SENSORICA's communication infrastructure

Internal communication

SENSORICA used Gmail and Google Groups for internal communication. The SENSORICA general mailing list is private. The most active agents share ownership of this tool. Less active have manager status. All members can post. There is no moderation. It is possible to embed a Google Group within a website, which is what SENSORICA members did, in a page named "Working Space".

Steve has proposed Slack and sensoricans tried ot for a while. See here.

Problems

• After one year, people are still reluctant to use the Working Space or use Google Group from its own page with full features. Everybody is using the email to communicate through the mailing list.
• some people, those who are not regular contributors, complain about the volume of emails received.
• people don't use the Google Groups interface for this mailing list, thy rely on their email. This has reduced functionality. We don't use the full capacity of Google Groups. Many other concerns can be resolved if people would communicate from the Google Group web interface.
• some people have complained said that this mailing list is closed. The argument for it to be closed, invitation only, is to reduce the amount of noise.

More open communication

SENSORICA also has an open forum that is not very used. This forum is also a Google Group, customized like a forum with different preset categories or topics. The forum is easy to find on the website, it has a tab in the menue called Forum.

Open communication

SENSORICA website The website has many functions. On one side, it is a collaboration and coordination tool for participants in SENSORICA projects. On the other side, it is a window into value network's activities and, in that sense, it is used to communicate with the external world. You can explore the website to get acquainted with its structure.

The most important sections for collaboration and coordination are the Working Space and the Projects sub-structure.

Announcements

SENSORICA has announcement-type pages associated with the website. There is a General announcement page, which is also accessible from the home page. moreover, every project has an announcement page associated with it. All these announcement pages are also aggregated into one page called All SENSORICA news. All these announcement pages produce a RSS line, which can be used in other media outlets.

Limitations:

• As the network grows the noise level increases.
• People send messages through this email list using their Gmail account, which reduces the functionality. No one tags messages.

Social media

• Facebook page - communicate information of general interest
• Twitter - contributors use their own Twitter accounts
• rebelmouse - content aggregation, still experimental
• Pintrest - content aggregation, still experimental
• SENSORICA Youtube channel - also acts as a video database

We are also distributing content on other social media outlets like Multitude Project, p2p foundation (including the Facebook page, Nign and blog), other Facebook pages and groups (Next Edge for example)

SENSORICA members are also using other social media channels like mailing lists Linked in groups, etc. to communicate specialized information and to get help on technical problems.

Problems

There is very little integration between all these social media channels. For example, if a video is posted on YouTube it it not automatically posted to Facebook, or Twitter. The same thing can be said for news posting on the website.