This forum / member participation

yellum

This forum has always been a lively place of debate but lately I think it has become very apparent how well viewed it is by the Telcos themselves, the government and the ODTR. We have representatives from NTL , UTV, IrishBroadband and Leap communicating with members.

The UTV thread is the most viewed one on boards and its not around that long. UTV actually changed the packages they were offering after getting feedback from here.

It proves that communities can be influencial and people power can work. It shows that the smart companies that look for feedback here know how to use the membership of IrelandOffline to their advantage.

Now I wonder does the IrelandOffline committee realise this ? I really think the power of the membership is under-utilized and the forum itself could be used to aid in furthering IrelandOfflines aims more than it is.

Fair play to EircomTribunal for going off and doing something. The IrelandOffline group should be jealous and even ashamed that they didn't do something like this. It doesn't have to be as biting as EircomTribunal as I know the committee seems wary of trying to irk anyone in the government or the ODTR.

There are hundreds of members maybe even thousands at this stage that want to help and contribute in regular small ways and they are never given the opportunity to do so. The committee are the only ones that do anything when imho what they should be doing is appealing to the membership more to help out.

A pressure group which IrelandOffline claims itself to be is going to be most sucessful when they have their members doing something to promote the campaigns.

There were Lobbying and Research groups set up and they have vapourised it seems. Why doesn't the committee try and make a start at refueling membership participation and getting some momentum going ?

It doesn't take a lot of effort. Boards.ie itself is a good example to look at, Cloud and Devore are in opposite sides of the country and rarely meet in the non-electronic world, yet boards.ie is doing really well.

I'd love to help out myself and this may sound like me being an armchair pundit but I haven't the time to offer a lot of help. I do have time to do some small regular bits like most other members though.

I'm sure of one of the mods posted a poll on whether people wanted to help out with IrelandOffline you'd get a very good response.

So what I'm basically saying is Please ask us members to do something. Which is better 5-6 people trying to do everything or 1100 people always doing something ?

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

Dangger

We've always been here, through thick and thin over the last 18 months. I do not recall turning people away in the past who offered to help, but since there are so many people stepping forward I think its a great idea. But don't forget all talk and no action gets us nowhere. There is an offer at the end of this post. A means to address these issues.

Fair play to EircomTribunal for going off and doing something. The IrelandOffline group should be jealous and even ashamed that they didn't do something like this. It doesn't have to be as biting as EircomTribunal as I know the committee seems wary of trying to irk anyone in the government or the ODTR.

I couldn't disagree with you more. "Jealous and ashamed", come on! Personally I am ecstatic to see EircomTribunal's continuous outstanding portrayal of the Irish Internet truth. But to say the IOFFL is jealous!!! IOFFL is a voluntary group. We've had our ups and downs in our organisation internally, but we are still here. Last time I checked I hadn't sold out.

You highlight a core problem - co-ordination later in your post when you state:

I'd love to help out myself and this may sound like me being an armchair pundit but I haven't the time to offer a lot of help. I do have time to do some small regular bits like most other members though.

It is indeed difficult to accumlate and co-ordinate large scale member actions on a continuous basis. I admit that over the past few months we have focused on getting the message out, and as a result have overlooked direct action. We could certainly do with some member participation, especially over the past month, and indeed up to Christmas. These are interesting times, we need to keep the pressure on, and turn it up.

That said the action taken by members today to address Simon Coveney's astounding gaff was a real example of what the membership can achieve. Whats particulary astonishing about Coveney is that I've have met with Fine Gael's shadow Comms Minster - David Stanton and he is well up to speed. Do these people ever talk?

Other outstanding member actions include, jamming Dail faxes on the day of the Comms bill debat, bombarding Pat Kenny with email, having the ASAI respond to Eircom's adverts, having UTV listen, offer and adapt their products for you and of course raising awareness.

There are hundreds of members maybe even thousands at this stage that want to help and contribute in regular small ways and they are never given the opportunity to do so. The committee are the only ones that do anything when imho what they should be doing is appealing to the membership more to help out.

