Great question. You are not showing your age but showing wisdom. Something all of us can learn from as the WGA evolves. Funny thing is that I had what I thought was this great response all typed out and submitted only for it to get into a traffic jam on the information super highway. I went back to the parking lot and I started rethinking my response. In my profession, we live by the phrase “speed to market”.  Get what you have in front of the public as quickly as you can.

If you need to get a hold of someone, you reach out through social media or text messaging these days. You can almost guarantee a timely response or urge a person to do something quickly. If the WGA didn’t have social media notifications, I would have probably missed some things over the past couple of years. However, those notifications are only the headlines. If you want to dig deeper into the notifications you need open the page and read the details. Maybe I am middle of the road when it comes to these things but I see great value in the notifications as well as the ability to read more by using the WGA site as a great resource and tool by looking beyond the headlines. They are both very valuable to me personally.

I think the WGA website provides a great service to Wisconsin Cachers.  The site had a makeover within this last year to improve the delivery to us.   Volunteers who have undoubtedly spent many hours of their time to recreate this great tool are to be commended.   I believe the WGA can not be the answer for all things.  For better or worse, social media has certainly changed many ways of communication.

Perhaps members of the WGA can take a more active role to “talk up the WGA to other cachers.”   It’s up to all of us to suggest new ways of doing things if the current format doesn’t meet our needs.  As a potential Board Member, I don’t have the technical skill, but through synergy from all WGA members, perhaps new ideas could be found.    Maybe some new social media is just around the corner?

However, can the WGA be a part of this? of course, and they are.   Several of us had a discussion at the WGA Chili Feed last Saturday about this very topic.   My understanding of this conversation was the WGA Facebook page is there and useable.   From this discussion I learned the WGA cannot become a Group Facebook page.   There are several Cacher Facepage Groups out there who seem to be using this media for the purpose of what was mentioned which WGA was doing in the past. Do we know if these Cacher Facepage Groups ignore the WGA website and just do their own thing?  Do we know how to change the WGA website in other ways to accomplish what the Groups are doing? or use another social media form?   Is it a function we want the WGA to be able to do?

Basically I’m answering the question with more questions!   I think this topic needs more discussion and identification of what the members need and want from their WGA .

With everyone having smartphones and data plans, it seems that the WGA website has suffered a bit. Facebook and other social media seems to have taken off and left websites in the dust but the one nice thing about the WGA website is that it does function quite well on Mobile devices. The format of the Website forums allows for fairly easy recall of topics and individual posts while a busy day on Facebook and its non-descript way of updating your wall, makes finding individual posts nearly impossible without scrolling for hours.
the Website has its purpose and we need to continue to promote its use to keep it all relevant. it will not be utilized as much as FB unless we promote it. there are many functions of the website that cannot be performed via social media.