A Gauge 3 Society Members Group

[IanT]

I have just established a new Messaging & Forum service for Gauge '3' Members on Groups.IO

There are a number of reasons I've done this.

Recently, there has been a kind of 'mass' email circulating between some G3 members (added to by various responders) giving links to videos and photos of current work - probably incited by our mass incarceration. This kind of messaging (whilst very well meant) is very messy to manage longer term and frankly not a good idea in terms of personal email security. There are better ways to do messaging - and G.IO is certainly one of them

I have also been looking at the facilities that the G3S website offers and thinking about which ones can be expanded (or ignored). In terms of the G3S having an improved on-line presence - the G.IO fills a number of gaps in terms of communicating more easily with Members. Whilst subscription is managed, much of the administration is then semi-automated or self-managed. Users can (for instance) choose to receive individual messages 'as posted', or a regular daily 'digest' of posts or just Society Notifications (e.g. no 'user' posts). Users can also directly post images and other files to the site - although this is size limited currently. I also believe we can offer other Member On-line Services via this facility given time.

I currently receive regular messages via the G3S website from Members to Committee Members via the Contacts page. With the new Group, hopefully Members will communicate directly with the required person - and of course Committee Members can directly send messages to the whole Membership (at least those using the Group).

I have been asked why someone would want to join both "Forums" - and the answer is that they are somewhat different in their nature, use and target communities. I'm not intending for the new Group to compete with this one, Western Thunder or the G3 Facebook Group - they all have their particular communities, uses and focus of interests. Hopefully, the new G3S Group will simply add to the resources available to G3S Members without detracting from any of their existing on-line resources. 

The new Group can be found at: https://groups.io/g/Gauge3

As this G.IO platform is essentially intended for the development of services specifically for G3 Society Members (and cannot be partitioned for other users at this time) - it is a G3S members-only group and you will need to provide your full name and membership number to register.

Regards,

IanT