There are over 2,500 members to date. More and more people are coming forward and mailing the committee directly looking to help. Many non-committee members have contributed greatly to the work we have done to date. No one gets turned away. It should also be noted that not every member participates in the forum either. I disagree that people are not given the opportunity to contribute. Are you suggesting we are turning people away who offer assistance? Do you mean that the committee do not organise mass member action such as the blackout, or other kinds of protests?

A pressure group which IrelandOffline claims itself to be is going
to be most sucessful when they have their members doing something to promote the campaigns.

Claims itself to be? What do you think IOFFL has become? IOFFL has been together over 18 months. In the beginning we needed to get a committee together. Remember, our dirty laundary has always been aired in public - we fought for weeks about what to call ourselves. Next we managed to get an extremely rare opportunity to get into the ODTR to discuss the issues. Around about that time decisions were made as to how IOFFL was to operate for the next few months. We did not have the resources to educate every TD and journalist in the country, so we top fed.

We secured several meetings with government, telcos and other vatious groups to get a platform - to convey the frustration felt by our members and we never sat at a table and ranted. We always presented possible courses of action to investigate and persue for the groups we met with.

Thanks to regular coverage from several journalists and a dedicated group of individuals, IOFFL has raised a platform. Where many people spoke of the need to "do something" IOFFL suceeded. IOFFL is now the voice of the Irish Internet user.

It's your voice.

With the platform there I feel that the educational side that of our operation which we did not have the time or resources to carry out previously needs addressing. However weren't the Information Society Commission set up for that

There were Lobbying and Research groups set up and they have vapourised it seems. Why doesn't the committee try and make a start at refueling membership participation and getting some momentum going ?

They have not vapourised. They did not work in the long run. The people who headed them, admitted that they did not have the time to manage them. It was difficult. With each meeting came a new areas to cover. New technical issues to investigate, new legal directives to get to grips with, website issues to manage and decide upon, articles to write, meetings to attend. Nobody volunteered to reset up the working groups, just like no one volunteered to replace me when I offered to step down at the last AGM!

It doesn't take a lot of effort. Boards.ie itself is a good example to look at, Cloud and Devore are in opposite sides of the country and rarely meet in the non-electronic world, yet boards.ie is doing really well.

On the contrary. It takes a lot of effort. I was involved with IOFFL almost full time for several months. I enjoy it, it is interesting in the extreme to me, and of course I am proud of it. But never let it be said that it was a walk in the park. No offence to boards.ie but running IOFFL and running boards.ie are two entirely different beasts.

I'd love to help out myself and this may sound like me being an armchair pundit but I haven't the time to offer a lot of help. I do have time to do some small regular bits like most other members though.

You're helping out right now, by posting your view and stating this debate. For that I thank you.

Let me start the ball rolling in getting ensuring members can get involved and have their say.

I'l chair an IRC session on Sunday, 3rd of November from 7pm I'm sure some of the committee will join me (I have not run it past them yet :rolleyes: ) . Lets address how members can actively contribute to IOFFL. I'll post the IRC server info later tomorrow.

So what I'm basically saying is Please ask us members to do something. Which is better 5-6 people trying to do everything or 1100 people always doing something ?:p

It depends on how the co-ordination of the 1100 is managed.

Here is what I'm asking you to do - attend the IRC meeting. Lets talk this over and field some other questions about why we're such a pack of namby government boosom nuzzling wimps whilst we are at it. :mad:

Finally, where were you when the AGM happened?

acid

ok so here's my 2 cents for what it's worth - i have been following this forum a few weeks now with great interest but having nothing of any great importance to post i just read (and also learned).

my point is that i have long despaired over the lack of broadband or flatrate to increase internet use among our population and 2 years ago i was writing letters to my local td's (for all the good it did me) but it is only recently that i had even heard of IOFFL.

