Jeffrey L Minch
Vice President, PHNA Board
Chairman, Communication Committee
512-656-1383 cell
jminch@littlefield.com
The recent email repetitive message saga has focused a bit more interest as to what communication is on the Neighborhood List — formerly called the ListServ. There were many irate members who mentioned that they did not like the Neighborhood List being clogged up with non-essential information.
In the recent Board meeting, I was appointed to oversee the Communication Committee which will oversee the website, Neighborhood List, Pemberton Journal and all things related to messaging to our neighbors.
Our communication strategy is in its infancy but much of it is quite obvious and therefore I would like to share what we have done thus far and our plans for the future:
We are going to try to streamline the volume of messages on the Neighborhood List communication channel.
- The website will be invigorated to include a blog (WordPress based) and comment system (Disqus) to allow for a bit of commentary and back and forth conversation. This has already been accomplished.The blog will be governed by simple rules: no profanity, no ad hominem attacks and no ultra-long comments. Offenders will have their comments removed and repeat offenders will be blocked. This will not be a big problem.
- We will tout the capabilities of Nextdoor Pemberton Heights — https://phna.nextdoor.com — as a place to engage in dialog about such things as vendors. This has been done and our website has a link to Nextdoor Pemberton Heights and right now we have approximately 40 neighbors who have joined. Please join.
- We will add a “Recommended Vendors” tab to the website and will provide a continuous, complete and timely list of vendors from carpenters to veterinarians. When you want to add someone to the list you can simply email me — jminch@littlefield.com — or the webmaster — webmaster@pembertonheights.org — and your recommendation will be added. This effort is in progress as we speak and will be completed shortly. When you require a vendor recommendation, you can look through the recommendations at your leisure. We will provide a link to YELP for additional information.
- We will try to grow the Neighborhood List penetration in the neighborhood. Right now we have approximately 425 Neighborhood List members. We will try to grow this membership by direct messaging to the entire neighborhood by communicating through The Pemberton Journal and by hand delivered messages during the first quarter of 2012.
- Fred Robinson, our PHNA President, designed and launched a Survey Monkey survey to gauge neighborhood sentiment on certain issues and to bubble any other issues to the surface. We will take careful note of those results in formulating our communication strategy.
- The Pemberton Journal will be used to solicit Neighborhood List membership as well as a vehicle to disseminate news of all kinds.
The net result of these efforts will be to streamline the Neighborhood List to ensure that critical information is not obscured. Thanks for listening and let me know if there is something else we should consider.