rest unread.
~ I'm retired now so I don't feel the need to minimize, but I can see where having [ASP TOPIC], [ASP BUSINESS], and [ASP STEERING] files set up to receive incoming shares would simplify my day. I'd need to learn how to do that. Perhaps ASP could come up with a "how to" instructable?

Lastly, I can't help but bring up the dreaded OT topic. OT shares add to the volume, too. Maybe OT shares could be diverted to a separate [OT] address where only [ASP] members who choose to join that forum would participate. Could evolve into a chat room though.

Officially out of ideas.

Jerry
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