IOFFL badly needs 1 thing and lots of it - PUBLICITY

fact is that most irish people dont use the internet regularly (and we all know why), few realise just how important IOFFL's goals are to our economy and i reckon most people have never even heard of IOFFL.

talk is all well and good (and i congrartulate IOFFL, as a voluntary organisaton, for meeting with important and influential people to get the message across) but talk will achieve nothing.

a few years ago the UK was in a similar position to where we are now - publicity and media coverage forced/shamed their politicians into taking action.
we need the same to happen here and it wont happen without PUBLICITY


ps apologies if the above is somehat incoherent but im rather drunk and stoned atm, and pissed off with my latest phone bill - my last contribution to beans o reilly's retirement fund since i signed up for utv but once again PUBLICITY, less talk more action.

Dangger

acid we have definitely been ramping up publicity over the last month with radio slots, regualr newspaper articles and a monthly feature in PC Live. In fact we have had steady success with press coverage since our inception.

One thing we are guilty of not doing is getting a newsletter out to all the memers covering all the latest developments. This is something currently on the drawing board, and it will need at least another week.

We could do with a publicity stunt to get the average Joe in the know. Any one got a rat suit?

acid

Dangger, i know publicity has been increased recently, (i had never heard of IOFFL until recently and i am a heavy internet user ny any definition)
a newsletter is not really important, imho, although a mailing list would not be too difficult an undertaking i suppose.

you hit the nail on the head by mentioning a publicity stunt - something for the media to get their teeth into - something to educate mr and mrs j. soap amd inform them of exactly how bad things are (because they really havent a clue)

forget about technical details and connection speeds - something like "every other country has this and in england u pay £20 per month for 24/7 access but in ireland it costs 100/s" (whatever the exact figures are)
irish people love to whinge and moan about everthing but unlkike our continental friends we are not so quick to make noise and complain and take a proactive stance to make things change

DeVore

Dannger writes:

No offence to boards.ie but running IOFFL and running boards.ie are two entirely different beasts.

Well thats true, Boards was set up specifically to minimise the amount of time we would have to spend "tending" to it...

Now, maybe its just me but I see a contradictory statement from Yellum... the membership *ARE* helping. They are helping by being here, posting, and making their voice heard. As Yellum says: the ODTR, UTV, NTL, EIRCOM, ESAT and the Gov are here. You think they're here for my wit and sparkling repartee?
There here because the membership is interacting here.
That in itself is an example of the membership "doing" something.


I'd love to see a public rally but its not going to happen. We're nerd and techies. Outside doesnt appeal to us.
However, more online agitation would definitely be something that would get my anarchic thumb rising

DeV.

yellum

Originally posted by DeVore


Well thats true, Boards was set up specifically to minimise the amount of time we would have to spend "tending" to it...

Thats kind of why I pointed to Boards as an example to follow. Set up intelligently and you can have the members doing a lot of the overhead with just a small amount of tending.

Now, maybe its just me but I see a contradictory statement from Yellum... the membership *ARE* helping. They are helping by being here, posting, and making their voice heard.
....
That in itself is an example of the membership "doing" something.

Its not really contradictory as its the membership doing something in an almost independent way to the committee. They were not asked to do this by the committee. Its great to see that the membership can do stuff on their own and it canhave serious momentum. This can also be an advantage if the head of the entity is chopped off the rest of it can still function.

Theres a bit of "smart mob" behaviour going on in this forum and its interesting to study. What I'm suggesting is for these intelligent energetic members to be guided into doing things in a certain way that when combined will be so much more powerful and achieve the goals more efficiently.

As was pointed out by Dangger with the Simon Coveney **** up the members can quickly start communicating their feelings with those that make stupid comments. This was still on a small scale and only a few individuals were involved, imagine the 2500 members doing this.

DC

The danger is that people won't always speak with one voice. You'll end up with certain groups of individuals going after certain things. Then its not really in the name of IOFFL anymore.

Coordination is required. Look at MIJAG as a good example. Focused activism....

SkepticOne

Originally posted by yellum
As was pointed out by Dangger with the Simon Coveney **** up the members can quickly start communicating their feelings with those that make stupid comments. This was still on a small scale and only a few individuals were involved, imagine the 2500 members doing this.

