It’s easy to get caught up in specific facets or aspects of the broader Internet that we use regularly or that makes our lives easier, more connected or more informed at the expense of losing perspective of what is going on in the broader context. Often it helps to take a step back and survey where the road we are traveling is leading and what the implications of following that path will have. And while many experts and pundits have their own opinions of where we are going or what lies ahead few have the respect and clout of Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf.

In celebration of Google’s 10th anniversary, here is what he had to write on the Official Google Blog when asked about the societal and technological impact of the Internet over the course of the next ten years.

In the next decade, around 70% of the human population will have fixed or mobile access to the Internet at increasingly high speeds, up to gigabits per second. We can reliably expect that mobile devices will become a major component of the Internet, as will appliances and sensors of all kinds. Many of the things on the Internet, whether mobile or fixed, will know where they are, both geographically and logically. As you enter a hotel room, your mobile will be told its precise location including room number. When you turn your laptop on, it will learn this information as well–either from the mobile or from the room itself. It will be normal for devices, when activated, to discover what other devices are in the neighborhood, so your mobile will discover that it has a high resolution display available in what was once called a television set. If you wish, your mobile will remember where you have been and will keep track of RFID-labeled objects such as your briefcase, car keys and glasses. “Where are my glasses?” you will ask. “You were last within RFID reach of them while in the living room,” your mobile or laptop will say.

You can read more from Cerf here: The next Internet

His He goes on to offer a number of other analogies and examples to reinforce his thinking. I am struck by the ubiquity, convenience and connectivity that he suggests while simultaneously being fearful of the implications of the same. All gain comes with a cost and the cost for this enhanced connectivity could be the potential loss of privacy; at least if this information is used in a less than ethical or scrupulous manner. It’s an interesting thought to ponder but one that must be considered especially in this age of increasing business and governmental involvement in all things we do. I’m not suggesting that we revert back to the way things were or recommending that we retreat into isolation but I do think we need to be aware of the actual price of what we are getting. With great power comes great responsibility. Thought provoking no doubt.

On a similar vein it would be interesting in hearing from those involved in the association world to hear some of your thoughts on what the challenges and opportunities that the next 10 years, specific to leadership, learning and technology, of the Internet may bring. Share your thoughts below.

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It was obvious from some of the feedback that I received on my post yesterday about my problems with ASAE’s listserv that I am not the only person who has had the experience of getting spammed by the application and I am also not the first to bring this up in a blog post. While I may not be the first, I certainly hope I can be the last by continuing to drive this issue until some sort of workable solution is found. Granted some things can’t be changed and those that do get changed often do so only because of patience and persistence. Fortunately I have a lot of both. I also have a good amount of resourcefulness and willingness to seek out potential answers to the problem and share them in the hopes of being part of the solution instead of just part of the problem.

Both Fred Simmons and Elizabeth Weaver Engel got me thinking about what could be done to remedy the situation and I have to agree that other organizations are using Lyris ListServ without generating an undue amount of redundant or unnecessary email to the list members, the question is how. I did a good deal of self-educating since I posted yesterday and I think the answer is actually pretty simple and fortunately does not put the burden of responsibility on individual ASAE members. In fact a pretty simple Google search yielded a number of solutions in the first page of results.

For example Dgroups, an online home for groups and communities interested in international development, has a wiki dedicated to the Lyris ListServ product which they use for their own groups and had a great entry on preventing “out of office” messages from being sent to list members. I have included it below:

How do I prevent “out of office” messages from arriving to the list?

A filter on the global server level is applied to all messages of all lists containing typical “out of office” message keywords. This filter prevents these messages from being sent to Dgroups lists. The keywords in the global filter are the following:

• AutoReply
• Autoreply
• autoreply

If you have any suggestions to add to this list, please send them to zqu AT bellanet.org.

If you would like to create a filter which will apply to only your list, then follow the steps below. Note that by creating a new filter, it will be applied in addition to the filter on the global server level. Before creating your own filter, it is important to be cautious when choosing words/phrases which will prevent a message from being delivered to a list, in order to reduce the possibility of legitimate messages not arriving to the list.

Follow these steps to create your own filter:
1. Login to the Lyris interface.
2. Click on ‘List Admin’.
3. Click on ‘Action Phrases’.
4. Click on ‘Create Phrase’.
5. Supply the information:

• Phrase: These are the word(s)/phrase(s) which will prevent the message containing them to be sent to your list. For this field, follow the directions given. Note that there should only be one word/phrase per line. No additional syntax should be included for phrases, such as surrounding the phrase by quotations.
• Response: nothing.
• Rule: phrase appears in the message body or subject (normally, this is the best choice)

You do not need to change any other values, but if you would like to be notified of when the filter is triggered, then supply your email address in the Notify field.

