User:Robbie

Robbie McClintock

Reactions to the Key activities section of the draft Windrows long term tech plan

Key activities: [What can and should we do?]

1. Monitoring the functioning and content of the resident website, recommending improvements and offering seminars to residents on how to access and use the website. [I've monitored it since before coming to Windrows 3 years and a few months ago. The public facing parts maintained by the real estate office were helpful. The functioning of resident oriented parts is stiff, off-putting, and unresponsive. The content is boring, more likely to be inaccurate and out-of-date than its printed versions, and neither occasions nor requires activity by residents. Until residents have reasons to access the website, seminars on how to access and use the website will have little effect.]
2. Responding to requests for technical assistance from other resident committees by either providing direct assistance, or by directing residents to others able to help. [Responding to requests won't hack it. The tech committee should work with the chairs and select members of other committees to design, implement, and encourage use of online resources that will facilitate work by the members of other committees.]
3. Develop and implement programs to help boost residents’ comfort with using technology and bolster their technological literacy. [As of mid-May, the online directory of residents lists 327 persons. Many of them are uncomfortable using technology and choose not to do so. Development and implementation resources are scarce and we should not expend them in remedial efforts directed at them. We should devote our development and implementation efforts to the large middle ground of residents who are comfortable and literate but find the technological opportunities at Windrows uninspiring and not very useful.]
4. Monitoring the functioning of technology used throughout Windrows to ensure that it is operating correctly and working with staff to correct problems. [Is the limiting factor with communication and technology the poor operation of what we have? What could we have and what could we do with it within the scale of resources we can muster?]
5. Researching and recommending technologies that could:
   1. Improve the efficiency or lower the cost of regularly-occurring procedures at Windrows, with a particular focus on communications. [Is this consistent with the often-voiced concern to make Windrows technologically attractive to younger potential residents? Are there important possibilities that don't regularly occur at present?]]
   2. Facilitate residents’ participation in Windrows life while they are both on campus and away. [Yes, but @c.]
   3. Facilitate online communication between residents. [Yes, but to what degree do we need to pay more attention to the interaction between residents online and external online communities and resources?]
   4. Improve energy efficiency. [Of course, but is it our proper focus? Buildings and grounds?]
6. Working with the Board and Staff to develop long-term technology goals and implementation plans; developing data necessary for evaluating progress toward achieving these goals. [Should we include concerns about Purpose and Human Agency in framing our activities and the evaluation of their effectiveness? Do organizational goals and plans generate sufficient aspirational effort?]
7. Implementing a Bi-annual technology satisfaction and need survey among residents and staff.