Exactly. Another example: on another post Tom Dunne talked about how he got on to the PR people in the company he worked for:

Instead of sitting here moaning, I decided to get onto the PR people in my company asking them to add their voice to the growing calls for affordable high speed internet access. I put forward a business reason why Ireland needs affordable high speed internet access (i.e. all the benefits of employees working from home, fixed costs, happier/more productive employees). Given the size of the company, I would think that their voice would add some weight to the argument.

This is great. We are trying to do the same thing on the committee but we can never match hundreds of people each following this example. Daveirl also suggested that we as a group should get something together to hand to the employers:

Loads of good ideas are mentioned here but nothing ever happens. The group should create letters like the election one's for employee's to give to their employers. Surely if we could get IBEC on side we'd be flying.

Another great idea. Why don't people post up their ideas for a flyer here for discussion. Then we as a group can choose the best one and tart it up. It's far better that it it is done this way than the committee simply issuing one. The Simon Coveney issue proves this is possible.

Once in a while the committee will ask members to do something specific like during the comms bill debate because there is a need for coordinated action at times, but generally the success of IrelandOffline and its goals depends on people acting on their own initiative.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by DC
The danger is that people won't always speak with one voice. You'll end up with certain groups of individuals going after certain things. Then its not really in the name of IOFFL anymore.

Coordination is required. Look at MIJAG as a good example. Focused activism....

I think there is a for both focussed activism and individual initiative. There may be legal and technical issues that might be best left to a core group, but the general message is pretty much agreed by every on here. Sure, it may not be in the name of IOFFL, but IOFFL is only a vehicle for bringing about the goals of IOFFL. In itself, it is not important. We should support the goals not specifically IOFFL. We should also support initiatives like EircomTribunal.

DC

I agree. However, IOFFL as an organisation needs to have stated positions.

As an example. A lot of people think its great that esat are launching 256 for 49.50 + VAT. As many others feel that its a lowering of the bar and a rip off, when 512 is a fairly universal minimum for broadband.

So, do IOFFL release a statement welcoming 256 or castigating it? (If a statement was to be released).

I suppose I am separating the greater good (i.e. we all harass and hassle those decision makers to get results) and IOFFL itself, which I think is what yellum was addressing in the original post.

yellum

/me crys

I just spent an hour replying to Danggers post and was about to press submit reply when Internet Explorer crashed. Son of a bitch ! I'm seriously fatigued now. I'll post the reply in the afternoon , right now I need a frickin drink....

SkepticOne

Originally posted by DC
I agree. However, IOFFL as an organisation needs to have stated positions.

....

So, do IOFFL release a statement welcoming 256 or castigating it? (If a statement was to be released).

I accept the point about holding stated positions, maybe not in this particular case, but generally yes.

Slutmonkey57b

IOFFL's greatest asset as I see it is the range of technical knowledge available from the general membership (you only have to read some posts by the likes of Muck to see the value). The success of the campaign relies on the ability to refute spurious arguments from telcos, highlight inconsistant service, reveal the true quality of access, and above all explain to J. Soap esq why exactly he's being ripped off.

The advantage we have is that most Irish journalists are... umm... not entirely cognizant of the background to the story and therefore will tend to... umm... not cover it terribly well. Ahem. What IOFFL can offer journo's is open, non-company specific advice. Take the P. Kenny show - a non-techie journo managed to pin the government's kingpin to the wall very easily (ok Doyle's not a difficult target. Still.) using simple, direct, irrefutable information.

The membership surely can start to contribute to a set of background docs that can be used not only by the membership but can be used by anyone pushing the story in the media.

