All,
I am not sure how active the membership is anymore in communication amongst ourselves, but I would like to suggest some changes, that are free of course, and would possibly benefit the entire community.

Here are some items I would like to suggest: facebook, linkedin, twitter, googledocs, picasa, and various types of forums/website.

Facebook
For starters, most people know about facebook, but after a certain age, fewer people use it. That should not deter people from using it as you don't need an account just to read the "wall" or "pages". This is an example of one of my pages.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Az4Education/172828352736491?sk=wall

If you have an account, be sure to like us, and if you don't have an account, suggest getting one to take advantage of the many other features available on FB.


Linkedin
The same can be said of Linkedin. We can create a group for the four hills community, that allows others to see it, share information and it acts like a simple forum/blog.

This is an example of one group I belong too... if you have a free account, you can join many more.

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Az4Education-Network-3996072


Twitter
For twitter, this would be helpful to have if there are emergency updates, that need real time communication, and the beauty is you can tie them all together, so that your tweet can go to a website, a linked in group, and the facebook page, etc... so if you tweet, your message gets to others who may have a twitter account, but certainly will be seen on the social media.


Googledocs and Picasa
A few years ago, I suggested we move to google docs, to manage and hold our documents. This works great for holding minutes, pdf/ppt/word and other documents. For images and videos, Picasa, also free, allows people to share images, and this has been used before for the road commitee. The nice thing is that you can make it all open to the public or private to select members for both docs and picasa.


Forums/Websites
Lastly, for website and forums, there are now a lot of very user friendly, easy to manage systems, such as wordpress, phpbb, blogger and more that take all the headaches out of website management. In fact, this can also be a huge cost saver, depending on the ISP and URL. Time to manage is also dramatically reduced, and can be distributed to other generalists, rather than relying on specialists.

Here's one of my examples on blogger.com
http://sandersfamilia.blogspot.com/

If you have any questions or comments, reply here or email me at brians777@gmail.com.

Regards
Brian Sanders
lot owner 616/7/802

Quick answer...all for it - seems like there is not alot of info / change here ( that might be good :-) )

As an out of area owner, I would love to have a better option for info - in case I "cant find my way home"
Of course the question begs to be answered -- who will step up? who will maintain it? This forum is GREAT -- but I have no doubt that Sherrian and Bruce have many more important things to do then post the pictures and info that we all would love to see. For now... Im out of area, and not very tech savy so Im out - sorry.

"Friends Don't Let Friends Facebook"

Of course that's just my opinion. We don't do social media anymore--FB in particular.

So, someone else will have to step up to the plate in that regard.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2057000/Half-Facebook-users-sites-snooping-policies-site-changes-privacy-rules-EIGHT-times-years.html

Bruce,
So true, but you don't have to put your personal details on fb in the first place. The fb page acts more like a bullitan board, where information about four hills activities is shared. And, the beauty is that you don't have to have a personal account to read it. and if you do have one, updates will be shard with your personal fb account .

Even better is that these are all interconnected so one statement, status update gets posted to everything... Example would be to have a minutes posted on the website and it automatically pushes a notice link tomthe twitter, fb, linked in pages represented by four hills. All free.

I will be willing to help. Who is in charge of the website these days? have left a message (or two) with board phone number, but no response yet.

Bruce or Sherrian, can you give me a call or email?