Pushmepullyou

I was having a talk at an event this last weekend with a friend who is also a member of the group that hosted the event. We limit attendance to 400 people. We feed them at this event and provide several live bands... this is a big event that requires TONS of coordination - all from volunteers who care about this event that we have now hosted for 12 years.

Our conversation had to do with him not knowing what was going on with meals, and my response was "well... I put it on the forum days ago that I was making food for Friday night for everyone," and his response was "I don't use that. I like my information pushed to me, not where I have to go pull it." I am the exact opposite.... I cannot stand getting tons of emails that have little to do with me. I want the info somewhere that I can easily get to to find it when I need it, and not sort through a barrage of stuff that clogs my mailboxes with everyone "replying to all" when really not all need to know their response, etc. I am a user of forums/discussion boards and not a lover of list serves or yahoo group-type arrangements for information sharing. I am about maxed out on all of it though.

I manage a portion of a website, have 3 email address accounts to deal with, numerous websites that I constantly glean info from for work, multiple discussion boards and blogs that I haunt, various newsletters that are "pushed" at me via email, a new forum I am trying to get up and running for PSD, and now I need to manage a facebook and/or myspace page for PSD work as well - probably both brands and probably more than one of each for different populations. And I am not even keeping up with all of the many forms that are being used currently and I don't use lots of these very well either. I am suffering from information overload ... too much coming at me and too much that I am trying to disperse. And good old analog technology... I have at least three phone meetings every month, and three committee meetings to attend in person.

And this is the kind of thing we are asking of our volunteers as well. How much of a spiritual home are we providing when we are practically deluging them, and our staff, with so much? It has almost gotten to where Sunday mornings are the slow portion of my work where I just have people wanting my attention in person, not in every form of technology I can think of as well.