Like:
What is FRIACO
What is ISDN
What is ADSL
What is Fibre
What is (flavourx)DSL.
What is Deregulation
What is CPS
What is CLID
What is Leased Line
What is LLU
What is the state of the backbone
What is the cost of unbundling?
What does the govt do
What are the various ministries and statutory bodies
What do the bodies do and what's wrong with the structures?
What are the benefits of FRIACO / Broadband / Deregulation
What arguments do the telco's use to excuse themselves?
What excuses does eircom use and to what extent has it spent its own money on (for example fibre rings)
What should we be able to expect?
What's the actual cost of upgrading an exchange.
What do the exchanges do - where they are - how many there are.
What prevents broadband being activated (real-world technical issues)
What prevents broadband being activated (incompetence greed and laziness wise)

That sort of thing. The information all floats about here but most of the membership will tend to take it for granted.

De Rebel

It seems to me that Yellum’s contention is that Yellum isn’t doing anything and that it’s the IOFFL committee’s fault.

If you have concrete suggestions on what you and the rest of us can do to further IOFFL’s objectives, lets hear them.

I'm in the same boat, little bits of time and willing to contribute. I'll help in any way I can.

yellum

Originally posted by De Rebel
It seems to me that Yellum’s contention is that Yellum isn’t doing anything and that it’s the IOFFL committee’s fault.

If you have concrete suggestions on what you and the rest of us can do to further IOFFL’s objectives, lets hear them.

You have summarised me well I think. As for my suggestions do a search of this forum for posts by me. I have had made many suggestions in the past, some I still believe were good ones.

I'll have a nice clearly worded list for this irc session.

To the Committee: Can the membership be informed (via the mailing list )of this irc session too ? Get as many people contributing as possible. I'd be just as happy with everyone diagreeing with me as agreeing with me, once theres people actually giving an opinion. I hate apathy and inaction.

dahamsta

That sort of thing. The information all floats about here but most of the membership will tend to take it for granted.

http://www.irelandoffline.org/wiki/

It's not pretty, but it's got most of the answers. Always has done.

adam

De Rebel

Originally posted by dahamsta

http://www.irelandoffline.org/wiki/

It's not pretty, but it's got most of the answers. Always has done.

adam [/B]

Never saw that page before. Interesting stuff. Be great if a member with some time on her/his hands and the necessary skills would volunteer to update the content, fix the links and graphics and pretty it up a bit.

yellum

reply 1 of 2 since I can't fit it all in

Originally posted by Dangger
We've always been here, through thick and thin over the last 18 months. I do not recall turning people away in the past who offered to help, but since there are so many people stepping forward I think its a great idea.

Nobody has ever been turned away, its just thats theres never been any feedback to the suggestions and contributions.

But don't forget all talk and no action gets us nowhere.

Thats one of my points ! Talk is not enough.

I couldn't disagree with you more. "Jealous and ashamed", come on! Personally I am ecstatic to see EircomTribunal's continuous outstanding portrayal of the Irish Internet truth. But to say the IOFFL is jealous!!!

Read what I typed. I said you should be jealous, maybe I should have said envious. EircomTribunal has done to much so quickly in highlighting the complete mess the government made, the monopolistic practices of eircom and the intransigence and apathy of the ODTR.

This should surely have been IOFFLs brief as well. It took a member to go away and do this on his own back. His talent should have been used by IOFFL.

There are many intelligent and talented people like the EircomTribunal satirists that are members of IrelandOffline, give these people a chance to shine. Use them to make IOFFL so much better.

There are loads of members that have put together some good resources and they are not on the IrelandOffline website. They're on different websites scattered about the place. With the permission of the creators

IrelandOffline should collate all this information and put it on the slightly stagnant website.

I admit that over the past few months we have focused on getting the message out, and as a result have overlooked direct action.

When you say "we" though you are just talking about the small few in the Committee, surely it should have been the 2500 that were all getting the message out.

We could certainly do with some member participation, especially over the past month, and indeed up to Christmas. These are interesting times, we need to keep the pressure on, and turn it up.

Yes definetly.

That said the action taken by members today to address Simon Coveney's astounding gaff was a real example of what the membership can achieve.

Yes, but its independent members working on separate goals that are doing this. A small handful of people contacted Simon, what if all 2500 people did the same with their TDs ? I think that theres a good chance of

IrelandOffline having members now in every area of the country and all local tds could be educated by their electorate.

