| Grex > Coop11 > #21: Conference Request item |
| response 21 of 143: | 
Sep 1 15:22 UTC 1998 |
Okay, the Space conference is now listed in the public conference
index.
^R
(With a dialup or telnet connection, you can see the conference
index by typing "help conferences" at a Picospan prompt. Via the
web, its at the URL
http://www.cyberspace.org/cgi-bin/pw/bt/pistachio/conflist
With the web version, you can go to the conference by clicking on
its name.
| response 22 of 143: |
Sep 2 01:20 UTC 1998 |
What's the ^R in aid of, John?
| response 23 of 143: |
Sep 2 11:49 UTC 1998 |
Beats me. I posted the response in Backtalk, and it looked fine before I posted it.
| response 24 of 143: |
Sep 22 21:07 UTC 1998 |
The Slavic Languages Division of a national translators' organization is
looking for a way to conference. We have about 300 members, maybe half of
whom are originally or still from Eastern Europe or the former Soviet Union.
THe group publishes a quarterly newsletter of about 15 pages, discussing such
topics as why it is now Ukraine instead of the Ukraine, ecotourism in national
parks in the former USSR, the life of a translator in Ukraine, dictionary
reviews,, electronic dictionaries and other computer related topics (how to
type Bulgarian using WP5.1). THere is also a question and answer column for
problem words and phrases. I have asked the administrator if grex would be
a suitable location for a Slavic translators' conference. If so, I would
request first that users donate to grex, and that they try to make the
discussions, or at least many of them, of interest to non translators. Many
of the translators are recent arrivals from former communist countries and
would be able to answer questions about life there, politics, economics,
cooking, housing, whatever. Translation can be a lonely business and I expect
there would be quite a lot of general chit-chat. Some of our members are
still living in eastern Europe (but would write in only in English).
I do not expect a flood of users, possibly ten or twenty new grex members at
the very most and some other occasional users.
THe translators' association is non profit and educational. would
there be any problem in setting up a conference on grex intended primarily
for the use of another nonprofit organization? (And if this worked, how about
a conference for an amateur fruit growers' group?)
| response 25 of 143: |
Sep 22 22:35 UTC 1998 |
Sounds great !!! Invite them immediately !!! (IMHO)
| response 26 of 143: |
Sep 22 23:05 UTC 1998 |
as usual, I suggest that we try a few topics in agora first. The translator's association sounds pretty viable, assuming all the readers of the newsletter would also have telnet or web access to grex. I wonder if the amateur fruit growers' group has the same everyday use of the web. Even in Ann Arbor, some seemingly "natural" groups of potential grexers never show up. For a prime example, look at the People's Food Coop conference. Food coop has a web page, some very computer savy activists, and absolutely no activity in a conference that was promoted in its newsletter, its web site, and in person. They were simply not interested in being involved in a computer coop based on their food coop interests. Which is not to say that there aren't a lot of Food Coop members on line in Grex. Just that they don't use the Food Coop conference.
| response 27 of 143: |
Sep 23 01:39 UTC 1998 |
If it isn't used, why is it still around?
| response 28 of 143: |
Sep 23 11:53 UTC 1998 |
Because we never get rid of conferences, basically.
| response 29 of 143: |
Sep 23 17:45 UTC 1998 |
I just wanted to make sure that there would not be any legal or other
objections to letting another organization have a conference on grex, which
might concentrate heavily on matters not of very general interest. I have
not yet heard from the administrator of the translators' association, but will
let her know that so far it looks possible..
Jim is trying to get hold of the person teaching computers at the
Chelsea-Dexter area senior center, to see if the students, many of whom have
no computers at home, would like some from Kiwanis (or from Tim Ryan). Also
to see if they would be interested in joining grex, and maybe have a seniors
conference. (I did not check if there was such a thing). One of the students
and her husband found it interesting when I showed them how to join the
kitchen and the diy conferences, and also look at websites on medical problems
and rototillers. They make wine. We could use more older members for more
of a balance. May know more in a week or three.
| response 30 of 143: |
Sep 23 22:31 UTC 1998 |
Colleen, I'm not so sure that making people "try out" in Agora first is such a good idea when we'r talking about an organization. After all, a lot of what they want to discuss would be, as Sindi says, of no interest to the average Grexer. That doesn't mean they won't use the conferenc eif it's started. (Of course, if it's started, there's also no guarantee that they'll use it -- but I don't think unused conferences cause any problems...)
| response 31 of 143: |
Sep 23 23:02 UTC 1998 |
Yeah, you're right Misti. An organization is, theoretically, a mass of people who have expressed interest in communication about a topic.
| response 32 of 143: |
Sep 24 14:10 UTC 1998 |
I could start this off as an item in Language. The organization is already communicating via a quarterly newsletter which publishes anything and everything people submit, but many people feel too shy to submit to a printed newsletter. Also it does not help a lot to get an answer to a question on a document you are translating in the newsletter six months after the document has been translated. The national organization could also use a bulletin board for short questions on translating, but I am afraid the volume of questions might be too large for grex to handle (6000 or so members as opposed to about 300 in teh Slavic languages only). Let's try out Slavic first.
| response 33 of 143: |
Sep 24 22:54 UTC 1998 |
Go for it. If these are people who have never used computer
conferencing, then you'll need to think about ways to get people
participating. That means you'll want to try to pay a fair amount of
individual attention on each person. Some simple things you can do are
to ask each person to post a response "somewhere"--that could be a
response that describes the person, or if you can come up with a few
reasonably silly be perhaps interesting items, something to that. ("my
favorite restaurant"? "My most scary client experience?" "the silliest
sentence I ever saw translated?") Another thing you need to do is to
see that is a reasonable amount of interesting activity in the
conference. Some of this you can do yourself, by posting items and
participating yourself. But one thing you also want to do is to get
*other* people to post items, and so what you might do is to pick people
you think are especially interesting and literate, and get them to post
some interesting items, using gentle prodding ("say, remember the story
you told me about X? Can you enter that?")
