Many of our volunteer engineers have told us they want to connect with each other. Sometimes they just want to meet others with the same interests, but they also want to provide each other with peer support. A fair few have specialist knowledge or skills that will help us develop the programme further. Connection will help them see a fuller picture.
We’re very happy with what they want, so we’re just trying to work out what works for them. There are lots of options. Many of the engineers think the programme will develop skills that help with their careers, so a LinkedIn group might be a good option. There are Facebook and WhatsApp groups, and email mailing lists, of course, or we could set up a dedicated internet forum.
We’re already using blog posts to ask questions about what we’re doing. For instance, we’ve recently asked about what we need to change in the reading materials format to make them work. We’ve also described what we know about monitoring electricity use so far, which falls short of what many groups will want to do. One way of connecting with us and with each other is to follow the blog and comment on it. We’re very happy to receive comments on what we post. Once we’ve made our choices, we can make sure the blog posts go automatically to LinkedIn or Facebook, or both, to make that easier.
If you have opinions about this – networks you do and don’t use, for instance – please take a minute to tell us:
We’ll do whatever looks like it will work best for this community.
“3D Social Networking” by Chris Potter is licensed under CC BY 2.0.