YMCA- Final Installment

Text Messaging

The Head Counselors in Beacon are the ones who receive money for their phone bill. Their phones are used for emergency contacts when they are on trips. Since their phones are used for business purposes then their bills are payed and depending on which phone they have they might get phone cards instead.

Making phone calls can get a little expensive so in order to save money I would suggest for them to use text messaging. It can be used when someone needs to ask a quick question.

Walkie Talkies

The Walkie Talkies are usually used when each age group is in different parts of hte building or when they are on a trip to the local park.
The walkie talkies are used in order to save money for the cell phones. The ranges of hte walkie talkies only allow them to be used whe nthe counselors are a couple of blocks away from the site. That's why it is used only on local trips. Having a walkie talkie is one of the best technologies that they use and I wouldn't change it at all.

THEORIES AND TECHNOLOGIES

My ideas for improving Beacon's communication is based on one of the six conditions necessary for succesful change, which is implementing new ideas in a carefully organizaed and gradual manner.

Beacon is a place that has very common and "old fashion" ways of communicating as a business. They use fax machines, telephones, and e-mails. For goodness sakes they still make flyers. Adding in these technologies would be an easier way to bring Beacon into the new age of technology. Weblogs,Wikis, news aggregators and technologies are very simple technologies. You don't have to be a computer wiz in order to use them. So it would be very easy for the organization to keep it up-dated. And they are free which really fits into the organizations budget.

It would be easy to adjust to these technologies if the organization would get at least two more computers for staff use. It can be placed withing the office since the staff members using go there right before work starts or it can be placed within one of the extra rooms that they have.

Bringing in Technologies like blackberries and the idea of Smart mobs or flash mob would have not been great ideas for this organization. Blackberries would have been to expensive for the organization and Smart Mobs and Flash Mobs just don't fit Beacon at all. They are mostly for organizations that have a specific quick task to do and want it done quickly even if they don't have a specific task such as Sarah said in a previous post.

Informal Networks

Beacon's informal networks as mentioned in my earlier post is a very simple chain but sometimes it is difficult to get in contact with the big boss simply because he is always busy.

Sometimes the only link between the counselors and the boss is the secretary and that is weird for such a small organization. She there for can be the gatekeepers of the organization. She controls the flow of information since she is the one who receives and sends the information

Adding in these technologies will hopefully knock out the middle man and help connect everyone together. Staff members will not only be receivers but can also become senders as well. No one will be excluded from the network.

WEICK'S THEORY

As mentioned before my ideas will be used to bring Beacon into the new age of technology. Making it adjustable to it's world around it would be what Weick's idea of requisite variety is all about.

Requisite variety is the ablilty to make the organization's inside world as complicated as the outside world. Having a news aggregator and weblog would make Beacon more identical to its outside world. Since Beacon would have these technologies it would be able to become like the rest of the wolrd and being connected with them would help the organization know what is needed and what needs to be changed. It will keep them as up-dated as possible.

PROPOSING THE IDEA TO BEACON

It was very easy for me to suggest this idea to Beacon since it is in my neighborhood and I know every one there. I proposed the idea to the program director whom bascially can act like a producer and gets things that are needs for the Organization.

He really liked the idea of having a Weblog For Beacon. He really believed that it would bring more people to their program especially when they host their Halloween parties. He thought it would really help them raise more money since they sell alot of goodies at those parties.

He had never heard about a news aggregator before and thought that it sounded like a good way to keep everything well kept but he wouldn't know for sure if the other YMCA's in the neighborhood would set a blog up as well manly because the problem is funding. That's why most of these places have parties to sell things as a fund raiser to be able to buy what the organization needs like more computers. This when I introduced the idea of a Wikis board which would be a place to discuss what problems each organization has and what ideas they have to fix it. Again the main problem would be having the money to communicate like this and pursudaing a gorup of people who are very used to using paper and pen.

Even though problems may occur he kept the idea of weblogs and mind and proposed it to his computer wiz staff member who works as a counselor at the program.