A Great New Resource

by Luis Martin

A great new resource was recently made available to the RSOL community. With this resource, we can finally put the nightmare of keeping up with all the email discussions and mailing list messages to an end. If we all use this resource, we will no longer have to spend time organizing emails into categories in order to keep up with all of the different discussions. I am referring to the RSOL forum.

The RSOL forum is a discussion forum available to all RSOL members. It can be accessed through http://www.rsolcc.org/forum/ (please email Luis_Martin@fastmail.fm for approval after registering). In the forum, you will be able to start discussion threads or comment on threads that have already been started. You can use this as a platform for brainstorming, planning, disseminating information, or even calling people to action. Virtually anything you had been doing via email can now be done more efficiently using the forum.

The advantages of using the forum instead of relying on email are numerous. First, you will find that everything is much easier to organize. Unlike emails, discussion threads are naturally organized by topic and do not require you to set up advanced filters or spend time re-reading emails in order to catch up with where you were at in a certain discussion. Discussion threads also lend themselves nicely to multi-user discussions. You no longer have to CC half a dozen people and be CC'd on half a dozen responses; one discussion thread can be used by everyone simultaneously and all of the replies are organized into that one thread.

Another advantage of discussion threads is that they allow new members to jump right in. A new member, once given access to the forum, is able to go to the appropriate forum page and view the discussion on whichever initiative interested him/her and within minutes be up to date and ready to go with what could have taken hours of wading through disparate emails otherwise. As new members arrive, they can quickly get up to speed on all the projects and initiatives you are working on.

Finally, among the forum's many benefits is the increased sense of community that it will foster. As things stand now, it can sometimes be difficult for one person to know someone else unless they are working on a project together or are in the same state group. With the forum, it will be easier for all RSOL members to get to know each other.

Everyone is invited to join the RSOL forum. To do so, please create an account in the forum and then email Luis Martin at Luis_Martin@fastmail.fm.

In an effort to combat spam, the forum requires that registration be manually approved by a moderator. If Luis does not receive an email from you, it will be assumed that you are a spam bot and your request for registration may be ignored. Please email Luis as well as creating your account.