EN 5.0 and Groups
Team,
Below is how we intend to organize and use the Groups functionality of EN 5.0:
WHY -- Groups will be created by Rich and Patrick, not the members.
During the change from 4.0 to 5.0 we found we had many, many, many unused groups -- even a group for fans of American idol! These create unnecessary clutter on the site, for you, and back here behind the curtain. Again, our 100% focus for EN 5.0 is to keep the site clean, efficient, and clean.
WHO -- Groups will be created for races for which we feel EN has achieved a critical mass of participation by the members.
After six years of running the Team, we’ve learned that a Group with very little to no participation is worse than not having a group at all. For this reason we’ll only create Groups for races for which enough members have registered, so that the Group can serve as a valuable communication and aggregation tool.
WHEN -- Groups will be created about 14 weeks before the event.
You may think you need to be talking to your IMFL folks in February, but you really don’t. As coaches charged with the important task of preserving your head across a long season, our job is to keep you focused on the stuff you should be focused on, and your head out of the spaces it doesn’t need to be. So we want those IMFL folks to be engage with their OutSeason peeps, then the Group for their June half Ironman, for example.
That said, if you want to ping the TEAM for lodging and other logistical information about your race ahead of this 14wk timeline, the Race Selection Forum would be a good place for that.
WHERE -- Each Group will live in the My Groups Tab and will have its own Forum in the Training & Racing Forums subgroup
You can find a list of all the current groups that you can join in the My Groups Tab (under Community). Once you join the group, you’ll be notified of all group activity in the Dashboard view and you’ll be able to easily find/connect with other racers. RnP will also be able to organize and message you as well (this is a good thing).
The forums for each group are maintained in the overall Forum area under the Training & Racing Forums subgroup. We have done this so that the discussions from these smaller groups are still accessible by everyone on the Team. Prior group infrastructure isolated racers and make the Team into a collection of smaller, disparate groups that took away from the value of being on TeamEN. As of this time (Feb 2013), these groups and forums are not 100% connected (you’ll have to find them in the forums) but we hope to soon implement a more permanent change.
**EDITED 2/20**
Below is how we intend to organize and use the Groups functionality of EN 5.0:
WHY -- Groups will be created by Rich and Patrick, not the members.
During the change from 4.0 to 5.0 we found we had many, many, many unused groups -- even a group for fans of American idol! These create unnecessary clutter on the site, for you, and back here behind the curtain. Again, our 100% focus for EN 5.0 is to keep the site clean, efficient, and clean.
WHO -- Groups will be created for races for which we feel EN has achieved a critical mass of participation by the members.
After six years of running the Team, we’ve learned that a Group with very little to no participation is worse than not having a group at all. For this reason we’ll only create Groups for races for which enough members have registered, so that the Group can serve as a valuable communication and aggregation tool.
WHEN -- Groups will be created about 14 weeks before the event.
You may think you need to be talking to your IMFL folks in February, but you really don’t. As coaches charged with the important task of preserving your head across a long season, our job is to keep you focused on the stuff you should be focused on, and your head out of the spaces it doesn’t need to be. So we want those IMFL folks to be engage with their OutSeason peeps, then the Group for their June half Ironman, for example.
That said, if you want to ping the TEAM for lodging and other logistical information about your race ahead of this 14wk timeline, the Race Selection Forum would be a good place for that.
WHERE -- Each Group will live in the My Groups Tab and will have its own Forum in the Training & Racing Forums subgroup
You can find a list of all the current groups that you can join in the My Groups Tab (under Community). Once you join the group, you’ll be notified of all group activity in the Dashboard view and you’ll be able to easily find/connect with other racers. RnP will also be able to organize and message you as well (this is a good thing).
The forums for each group are maintained in the overall Forum area under the Training & Racing Forums subgroup. We have done this so that the discussions from these smaller groups are still accessible by everyone on the Team. Prior group infrastructure isolated racers and make the Team into a collection of smaller, disparate groups that took away from the value of being on TeamEN. As of this time (Feb 2013), these groups and forums are not 100% connected (you’ll have to find them in the forums) but we hope to soon implement a more permanent change.
**EDITED 2/20**
Update re Half Ironman Groups:
- We will create Forums by month, so, for example, the May Half Ironman Forum.
- Within that Forum we'll park a couple admin threads for each race or you can create these threads yourself. (ie, The Official IMSG Sign-in Thread and the Official IMSG Discussion Thread...or I suppose you can start other threads in this forum but include IMSG in the thread title).
- If the sign-in thread reaches a critical mass of 20 EN members, we'll create a Group for this race. For races that don't achieve this critical mass you can use the forum and admin threads above to communicate to your fellow teammates doing your race.
^This^ will be setup later today (2/20) for May half Ironmans
****
Thanks again for your support and let us know if you have any questions!
Rich and Patrick
0
Comments
Good call on restructuring the groups. Sounds like good things are in the making!!!!
Shouldn't you be at Physical Therapy or something, Evel Knievel?? ;-)
What process will you use to identify how many in the upcoming races?
IM TX is the "first", but can there be some love for St George 70.3, which is two weeks earlier - I'm doing that, and I'd like to start connecting. If no plans behind the curtain, I'll just shout out in the forums generally.
Yes! And there are others doing HIM's same weekend, like Wildflower, St Croix, etc.
When it's time could you add me back into the IMTX group and later into the IMWI group?
THX!