Whats particulary astonishing about Coveney is that I've have met with Fine Gael's shadow Comms Minster - David Stanton and he is well up to speed. Do these people ever talk?

Thats a pot calling the kettle black statement. Its true though. They too seem to have problems with feeback and communicating with themselves. It might have been useful to have had a record of your meeting with David Stanton for those that contacted Simon to wave at him.

Other outstanding member actions include, jamming Dail faxes on the day of the Comms bill debat, bombarding Pat Kenny with email,

That was brilliant. A true sign of people power and educating someone with the real facts. Now if this sort of thing could be almost continuous. That was the first action the members were asked to do since July and look how sucessful it was.

having the ASAI respond to Eircom's adverts,

This was the effort of some independent members again. What if there was a sticky on this forum for advertisments that people thought were unfair. Then all members could write in and complain. IrelandOffline could suggest to members to use a standard complaints letter than IrelandOffline would have created.

having UTV listen, offer and adapt their products for you

I think UTV using the power of this forum was amazing and something to learn from. They changed the packages thanks to this forum. Amazing ! The potential is there, let it be used.

and of course raising awareness.

Thats not really happening. This should be moved up a few gears. IOFFL will be a household name but at the current awareness building momentum its going to be years before it happens. It could be so much sooner.

If every one of the 2500 members gives a flyer to 10+ of their friends you now have a significant larger number of people. Create a chain reaction.

There are over 2,500 members to date. More and more people are coming forward and mailing the committee directly looking to help.

Good, but unless they get something back, they will get jaded and move on. Strike while the iron is hot.

Many non-committee members have contributed greatly to the work we have done to date. No one gets turned away. ..... I disagree that people are not given the opportunity to contribute. Are you suggesting we are turning people away who offer assistance?

You are not giving feedback and carrying out these suggestions. Theres been some great suggestions but they get a "nice idea fella" pat on the back and then nothing happens. It fades away into the archives of the forum. Appoint someone to look after this, get the suggestor to do this, vet it and then give it the IOFFL stamp of approval.

Do you mean that the committee do not organise mass member action such as the blackout, or other kinds of protests?

They say a week is a long time in politics. The blackout was 50 weeks ago.

Next we managed to get an extremely rare opportunity to get into the ODTR to discuss the issues.

The ODTR have good and bad things about them. A truely good one is communicating and talking to people.

They're great. They are always willing to listen at least. Meeting the ODTR is not a rare opportunity, they are always happy to talk with most people and groups.

We did not have the resources to educate every TD and journalist in the country, so we top fed.

YOU DID. You had members scattered throughout the country that were willing to talk to their local tds and educate them. Was there any official flyer created for members to introduce IrelandOffline and what its aims were ? Were the members ever asked to talk to all their local representatives and tell them their feelings on internet access ?

IOFFL is now the voice of the Irish Internet user.

Does the average internet user know that IrelandOffline represents them ? How are you going to go about letting them know there is a light that never goes out, and its called IrelandOffline ? I'm happy for

IrelandOffline to represent me and fight for me but everyone else that uses the net needs to know too.

With the platform there I feel that the educational side that of our operation which we did not have the time or resources to carry out previously needs addressing.

Yes indeed.

However weren't the Information Society Commission set up for that

Ah some light relief in such a bitchy thread.

They have not vapourised. They did not work in the long run. ... Nobody volunteered to reset up the working groups,

So are they gone or are they about ? The above is slightly unclear to me. Are they needed ?

just like no one volunteered to replace me when I offered to step down at the last AGM!

Big scary boots to fill really.

On the contrary. It takes a lot of effort. I was involved with IOFFL almost full time for several months. I enjoy it, it is interesting in the extreme to me, and of course I am proud of it. But never let it be said that it was a walk in the park.

