Are They Wrong? Or AM i?

Heightened awareness, perhaps?

RECREATION CENTERS OF SUN CITY, INC.
BOARD MEETING SUMMARY
September 30, 2021
235 RCSC Cardholders and 1 member(s) of the press attended
Proposed Amendments to Annual Membership and Robert’s Rules

RECREATION CENTERS OF SUN CITY, INC. SPECIAL SESSION MINUTES
September 20, 2021
85 RCSC Cardholders and 1 member(s) of the press
Meeting Subject: General Manager Bill Cook – Request for the approval of the final budget to Meeting Subject: General Manager Bill Cook – Request for the approval of the
final budget to replace the Lakes East/West Golf and Grounds Maintenance Buildings at a cost of $3,948,872.

RECREATION CENTERS OF SUN CITY, INC. BOARD MEETING MINUTES
September 13, 2021
191 RCSC Cardholders and 1 member(s) if the press attended
Installation of Appointed Director Gene Westemeier, who will serve the remainder of 2021.
**(Meeting immediately adjourned abandoning all other stated agenda items )

JULY AND AUGUST BREAK
NO RCSC BOARD OF DIRECTOR MEETINGS

RECREATION CENTERS OF SUN CITY, INC.
EXECUTIVE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
CLOSED MEETING
June 25th, 2021
Dismissal of Karen McAdam, Director

RECREATION CENTERS OF SUN CITY, INC. BOARD MEETING MINUTES
June 24, 2021
75 RCSC Cardholders and 0 member(s) of the press
Proposed Amendments
Mountain View Center Master Plan, Aquatic Facilities, Miniature Golf, Club Member and Guest Attendance

https://suncityaz.org/rcsc/meeting-minutes-and-summaries/

 

Let’s look at We ❤️ Sun City as marketing. Yes it will take some $$ to get started but if we had t-shirts and window decals in our cars it will give us the opportunity to have discussions with members who are not educated or involved in what is going on with the BOD & RCSC. We could then direct them to the new website where Bill & others who write better than I can inform and direct them to get involved. We need to create a movement…which had started. We need to keep it rolling.

 

What would be different about a new site that cannot be done on this site? This site can be used to discuss anything you'd like.
As far as a social media site, I for one do not use them and never will. The one very specific site about Karen's dismissal only has 100 users. Pitiful.
How do you plan to drive people to a new site? Whatever mechanism you try to use can be used to drive them to this site.
Perhaps having realtors direct Sun City home buyers to the RCSC site AND this site can help attract new members to the site.
Just saying.

 

I brought 6 neighbors along to the last meeting. None had attended a meeting before. They have been residents 10 yrs, 9 yrs and 3 yrs. All were happy to have attended and witness the shenanigans and recognized our responsibilities. -- It's all about education.

 

How about adding the talk of sun city site to the list of links at
https://delwebbsuncitiesmuseum.org/

 

Cheri - welcome to the site!

 

Good questions SCR and frankly ones i ask myself often. The pandemic has helped me embrace the Howard Hughes school of human interaction and consequently i spend countless hours each day withdrawn from people. It's all good and it is by choice. Let me answer the questions you posed, one is really easy, others more complicated. TOSC is an interesting study in curiosity. The owners have elected to stay well hidden and above the fray. They seldom comment and only when users inform them of an issue are otherwise missing in action. They have never tried to make money on the site which raises even more questions. I quickly came to understand when TOSC went down, we have absolutely no control. None. If it went away tomorrow we would be starting from scratch. I hate when others control our/my destiny. That's the easy one.

The other answers get more convoluted. I went on the board of the Museum in 2009 and became president in 2010 and 2011. During those three years i spent countless hours reading. Some of the best written, emotionally attaching pieces i read were the first model home books. So much so, i have tried to repeat their writing style in the magazines i have written for SCHOA and the RCSC. They had no alternatives the first years, they needed to write in a way that by the time readers finished, they would want at the very least to visit Sun City to see if it was all it was bragged up to be. They were brilliant.

Now fast forward to the technology driven world where there are a gazillion websites, many of them message boards like this. When you first land on TOSC, what do you see, feel? Anything? Warm, welcome, like i found a page i want to bookmark and come back to time and time again? I can't imagine that to be the case. What was the old number, something like 10,000 boomers a day would hit retirement age? There is an awful lot of computer savvy boomers and now Gen X age people looking for their place in the sun. Ask yourself, if you were one of them and clicked on TOSC, would you even open any one of the 50 plus categories on the home page. I suspect the answer is not.

I've worked on structuring websites, have studied countless others while setting them up and find most have bought into the adage, build it and they will come. It is nonsense. That is why i mentioned those 1960 and 1962 model home books. We tend to put things in boxes and forget what worked and just look for the new, next best thing. Sometimes the next, next best thing is a marriage of what worked in the past rolled into the available technologies we all take for granted today. So i am clear, i know people's attention span is shorter than 60 years back and so that too has to be calculated into the mix.

It was why the first question i asked of the guy who was going to build the site was if we used the PHP.BB platform, could we build a landing page with a greeting and then establish 4 or 5 hot button topics so users could find what they were interested in or looking for? He said absolutely, which gave me hope to build a more attractive, user friendly site where people that opened the page knew what the purpose/value was.

The second part of your question is the next to impossible one to answer. How do you reach new people? You may not use social media platforms, but the other half of the free world does. It is way beyond my pay grade or interest or knowledge level, but the ability to cross pollinate the We Love Sun City site on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter is a reality where members of the group that do use those them could do a good job of promotion. It used to be keyword usage that drove traffic, now they tell me it is algorithms, which is essentially the same thing. I do know the importance of new materials being added and have found when talking about retirement and why Sun City would be right for a potential buyer provides an endless option of discussion.

