[K4RY] Experiments with AUInvolve and Social Networks

Thu Sep 4 18:26:49 CDT 2014

SueAnne and I have been experimenting with this for a bit. We've figured out some neat stuff and I'd like to share how it's been going and get some input.

AUInvolve
https://auburn.collegiatelink.net/organization/auarc

As far as the University is concerned, AUInvolve is our official page. When  Camp War Eagle, SOS, First Year Experience, etc, send out information to new students about organizations, this is where they tell you to look for them. SGA uses AUInvolve to officially keep track of our membership (if we drop below 10 members on AUInvolve, we go on probation), officers, and the constitution. We have to request event permits through it and we have to update the club registration through it every year. People can join the club or request more information through the site and it will automatically email whoever we set as the primary contact (it's me right now). I'd argue that any of our old existing AUARC or K4RY pages that we have floating around should redirect to AUInvolve or just get taken down.

The K4RY Wiki
http://wiki.eng.auburn.edu/k4ry/doku.php

This site is awesome and has an almost complete inventory of the club, along with manuals, history, projects, and other stuff. Zeb, Ben, possibly others? at Engineering Networking Services set it up. It's on official university webspace, and pages from it are slowly starting to turn up in Auburn's search results as they get cached.

Mailman Mailing List
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/k4ry

If you're reading this email then you're on it. We've handled a lot of club business on it over the years and I don't really see any reason to replace it as our primary communication method. However, if we want more exposure, we should cross post content from it to other sites.

Facebook Group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/auarc/

The group was setup through the Facebook Group for Schools program (https://www.facebook.com/groups/groupsatauburn/ ). It has some serious limitations. You have to register on Facebook with an @auburn.edu message to join the Facebook group. You may even have to register with one to see it but I'm not sure. Groups for schools do not really support duplicating content over multiple sites very well, and along with all the other limitations, I think we should delete it.

Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/k4ryarc

I set this up today. It's a Facebook Page, similar to the pages business have (there is a section for reviews and I can't get rid of it). Currently SueAnne and I are administrators. It's a bit like managing a regular Facebook profile, except you can add multiple editors and there's some extra features that are useful for organizations and business. It's not like the group though. You can't join it, you have to like the page and then it's posts will show up on your feed. It is viewable by the public and you do not have to have an Auburn email address to do anything on it.

Twitter
https://twitter.com/K4RYARC

You can follow us on Twitter here. There's not much to say about it.

Google Account

AUARC has a gmail address (k4ry.auarc at gmail.com<mailto:k4ry.auarc at gmail.com>) that gives us access to all google services. The ones that would be of any use to us are email, Google Plus, Drive, and Calendar. We have a an event calendar on Google calendar here:
https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=s7abc7dpuiegu3ugagt639vj4k%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/Chicago

IFTTT
https://ifttt.com/

Doesn't do anything that anyone can see publicly, but it allows us to basically create scripts that will simultaneously update every site.

How it works right now:
AUInvolve and the K4RY Wiki are kind of the "hub" sites, linking to all the other sites. AUInvolve embeds our Facebook and Twitter feeds on the site, so they're visible to anyone looking at that. Twitter also automatically posts all of our tweets to the Facebook page. Other than that, we're updating everything manually right now.

How we'd like it to work:
AUInvolve is kind of its own world. We can sort of post stuff to it through Twitter and Facebook, but the only way to get any event information out of it is through an RSS feed that seems to behave kind of strangely:
https://auburn.collegiatelink.net/organization/auarc/EventRss/EventsRss

Ideally, this is how everything would work, if AUInvolve makes the RSS feed behave, or better yet, automatically generate a web calendar that people can subscribe to (this format is supported by most desktop email and webmail clients):

We officially post events to AUInvolve. The content is added to the web calendar. Using IFTTT scripts, we can make a post on Facebook every time a new event is scheduled,  post a status update 15 minutes before a scheduled event is about to start, and send a Tweet about it that's automatically addressed to AUInvolve/UPC/Plainsman or anybody else (who will retweet it to their thousands of followers if someone's paying attention).

Regular club communication still occurs through the mailing list. K4ry.auarc at gmail.com<mailto:K4ry.auarc at gmail.com> is subscribed to the mailing list, so that account receives all of our discussions. Using IFTTT, we could automatically upload posts to Facebook or post links to messages on mailman's server to Twitter. I don't really know if this is a good idea, it may be better to post messages manually and edit the content.

Eventually we'll set it up so approved members can send emails to k4ry.auarc at gmail.com<mailto:k4ry.auarc at gmail.com> and it will automatically post the content of the email to Twitter or Facebook (you can pick which you want). That way anyone can post without logging into either service.

Then we'll only have to update two things. Post events to AUInvolve, send announcements to the email account. It's not that bad.

Why bother with Facebook accounts and Twitter? It lets us reach and interact with a larger audience. As an example, today someone found our twitter post about O-Day retweeted by @AUInvolve, found our website on AUInvolve using the link on our Twitter page, and sent me an email (my contact information is listed right on the front page), and I was able to forward a flyer and event list to someone who wasn't able to stop by our table today. I know that most radio clubs don't have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, but we're on a college campus and that gives us a unique opportunity to reach out to the student body through other communication methods.

Handoff procedure:
I'm not going to be President forever, so we're trying to think way ahead and figure out how to hand off the accounts neatly. Right now, everything is tied to the Gmail account, so in theory that's the only account we need to hand off. We can store the password in a file on AUInvolve only accessible by officers, and I can print out a copy of them and keep them in the President's binder.

Okay, I realize that's a lot to read. Does anyone have any questions or suggestions? Should I make a flowchart?
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