Introduction
As a volunteer organization with 315 members (with at least half of our members as active volunteers), LLI takes a lot of coordination to pull off our classes, events, mailings, etc.
With many time-intensive volunteer processes to complete LLI work, the technology issues (aka volunteer time sinks) have more to do with too much information than not enough. We store things on our individual computers in many versions. None of the versions are completely accurate. Many volunteers use handwritten lists of things. We often reinvent the wheel each year for annual events. Ouch! Lots of pain out there!
Ideally, LLI would have one and only one place to get the most accurate and convenient information. For example, the LLI website is the central place for members’ and public information. You can be assured that event dates, class catalogs, and news on the website have been reviewed for accuracy. Many committees use the website to see our archives and current information.
Getting Beyond the Silos
Beyond the website, we have lots of silos of information, and the people in those silos do not talk to each other. The Tech Team is working to roll out G Suite, which will help with this problem. This involves training volunteers and changing workflow processes to minimize the time they need to look up and use accurate information.
G Suite is a cloud-based application, which means information/data is stored in the Google cloud and available to any person (and most devices) at any time. Of course, there is security around access, but cloud-based applications store the most recent version of data/information/files. This eliminates the version-control issues and silos on personal computers. Hooray! The Communications Team uses these tools every month to produce our newsletter and they are a wonderful, time-saving addition to our process.
New Tech Team Members
Thank you, new members on the tech team.
It is very helpful to have the new tech team members working with our LLI volunteers to roll out G Suite to other LLI teams.
How do I get an LLI G Suite Account?
If you are an LLI member, you can get your own LLI account by emailing Deborah Schwartz at [email protected]. You will get an invitation from Google to set up your account with a link to click. When you click the link, you will need to change your password to something you remember, at least eight characters long. It’s that easy!
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