WhatsApp Community

This initiative is being driven by Shona Hudson and Mags Adams-Aston

OBJECTIVE

WhatsApp is used quite extensively across the Club however its use has been organic and it is used for different purposes in different teams.

      • This has lead to a number of areas where we are not using it effectively and/or not exploiting some of its features.
      • In addition we are searching for a mechanism to do  immediate / very short-term communications of things such as ride cancellations, or items needing some review or action by the whole or majority of club.
      • There have been comments that it is not apparent to everyone what WhatsApp groups there are in use across the club and it could be that unknown to someone there is a group that it would be useful for them to participate in
      • The volume of social chit-chat on Whatsapp groups can overwhelm its use as a formal club communication mechanism

So what we are proposing is the implementing a ‘Whats App Community’ function to give us the ability to both make one-way, immediate/short-term  ‘Announcements’ out to the wider membership, and for the existence of all the user group WhatsApps to be visible to everyone  in the community.

What is a WhatsApp Community

Communities on WhatsApp bring members together in topic-based groups. Anyone can create a WhatsApp community. You can create new topic-based groups or add existing WhatsApp groups.
Community admins can reach members with important updates by sending announcements, and community members can stay connected by exploring and chatting in groups that matter to them. Members can receive updates sent to the entire community and easily organize smaller discussion groups on what matters to them.
Your personal messages and calls in communities are always end-to-end encrypted. No one else, not even WhatsApp, can read or listen to them.
You can create a WhatsApp community with up to 100 groups. Community Announcements will automatically be created for your community. This is a space where community admins can send messages to all community members.
 
When you’re in a community, you’ll always receive community announcements. Admins can send announcements to broadcast updates and other relevant messages to all community members.
 
Only community admins can send messages in Announcements. As a member, you can view how many participants are in the community and mute notifications for announcements.
Note:
        • Users who leave community Announcements will also exit the community.
        • Everyone can see the total number of participants in Announcements, however, only community admins can see all of the participants in Announcements.

 

CONSIDERATIONS

We need a Naming convention for all the WhatsApp groups in the Community.

We need to prepare some guidelines on Inappropriate posts /material. A possible sample is –

This group is there for the sharing of information in a friendly and positive manner and it should be done in a way that is respectful and mindful of everyone in the group

Inappropriate posts will be deleted and people removed as necessary but the admin is not there to monitor each group … however if someone finds something that makes them uncomfortable then they can let the admin know, it will be self policing in that respect .

Jokes and GIFs , memes etc are for your own personal Whatsapp and not for any Club Whatsapp group as everyones humour is different. Photos and sharing good news about club activities such as rides/tours etc are welcome .

 We have a few open items relating to the scope of how we want to inplement the Community function that we need the Committee to decide – 

COMMITTEE ACTION REQUIRED -We have a range of ‘sets’ of people that we engage with and the Club Committee need to decide who we invite to join the Community …. how we identify them to build a distribution list ….and the mechanism we use to send them an invitation to join the community.

        • Only members of Cycling UK (e.g. our AGM distribution list) ?
        • All Subscribers to the Bulletin ?
        • Only Active Riders / Social attendees ?
        • Do we include New Riders who are not members of Cycling UK or should they be in a group outside of our Community ?
        • Any other grouping !!

COMMITTEE ACTION REQUIRED -Do we offer a facility for people to request to join from the website ? … and if so how do we check that they are a valid person to join the Community

COMMITTEE ACTION REQUIRED – We need to be careful to not overload the Announcements facility and do not use it when we could be using the Bulletin or Website more appropriately. It should be for items for Immediate action only. Committee to provide guidance on what we would use this for used for e.g. All rides cancelled.

 

ROLLOUT PLAN

We will aim to start inducting people into the Community by the end of October

We will progress with Mags and Shona as the Community Administrators

The top-level Community function has already been installed and tested.

We need the Committee decisions to be made at the September Committee meeting as to who will be part of the Community and how that will be validated

With the above information we can design the launch and invitation communications

In the weeks leading up to the launch put articles in the Weekly Bulletin announcing the WhatsApp Community approach to prepare them for the launch

Issue final announcement to everyone that the Comminity is open for them to join

Administrators of the current WhatsApp groups to be consulted on the timeframe for moving their group into the Community

 

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