Mount Olympus Online Groups

Mount Olympus is a club ski field near Christchurch in New Zealand. The field has paid staff during the season but the management, planning and most maintanance and construction is done by volunteer club members and the committee.

The club committee meet regularly during the year but, in the lead-up to and during the season, most members work hard to make decisions and organise events. Until recently, this work involved a lot of email flying around. Much of the email had file attachments but no-one knew where the latest or the athoritative version of a file was. Thomas Stephens from the Olympus committee used OnlineGroups.Net to set up the Mt Olympus Online Groups site.

In March 2006, the club opened the WWSC Committee online group. The group is private. Non-members can see that the group exists and see the members list and the Charter, but can't read the posts. Thomas worked with OnlineGroups.Net to develop an appropriate membership criterion. The membership criterion can be objectively applied and ensures that everyone in the group knows who might join the group in future and read the post they make today. It also ensures that institutional knowledge can be passed from current committee members to their future successors.

The culture around Mount Olympus is pretty social. It has a large diaspora of people who feel involved with the club. To provide a place where these people can hang out and plan or reminisce about ski and snowboarding trips, Thomas started the My Olympus mega group. The mega group is open so anyone can read the messages or join and take part in the conversations.

Testimonial: Why was this site not around years ago?

Thomas Stephens, Site Administrator of Mount Olympus Online Groups says:

Why was this site not around years ago? The benefit of being able to search any committee discussion, latest phone list, latest price list, from any location, with a secure library is now the way of the future. The ease of the email interface and online interface is great.

The people who don't like change don't realize that they have changed and are now working in a more efficient way. People who take to the online interface so they can focus on club issues rather than sorting though their emails, just whiz though the discussions with thoughtful answers and questions.

On the fun side, having an open group eg Mount Olympus Mega Group, means all friends, members and even newbies can get a feel of the club sprit, keep up to date with on going hot topics and keep in contact when they are a world away.

Thank you, OnlineGroups.Net.