How to use Groups?

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Permalink Reply by Russell Campbell on May 27, 2009 at 1:06pm

I "solved" that problem by making the description of our group read like this: "The Atlanta FoxPro Users Group meets the second Tuesday of each month. Please see our site for further details. Note: The number of members here is not reflective of our actual membership." I hope that helps.

You mentioned live chat . . . check out www.dimdim.com for free online meetings like WebEx and GoToMeeting, but for free (for up to 20 participants per meeting, paid after that but still reasonable). They have chat built into that, but the real draw is for desktop video/audio sharing so that the participants can see the presentation.

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Permalink Reply by Cheyenne Throckmorton on May 27, 2009 at 2:51pm

I actually forgot and had chat on here disabled. It is now enabled on the bottom of the screen.

I will have to check out dimdim.com (another great reason to have the group leaders here, for different ideas). Sharing desktop video/audio will be a great feature.

Also, since this platform is built upon Ning which is part of OpenSocial, we should see more and more plug-ins/applications available for the groups and even your individual profiles.

You can even add PacMan to your profile if you want to get nostalgic for the old classic.

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Permalink Reply by Cheyenne Throckmorton on June 3, 2009 at 4:20pm

Great points Ben and echo those sentiments of trying to keep a centralized communication strategy.

With that posting there I was experimenting with how to deal with "online" events and events that fit into more than one group (that one being flex and php). I didn't realize it would email you as the admin, but at least it helped nip something immediately in the butt.

As admin you should be able to turn off the discussion section, which makes sense for your group. You should also have control to turn off the comments area and other stuff, basically make your group nothing more than an outpost leading people to your central area. This is what I'm doing with our ACFUG group here, the same as we have set up with our LinkedIn and Facebook groups.

Discussion Forums is something we don't currently have on our CF site, so I left them on for our group.

This same conundrum falls into place for posting events. Check "disable RSVP" if you already have a system in place. Most groups here do, but some groups do not, so they may wish to use the RSVP system.

Again, thanks for all of your thoughts on this as I think we are getting it honed down more and more, and tailored to each group.

The Uniqueness of utilizing Atlanta User Groups vs. FaceBook,LinkedIn, MeetUp etc. is that the target audience of this site is not just PHP Users in Atlanta, or CF users, the way that I have seen the other big social sites end up looking like in being "Just another outpost for the same group".

The advantage we are looking for here is that the audience is broader and more specific in that it is people that like learning about varying technologies in this format when they know about them.

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Permalink Reply by Cheyenne Throckmorton on June 15, 2009 at 5:33pm

I used some JQuery to remove the display of number of members from the homepage and group listing page. It does look better.

I still need to dig into jQuery a little bit more to figure out how to remove the member numbers from the two places on the individual group page.

Anyone know if there is a jquery command to find text inside of an element and zap it out. That would then clean up the group number conundrum.

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Permalink Reply by David Greelish on July 29, 2009 at 11:32am

Hi, I'm brand new to the area, and so also new to the group. I found out about this site by way of the Atlanta Mac Users Group, which I had just joined. They are considering joining this group, and I think that they should, to help promote it. I've joined to find out about other groups, but also because I am starting a new user group. I hope this web site will help me to start and publicize my new user group.

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Permalink Reply by Cheyenne Throckmorton on July 29, 2009 at 1:45pm

Welcome David. Absolutely, any and all groups should feel free to join and use this site as a method to promote their groups and meetings. Even for yourself David, I'd encourage you to go ahead and start a group on here to begin gathering interest in your topic, finding speakers and a place to meet.

As far as the mac user group, I have not had a chance to attend one of their meetings, but definitely having them post their meetings here month by month would be great. They have a great logo. I posted their event for them in June, but it conflicted with another user group on here. Definitely add their August event if you know about David. The point is to make this a socially updated calendar for Atlanta.

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Permalink Reply by Stephen Cristol on August 30, 2009 at 3:12am

I think Russell's point is spot on. Both our group and events here are simply pointers to our own web site. This looks like it will mitigate the issue somewhat, but I doubt it will ever solve it.

I'm not fond of the way ownership of groups and events are emphasized. Our group and its events are listed as mine "Stephen Cristol's event Atlanta Perl Mongers (September meeting)" or sometimes they are attributed to non-creators. From the perspective of community building, I think this sends the wrong message. I would rather see text to the effect that "the Atlanta Perl Mongers will meet in September." My first reaction to this was that I need to have two users--one for me personally and one for my role as organizer. Is there a better way?

Also, is there a way for a group's page to show upcoming events? Events and groups seem to have a very loose relationship.

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