Posted: 1 year ago

How can we enhance our experience of fellowship within our club? What's working -- or NOT working -- for you in this area?

Larry Levenson
President 2009-2010
Prescott, Arizona USA
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Posted: 1 year ago

I think it would be wonderful if we has a couple of times per week when there was a fair chance that other club members were going to be on the site.  THen we could use the group chat function and perhaps have some nearly real-time live banter going in private messages and the forums....

Trying to get without first giving is as fruitless as trying to reap without having first sown.

It does not do to leap a 20 ft chasm in two ten foot jumps.

Posted: 1 year ago

I second the call for times when the possibility is there that members can connect in real time.  There are all kinds of systems already built for this - Skype being one of the best ones.

Posted: 1 year ago

I don't know about the website mechanics, but given our meetings take place over a week's timeframe, could a "high points recap" email be sent to all who attended a particular meeting?  Perhaps it could include a few of the best comments left, and if there's a way to leave comments along with happy bucks, those could also be passed on.  It would facilitate a feeling that the meeting is interactive even if the reactions may come a few days later.

Posted: 1 year ago

I think that anything that can be done, that works, needs consideration because one look at the forum shows this:

International: last comments done four months ago; District: seven months ago; GSE: seven months ago; Club: two weeks ago; General Conversation: three weeks ago; Travel; two weeks ago; Fun Stuff: two months ago; and eClub Future: right now with my comments and Steve's 20 hours ago. If it is new on the forum, it gets some response, it seems. Have we as a society become so jaded that only the new gets comment. Only what is current has meaning? The past is our path to the future (we who have look back to move forward have found this is true).

What is obvious is that the forum is not used for communications, except when we did tell each other what we did with Mamie's What's Up, Doc each week. That was something that seemed to work for a time but it has been silent now for two weeks or more. Fellowship means exchanging stories, events in our lives, ideas and images that touch our existence, and learning about each other so that when needed, service is with those we know not just strangers. My college had a Latin phrase about the way that I feel, most of the time, about the forum: Vox Clamatis en Deserto ("A voice crying in the wilderness"). If you write something, our own eClub members do not participate (except for a few). For the future of our eClub, this has to change, improve and become as natural to do each week (or at least each month) as saying hello to our neighbors.

As President of Rotary Global History Fellowship, I use the phrase quite often, "To know is to grow," that is, knowing Rotary history as guides to solve problems in the future. If we do not know each other as members of RECSWUSA, then growth is minimal except for those who live close together or those few who do take the time to communicate. The whole idea of an Internet Rotary Club is that we communicate from a distance, using the technology of the present to move into the future.  We use emails and the forum, not Facebook, not a new system but what we created when we started this eClub and it still can work. What is being said here was said in 2006 when I joined and I see little progress. The opposite of my phrase is also true, "To grow is to know". The future of our eClub must be built on knowledge; and fellowship is knowledge of the most personal kind.  

Joe

Posted: 1 year ago

I am afraid that we have had this conversation to exhaustion in the past, and nothing has been accomplished in the area of fellowship.  I hate to be so negative, but I have not participated in these forums for months because it always seemed to me that there were only 3 or 4 of us participating.  One look at our membership list will reveal that several persons have not visited our website in weeks, months, or even years! Some of them have not even completed their profiles! I thought that an eClub would by necessity have all of its members  participating every week without fail.  I am beginning to see why the terra clubs have been criticizing us for years.  Maybe things will change in the future, but I am not holding my breath.  The only way it will change is if each member is committed to make every meeting and make a comment on any forum once a week.  Please remember that eClubs will be reviewed in 2010.

I commend Joe for not giving up, and like my grandmother use to say:  "May your voice be the voice of an angel."

Frank Longoria