Our online club chat groups have the goal of creating an environment in which club meetings can be organized quickly and productively. To ensure an efficient and focused, low-volume chat that can be followed by everyone, please observe the following rules in it:
1. Please try to read the messages at least once every couple of days (ideally - daily), and please do reply if asked if you can join a meeting or do a role, even if it's a simple "I can't" / " I don't know yet".
Why? This allows club members to know what kind of room needs to be booked, for how many people and how many activities can be done. You don't need to provide any explanations, and of course, attendance is not mandatory at all, but the club needs to know.
People that do not read messages for weeks, or that read them but don't bother to get involved and do not participate in club meetings are removed periodically.
Attendance, of course, is not mandatory every week, but if you cannot join at least twice a month you'll be wasting your time.
2. The chat is only for issues related to Agora and Agora clubs. Please no other posts of any kind.
Why? People sign up for a public speaking and leadership club. They don't want to be bombarded with other sorts of content - idle talk, motivational cookies or much less promotional or self-promotional spam for all kinds of services or other organizations. If this happens, they usually leave the group. Also, this rule helps keep the volume low, so that if you can't read the messages for 3-4 days, when you check the group you won't find 120 unread messages.
If you want to talk about something else - please do it at the club meeting in the form of a speech, thought of the day, debate, etc.
3. No voice messages, calls or video-calls
Why? This allows everyone to access and search the content of the chat. Additionally, people many times find themselves in noisy environments or without an audio device or simply in a context where they can't turn it on (in a meeting, school, etc.).
4. No other communication alternatives for now.
Why? All of the members come from Facebook communications and events. While Facebook Messenger groups are not the most convenient way of communicating, we can't provide assistance in other kinds of groups (Whatsapp, Viber, Telegram, etc.), and not everyone is willing to join them, and not everyone has the appropriate app installed either.
Once we deploy the Online Club Management System, this rule will be removed.
5. Before posting a question, check if it hasn't been answered already, at least in the immediately preceding days, and ideally check the documentation first.
Why? Again, the rule is to keep the number of messages low and avoiding posting over and over the same content.
6. Keep the messages civilized and respectful
This rule shouldn't need explaining. No offensive, aggressive, finger-pointing, or name-calling, or similar language will be allowed.
7. Anyone can add people to the group.
What we ask for is to make sure that the people you want to add know what the chat group is about, and are really interested in our clubs. It's better to have just a few interested and committed participants than hundreds of curious onlookers. All new members should:
- Have seen this presentation to understand what we do and how we do it, and especially to avoid thinking that our meetings are seminars, classes, lectures, or anything similar.
- Have joined our International group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/agoraspeakers/ - because for the time being that's where we announce all news.