You may also want to take a bit of time to explain some basic guidelines
on conferencing ahead of time, such as long responses (like this one)
over 25 lines don't go over as well as 5-20 line responses, and it's
important to be *much* more respectful of other people's opinions online
than in person (because you're missing many of the ftf cues and feedback
you'get in person that says this isn't necessarily a serious attack.)
You don't want to overdo this, because you could scare people off.
You'll also want to watch for signs of people overdoing stuff online,
and try to catch people before it gets bad enough to drive other people
away.
Some things you'll need to keep in mind are: if you take members of the
"average" population at large, the percentage of people who will
actually *be* interested in computer conferencing is surprisingly
small--*maybe* 1-2% at most. A lot of people don't like to read, an
even greater percentage don't like to write, and even among people who
like to do both, it takes a certain type of personality to enjoy
participating. The people who take to it may not be the people you
expect as well - someone who has great ftf skills may not be interested
in "wasting" their time online, while someone else who had always been
quiet and withdrawn in person, may blossom or even turn into a lion.
There's usually a certain minimum critical mass of actively
participating people before things will take off on their own. Usually,
this is about 20-25 people. Less than that, and things tend to die
down, and people wander off.
| response 34 of 143: |
Sep 25 00:19 UTC 1998 |
Thanks for all the ideas, Marcus. In this case, computer literacy is not a
problem, as these people all spend most of their day typing on the computer,
and a fair amount of time sending email. Second, most of us have never met
each other in person. I have met two other Slavic translators and had phone
conversations with perhaps ten others. I expect that it will be a real treat
for all of us who work alone at home to have other virtual people to talk with
about problems in our translations. I know that when I call someone to ask
for a bit of help we end up talking about unrelated things for a half hour.
Anyway, I expect more than 2% of members will participate, assuming that our
group does decide to use grex. (I have not yet heard back from the
administrator). My main concern was that grex might not want a specialized
conference, much of which other grexers would not understand. I am very
pleased at the responses. If the administrator agrees, I will post info on
grex in the next newsletter and/or email a few people before that.
The diy conference seems to be doing okay with only about 10 people
in it, and there has not been any unpleasantness of any sort. The only
possible problem is that most of the conversation takes place in one item.
More later, when something starts happening.
| response 35 of 143: |
Sep 25 10:33 UTC 1998 |
You needn't be concerned that "Grex might not want a specialized conference." In my opinion, the more diverse groups that Grex can serve via conferences in their specialities, the better. Like Marcus, I think you should go for it.
| response 36 of 143: |
Sep 25 22:45 UTC 1998 |
Sindi, as far as I'm concerned serving groups liek your are part of the reason Grex was created in the first place. No everone cares about any specific conference and that why we have several of them. ;)
| response 37 of 143: |
Sep 25 23:24 UTC 1998 |
I emailed the administrator again, and teh asst. admin, and the two newsletter editors for input, and hope to hear from them soon. If this works, may try something similar for the amateur fruit growers, and maybe Seed Savers, both of which have infrequent newsletters in print form. It is much more helpful to get your answers in less than three months.
| response 38 of 143: |
Sep 27 15:48 UTC 1998 |
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| response 39 of 143: |
Sep 27 16:02 UTC 1998 |
Leave it to us aging hippies to start one when we need one *grin*. I think almost all "senior" issues are well served in the current conferences. And I, for one, would prefer to discuss medical, housing, mobility, and other issues with all sorts of people, not just age-peers. Most "senior" issues are really society/government/etc issues that must be solved by the whole community, not just seniors talking amongst themselves.
| response 40 of 143: |
Sep 27 18:21 UTC 1998 |
I agree. I don't want to limit my conferences to other old fogies...all they want to do is talk about the good old days.... :)
| response 41 of 143: |
Sep 28 00:23 UTC 1998 |
Perhaps it would be better to have a translation conference, rather than a conference about translation of a certain language. It would certainly be possible, then, to create an item about a specific language. I would be very surprised if it turns out that there will be so much activity that the translation conference will need to be furthur split. Also, by making the topic much more general, I suspect that a lot more people will participate.
| response 42 of 143: |
Sep 28 01:54 UTC 1998 |
This response has been erased.
| response 43 of 143: |
Sep 28 14:54 UTC 1998 |
(Nor was it the idea that only seniors could use the senior citizen conference, I'm sure.)
| response 44 of 143: |
Sep 29 00:20 UTC 1998 |
It would even be a good place for those approaching senior-hood to get an idea of what to expect, and for seniors to show that that they've still "got it", and dispel stereotypes.
| response 45 of 143: |
Sep 29 04:23 UTC 1998 |
I don't know what a "senior" is, so perhaps it would be better as an *aging* cf. We all do that. Aging is probably given more thought as it proceeds so I suspect the discussions would concern aging past (say) 30, than before.