I doubt it ever was or ever will and it probably seems wrong of me to be super critical of how its run while sitting on my fattening ass in front of my computer down here in cork. Still I will complain and I will contribute as much as I can. I dearly wish I could contribute more but I have less and less time but I can offer a small bit of time to IrelandOffline on a weekly basis, whether it by collecting signatures for a petition or harassing my local tds.

No offence to boards.ie but running IOFFL and running boards.ie are two entirely different beasts.

See my reply to DeVore. Take some of the strain off the committee and ship the workload to the members. Restructure things so that there needs to be less overhead by you guys on the committee.


end of part 1

yellum

You're helping out right now, by posting your view and stating this debate. For that I thank you.

Diplomatic as ever David. I'm being a prick lately in this forum it seems but damnit I don't want to see the interest or momentum of this group to fade and I'm fearful thats whats happening and I'm also afraid the direction this group may go is the wrong one.

I'd be equally happy with people rubbishing my comments and
proving them wrong as people agreeing with me. I'd like to see people contribute though. Get people going and reduce the apathy.

We're getting new energetic contributors now and we've lost some too for whatever reasons but lets try and retain as many good people as possible.

Let me start the ball rolling in getting ensuring members can get involved and have their say.

Nice one.

I'l chair an IRC session on Sunday, 3rd of November from 7pm I'm sure some of the committee will join me (I have not run it past them yet

I'll be there.

Lets address how members can actively contribute to IOFFL......

Here is what I'm asking you to do - attend the IRC meeting. Lets talk this over and field some other questions about why we're such a pack of namby government boosom nuzzling wimps whilst we are at it.

Email the membership about this yeah ?

Finally, where were you when the AGM happened?

If I recall that weekend was not a good one for me. I was doing a lot of traveling and might have been out of the country or else just back in and taking care of business.

I get your point though, I was not there and from what I understand you only got a tiny percentage of the IrelandOffline membership to attend too. Maybe this in itself should be addressed.

Damien

sax0000

What about a system of “marking” volunteers to TDs, senators, local authorities, etc. ideally in their area of residence or where they come from or have some connection with?

The volunteer could decide his/her level of participation. At its most basic it might involve downloading a centrally prepared newsletter or other document in .pdf format, printing it out and snail mailing it to a handful of public representatives in their area – perhaps with a two line personalised covering letter from themselves.

Beyond that, the sky’s the limit for the more enthusiastic. They could become a “sales rep” for the cause attending TD’s clinics, organising public meetings, giving interviews on their local radio station, whatever takes their fancy.

Volunteers could cover a county or in more populated areas a collection of constituencies.

All it requires is a simple form to start off, with fields for your PM or e-mail address and general geographic location (county and town or suburb name).

The minimum requirement for anyone to participate would be access to a printer and being able to afford the ink, a few dozen sheets of paper, a few stamps and envelopes and a half an hour of their time once in the blue moon.

sax0000

De Rebel

Originally posted by sax0000
What about a system of “marking” .............
sax0000

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?postid=627544#post627544

great minds.......and fools..........

Slutmonkey57b

The info is technically accurate, but it is definately a technical document, and not exactly logically structured...
eg

Will Esat be offering a DSL service?

Yes. Esat are planning to rent DSL capacity from Eircom. Therefore, Eircom will be the provider of the physical DSL service, and Esat will be your DSL ISP. Esat will be unable to change the overbooking rate of their service (which appears to be set in stone at 24:1), or the speed (1024k/256k) but will have control over almost every other aspect of the service, including the currently contentious issue of capping/per mb charging.

All accurate, but makes no sense to J. Soap. FAQ's should be written like you were talking to a taxi driver on the way home.

Topics should flow from grand over view -> history -> technicalities -> actual state of affairs -> what's planned -> what should be the case.
Eg:
What is DSL? -> How old is it? Who started using it? -> How does it work? What do I need for it? -> Who offers it? Where can I get it? -> What's happening in the next 6 months/year? -> What should we be entitled to expect?

Curently the FAQ is accurate but not fully informative, and distinctly not pretty - note though that the plea for contributions doesn't seem to have been heeded!