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.

Sphere: Related Content

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.

Sphere: Related Content

So what do the three topics listed in the title have in common? In a nutshell: there is a whole lot going on with each. Beijing appears to be prepared to host the Games of the 29th Olympiad. For a great slideshow on Beijing and China in general, take a look at this:

The Olympic opening ceremonies have already begun and here in the states we will get a chance to see them tonight at 7:30 PM (EDT). For a sneak peek take a look at the photo gallery on NBC. I’m not normally a huge Olympics fan, but I do enjoy watching the events and hearing about the competitors and what they had to do to reach this elite position in the sporting world. Of particular note I am keeping a very close watch on Dara Torres, the 41 year old swimmer (50m free, 4×100m free relay) who is making a comeback after shoulder surgery. Torres is already the oldest swimming gold medalist, and she could raise that record from 33 to 41 by winning gold again in Beijing. She is also the oldest American swimmer to qualify for the Olympics and the first to make five teams. Pretty amazing story.

For those of you who are really “into” the Olympics, here are a few video sites worth keeping an eye on:

• The Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games - Videos
• CCTV.com - Official Internet/mobile phone broadcaster of the Beijing Olympic Games
• NBCOlympics - Official US online broadcaster of the Beijing Olympics
• International Olympic Committee’s cahnnel on YouTube™
• Universal Sports YouTube™ Channel

I will also be watching cycling a bit more closely than usual - road, track, mountain, and BMX - and pulling for some hometown favorites: Bobby Lea of Topton, PA and Giddeon Massie of Bethlehem, PA, both of whom are track cyclists. I wish the two of them and all of Team USA the best of success in bringing home the gold for the US.

Internet

A rather obscure fact but nonetheless worth mentioning, the idea of networking computers is 40 years old this week, marking the delivery of the technical paper which coined the phrase “packet switching”.

Donald Davies was working at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Middlesex when he delivered a paper in August 1968 which detailed how distinct packets of data could be sent over public telephone and later dedicated networks. Davies then set about actually building what is claimed to be the world’s first local area network (LAN) at the NPL, which consisted of approximately half a dozen nodes each with three or four machines attached.

Additionally, 17 years ago, on this week (August 6) in 1991, Englishman Tim Berners-Lee, an independent researcher at the CERN institute in Switzerland, published a summary of the World Wide Web project and this date was taken as the day when commercial Internet (WWW) became available to the public. The project started out as a philosophy stating that scientific information should be available to everyone. The goal was “to enable the exchange of information between internationally dissipated groups and spread information among support groups”, Berners-Lee wrote in his summary.

Pretty exciting stuff, especially considering how entrenched the Internet has become in our daily lives.

Me

Finally, with regard to where I have been and what I have been doing, all I can say is that I have been exceptionally busy and in the midst of some significant changes. Many of you saw my tweet stating that I had left PMI and begun a new gig this week. That’s part of the story and I will dedicate a full post to where I have moved to and what I am doing. As for the rest of my activity, most of it is related to Jeff DeCagna’s recent blog post. If you haven’t see it, you can read it here: Ready or not….

More to come soon. I promise. Until then. Happy Friday!

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