Finally, i almost always look at the long game, not the short haul. It would be foolish to think once we built it, thousands would flock to the site that live here. Not going to happen. Our greatest potential is as we become a resource for new home owners and a comfortable site for users to speak their mind, ask questions and get real answers it has the potential to grow. Building an online community is not something you do over night. You make people feel like they are a part of something, ask them to take ownership to insure it works...just like they did when Meeker came to Sun City and turned it around. I've learned the hard way, the answers were almost always contained in our past, but most people aren't interested in learning from them.

Hope that helps.

 

What is the link to the museum site? How about adding a link there to this site.

cheri, just curious, how did you learn of this site?

 

Future residents are much more connected by e-communication. Our current tools need improvement to reflect an active adult community.

RCSC site looks old, tired and just plain sad. A face lift is overdue.

Talk of Sun City needs tweaking. Adding some categories would help users find areas of interest. General Discussion is overloaded with varying and often duplicate topic threads. Yes, there is a search function, you have to
know what you’re looking for! A new user explores, road signs help.

Focus on Sun City could be a great tool, too, if it eliminated it’s current format. No host, first segment should not be RCSC, eliminate talking heads as much as possible, faster pace, more b-roll, stories that inform and excite potential and current residents and production that mirrors what a viewer is accustomed to!

There’s a valuable element in anything NEW, or NEW AND IMPROVED! A media release would be appropriate…free advertising!

Promotion…personal connection is the best buzz, like the new member who took six people to the last meeting. Neighborhood Watch groups and HOA/COA leaders could be provided with concise, eye catching information to share by email and printable for distribution. For residences with no group connections, if they have mail slots, flyers can legally be inserted as those are not US Postal
mailboxes. Flyers at retail locations often end up littering parking lots.

Timing IS everything. Why not take advantage of NOW while member interest level is higher than it’s been in a long time?

 

I believe I was Googling something (sorry, not sure what) out of frustration with BOD meetings and comments and this site came up.

 

My question was referring to the Owners of TalkOfSunCity.com.
What is the Motivation for the existence and support of this forum?

I think it is clear what the users of the forum want and the benefits they see.
Not knowing who owns this set of forums; not knowing who maintains this set of forums; not knowing who to call when it breaks....

This is the problem I'm looking to address. We have an anonymous email address: TalkOfSunCity.com@domainsbyproxy.com.
No phone number to call; No Admin@talkofsuncity.com email; Nothing for technical support other than the anonymous email address.
Why does TalkOfSunCity.com exist? It doesn't appear to be a profit motive for the owners (no advertising or fees). There is a cost to maintaining this site.

We are at risk of an outage again (never at a good time). This site could disappear at any time, to never come back.
We just have an email address for an anonymous benefactor.

 

Best wishes for your stay in the hospital CM. Please let us know if there is something you need.

 

I also enjoy writing. It helps me frame my thoughts through constant revisions and choosing better words.

As for a touch-typist skill, this used to be a highly sought after skill in the days of typewriters. The actual keyboard layout was designed to prevent typewriter jams that occurred with the manual nature of levers and hammers. The keyboard layout (QWERTY) was designed to slow down a typist.. There have been better keyboard layouts designed (DVORAK for one) that would actually let you do most typing from the "home" keys (little finger movement). But today, the QWERTY keyboard layout is the most common. I don't know that I wanted to or could learn 2 different keyboard layouts. I never tried. I stuck with the most popular layout. But with age, I make more mistakes (typos).

 

I tried to address this, when on the Communications Committee (prior to 2020). "Not the committees responsibility" I was told. It rests with Joelyn Higgins, the RCSC Communications & Marketing Coordinator. I don't expect the RCSC to make any significant improvements in this area until real importance is put on communication (Budget and Personnel).

 

The owners of this site (TalkOfSunCity.com) could implement some of this structure and control. But we don't know who the owner is, and what the owner gets out of hosting this site.

As for the current structure, its somewhat controlled Anarchy. Anyone can create a new thread. I was going to create a new thread for Corona Virus Covid-19 boosters. But first I went through the existing threads and found a thread already existed for Vaccines. So I posted to it.

Most people just respond to posts in an existing thread. This is good, but for clarity, we should stay on topic and not stray too much into the weeds.

Many thread seem to overlap with topic. This means you have to follow a lot of threads to stay informed. Its an education as to how to use this site effectively.

I personally prefer Talk of Sun City, over Facebook groups, NextDoor, and even the newspaper forums. Not perfect, but very functional.

 

Another lesson in Sun City history. Very well said. Looking to the past, helps put things in perspective. It can be enlightening as to what we would want the future to look like. Then focus on how to get there.

 

Interestingly enough i got an email from one of the guys who would help me set up the new site. Message boards like TOSC are exactly what Mike said, controlled chaos. My vision has always been a resource for new buyers working in concert with existing community members. It becomes a cohesive structure where people merge like interests. The virtual town commons. It marries the things that worked in the past with the newer technologies we have the luxury of working with today. I've seen it work in settings across the country, as people came together. It was too big a group, but i know it can work. The challenge is, if and when it goes away, people become resentful.

The true value would be to build it across a platform with easy access, structured and defined topics and administrators who would keep it on task. Someone sent me an email yesterday and said, if you do it, make it fun and educational. One word answer, YUP. Websites tend to try and be more than they should. They tend to become boring and stagnant. They tend to drift away and become meaningless.

There are several people i would invite to engage in the process as we build it. We would literally make it a community project. Nope, not 20 or 100 different builders, but input as we grew and took on relevance. That is exactly what John Meeker did in Sun City, it was exact reason i ran for the board and was an abysmal failure. They were headed in a different direction.