One Stop Shopping At Its Best- www.uucava.org/groups

Here some reasons why your group should be on UUCAVA.org:

1) You can advertise who you are to people who you don't know but who may interested in your group.

2) You have a central place for discussions among your group members.

3) Members can access multiple groups without setting up a new account for each group. Currently, many members are stuck joining new website communities such as Yahoo Groups or Google Groups every time they join new groups at UUCA.

4) You don't have to be as restrictive in access to the group as you might be in groups set up through Yahoo, Google or other social networks. Because these others groups are open to almost the whole world, you can't just have open membership (members join without moderation by the group admin) without risking the integrity of group discussion and exposing yourself to a high likelihood of receiving spam. Because www.uucava.org members are affiliated with UUCA and all who interact here are bound by the UUCA congregational covenant (posted to the homepage), you minimize the risk associated with open membership settings.

5) You can link documents and webpages to the discussions, allowing you to keep an online archive of material.

6) The group activity can more easily function as an extension of activity and fellowship within the church walls and you can work more collaboratively with other groups and members in the church.

Example of the Awesomeness of Groups:
You can add an event to the church calendar (which includes adding a description and reserving the right space for your needs at the time you make the addition). You can then post an announcement for the event under the www.uucava.org homepage "Discussions" tab so the whole church sees and you can direct people to the calendar for details on your event and to your group page to join in the community that is interested in related issues. You can also post the announcement within your group page and include a link for a sign up sheet for volunteers. If someone replies to the posting you can reply publicly within the discussion or, if you want to reply privately to someone's comments, you can send him or her a message directly through your UUCAVA.org private Inbox.
You can do all of these things- reserve a room, provide an event description for the calendar, advertise the event to the whole church and link them to details on your group, solicit comments and coordinate volunteers within your group, and engage in private correspondence- all in one sitting, all within the domain of www.UUCAVA.org.

www.uucava.org/groups is One Stop Shopping At Its Best

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by jill herndon on December 11, 2009 at 8:00pm

So well put! I love the one-stop-shopping analogy.

Permalink Reply by jill herndon on August 14, 2011 at 11:53am

Rereading this, and it is as fresh and to the point as the day it was written. Thank you again Natalia Averett.

I have something to add -- about the "how to" -- this just may be a whole lot easier to use the Groups online here than you think it is.

The social media and group collaboration features of this website are a wonderful tool to share the knowledge and wisdom of our Church community, introduce efficiencies in group work in teams, expand the teams' access to a larger group, and in the public areas to increase both transparency and outreach to the larger world.

I was surprised to find that one of the reasons people want to use external groups is that they think they would have to navigate/travel to yet another site (here), and sign in all over again, and then go look for the group and an item.

Whoaa! It is way easier than that!

Here is how I explained it to a friend the other day. Anyone with other tips, please jump in to this group discussion. Let''s collaborate and celebrate.

Easy #1 - Don't sign off and if you are on the same access device, you don't have to sign back in.

Easy #2 - A short list of all the groups you belong to are instantly available from the link on your My Page, in the left column.

Easy #3 - You think you need to enter text and remember words and places -- no -- just click on the name of the group or the icon for the group. Picture book navigation. Find the picture and click on it -- or if you have an iPAD just touch it and by magic you get to the Group or item.

Easy #4 - A biggie! When you belong to a Group, and something happens in the Group, you will get an automatic notification in your home email. In that email is an automatic link back to the Group page. If you did not sign out you will be instantly able to view and comment. If you did sign out, then your view is goverened by the security settings of the site and the public or private security settings of the Group.

A potential complication, but still Easy #5 - This one you may need to tell your friends -- because it could be why they no longer know what is happening with your Group through the Group information and calendars and meetings online. But I am still calling it Easy.

You don't remember your password and/or it does not match the one that is registered in your website personal security settings -- there is a link for that on the SIGN IN box and the site will send you an email at home to give you a way to reset it.

Complication -- you changed your email address altogether. Read on.

You can't sign in and you don't get messages from the website at all. When you signed up as a member to this site, you used your home email that was valid at that time. If you have changed but did not also go into your personal settings in this website to record the change, your messages are still trying to go to the old address. You have to SIGN IN under the registered name and email that you used to be known by, and go to your personal security settings and change the registered email so the website will now follow you again. Update your password too. See what else you might want to change or update.

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