What technologies do y'all currently use?
Anything that works particularly well? anything that's really giving you problems?
Evan Crook Tue 21 Nov 2017 9:43PM
Our co-op is a bit behind on this and just coming up to speed...
* We have finally (with new staff) started officially using google docs/drive for things like governing documents and Board minutes
* I got my house to use Slack, with mixed success (some people don't check it much and prefer posting paper in the kitchen) and am trying to get it adopted organization-wide
* also trying to get Loomio adopted as a pilot, this group is a bit of a trial run for me
* email listservs
Personally I'm a mac guy these days
Kyle Wed 22 Nov 2017 2:11AM
That's cool, and I find your experience with Slack helpful since I'm considering integrating it into our house communications. Ideally, it would be a fairly complete transition; i.e., we use it for all the things that we currently do on Facebook + for the benefits it offers
Kyle Wed 22 Nov 2017 2:15AM
What are some hurdles you face to getting everyone on-board? Also, do you think Slack represents a significant improvement? If so, in what areas?
Evan Crook Wed 22 Nov 2017 2:46AM
I think it's at least potentially a lot better than email, since it's faster to read and reply to and you have more focused channels. e.g. #chores, #food, #maintenance, #partyplanning. Co-op emails just end up in one big messy inbox and there are a lot of them, unless you have filtering/labels set up in your gmail, which most people don't.
The main barriers to adoption are just peoples' hesitance to use or check a new platform. I don't think it's anti-tech sentiment in general -- everyone in my house is a digital native, comfortable with facebook/instagram/snapchat/etc -- just that people don't want to check another app when they have several already.
Jimmy Coyer Tue 12 Dec 2017 12:07AM
- Property Management Software : Rent Manager
- Financial : QuickBooks
- Documentation / File Sharing : Google Suite
We're looking at adopting a convenient messaging system as well. Currently looking at Slack and (if you can believe it) Discord.
Alli Nilles Tue 13 Mar 2018 6:24PM
- QuickBooks for financial, though there is much grumbling about this from the finance people
- Meeting notes and file sharing: Google Docs (dedicated gmail accounts for coordinator positions, and Google Groups for listserv and sharing docs to everyone. Just learned recently that you can share docs with a group this way)
- Mixture of Slack and GroupMe for fast messaging and memes, participation is optional
- Spreadsheets for finance (dividing up utilities, etc) and cooking assignments
- Website and domain name are done through 1&1 right now and we pay $17/month. We're transitioning to getting a VPS from DigitalOcean for $5/month and getting domain name separately (about $20/year). This will require someone to know how to SSH into the server and make changes to the website if necessary. Looking into wiki apps and similar apps that allow browser-side editing.
Alli Nilles Tue 13 Mar 2018 6:25PM
We also have a desktop computer and printer in the house and are looking to upgrade these to have a more legit "office" for the house, as well as keep some files and backups on a local server. Desktop runs Linux.
Kyle · Tue 21 Nov 2017 9:39PM
What kind of tech do you use?