6. Click ‘Save’.

Source: Dgroups - Administrator FAQ

To be honest, that is about as easy as it gets. I would estimate creating these rules would take someone at ASAE under a half hour of effort to implement and based on the OOO responses that I received would have eliminated 30 of 31 (96.77%) of messages that I received. That’s a pretty significant reduction in unnecessary responses and likely a pretty significant reduction in the amount of emails that server that Lyris is installed on would have to process. Everybody wins.

Similarly, ASAE goes out of their way to help educate users in how to respond to both the list and individual users, but again they place the onus on the user instead of configuring the system to work with them. For example the ASAE Listserv instructions specifically tell users that if they want to reply directly to another user they should:

• Avoid resending the entire message to which you are replying by cutting and pasting the relevant parts into your response. And, please do not resend a digest back to the e-mail list.
• Using the reply button in your e-mail application will automatically send your response to the entire list. To reply directly to a member of the list, forward the e-mail and copy and paste his or her e-mail address into the “To” line.

Source: ASAE and the Center

This too is something they could configure Lyris to handle for maximum member benefit. Again borrowing from the Dgroups:

Can I change my list settings so that when participants “Reply” to a message, the reply only goes to the sender of the message and not the list?

Yes, by default message replies go to the list address. To change this to the sender of the message:

1. Login to the Lyris interface.
2. Click on ‘List Admin’.
3. Click on ‘List Info’.
4. In the section ‘Email Headers’, change the value in the ‘Reply To’ field to ‘author’ (by default, it is blank).
5. Click ‘Save Mailing List’.

Source: Dgroups - Administrator FAQ

Again, another really simple fix that could have a major impact. The question that I have is whether this is something that resulted as a lack of knowledge and/or attention or a lack of willingness to make the change. I have to assume it is the former as opposed to the later as ASAE does appear (at least to me) to be highly tuned into it’s members needs and responds when and where it can.

Admittedly I am a bit concerned about the feasibility of this solution to work for ASAE only because they are running a version of Lyris that appears to be a number of versions behind the current. Based on an evaluation of the html generated page they are running:

Lyris ListManager WIN32 database MSSQL version 7.0 build 1442 - Mar 17 2003

A quick view of the Lyris Listserv page indicates that they are currently up to Version 10.0. That places ASAE 14 releases out of the most modern release.

And because my familiarity with Lyris is rather limited I can’t say for certain whether this will work or not. And while I am not advocating for implementing a new version of a platform or system simply because it is available, often times new versions are release because they address shortcomings of past versions and also introduce valuable new features and functionality. Based on what I was able to ascertain this is exactly the case.

I will say that it is a great case study in the importance of making sure that your core technology is in order before running down the rabbit hole of new technology adoption. All of the cool new technology adoption in the world is of little value to your members if your core technology doesn’t work the way it should or in a way that inconveniences them.

So ASAE what can you do to fix this. If you aren’t going to listen to your most enthusiastic supporters who are you going listen to? Is there something obvious that I am overlooking? Is there a business reason that you can’t make these changes? I (and apparently many others) are interested in knowing. And for you technology pro’s out there what else can could ASAE do to fix this? There has to be blenty of other ways to make the listserv more useful and user friendly thereby making it stickier and less of an inconvenience for members who really want to get involved but couldn’t be bothered with the some of the problems that I have had.

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I haven’t been blogging much lately largely due to an extremely busy schedule but that doesn’t mean I am not keeping watch on what is going on in the association and broader worlds around me. So while I hate to come back with a rant, this one is well deserved and probably long overdue. One thing that I spend a lot of time checking out everyday is ASAE’s listservs as I learn a lot and on occasion have the ability to share something that I know.

Admittedly listservs are pretty dated technology but nonetheless they are still somewhat effective to share and exhange information. My frustration from the beginning with ASAE’s listserv was the inability to easily reply to a post without getting barraged with an overabundance of “Out of Office” responses from those who are subscribed but away from the office.

Today was really a breaking point for me. I responded to Caron Mason’s post on a few Movable Type questions that she had because I had some decent answers for her. I spent a good deal of time providing a thoughtful answer and adding links that I thought she would find useful. Now this has nothing to do with Caron, just setting the stage for what happened next.

I hit the submit button knowing what was to come but hoping for the best. Well the best didn’t happen, instead I instantly received over 30 out of office responses (and many more to come I am sure) clogging my already overflowing email inbox. Come on ASAE give me and the other members a break. There has got to be a better technology available to serve a similar task. What I did was a good thing and part of the knowledge sharing and community building process that makes belonging to an association so great. Sure I could have responded directly to Caron, but that would have constrained the knowledge sharing effort and only benefited her when others may have had a similar question or more experience with the topic that they could have contributed.

Why is it that instead of a smooth process I got punished instead? Anybody else have as much of a problem with this as I do? Anybody come up with a way to deal with the crash of OOO replies? Anybody from ASAE listening and can give me some hope on this front? I love sharing what I know as I am sure that many other members do as well, but if all that I get in return in punished than there is no sense in participating.  Technology is supposed to work for us not against us. Let me know what you think.

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