As our community grows, it will create social norms and expectations and learn to trust them. Part of being a good moderator is training members, employees, or customers to moderate discussions themselves.

If you do your job well — write an excellent guideline and modelled good behaviour — your members, employees or customers should be well trained, keep valuable discussions alive, and self-police unproductive behaviour. In addition, it will be easier for new folks to get up to speed since they’ll have many positive role models to emulate.

Our objective is to prepare our community to take ownership of how it’s used.

There are many ways you can contribute.

Our potential volunteers have a lifetime of experience and skills.

Your job will be to respect their time, avoid minion work and match their interests and skills to the task we need to do.

Eventually, we will have an automated Registry of small and large tasks that need doing.
We will also create a Registry of Volunteers so you can lay out what they like, what they are good at and what they like to do and the level of effort and duration they are willing to commit to. Then you/we will try to find a match.

In the meantime, we have several jobs we need help with. For the short term, you will do it the old fashion way.

Your job will be to get the ball rolling until we can get technology to lighten the admin load, so you can focus on engaging people and making them feel valuable again.

If you get it right, this might be the most important and the most rewarding job we have.

We envision using a lot of online tools to build a sense of community right across the country.

We will provide you with the web-based tools you and your team will need:
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Online Community Software, including Forums, Social Networking, etc.
Membership Administration tools,
Tools for organizing and running Running Webinars,
Tools for Recognizing and rewarding members who are making the most valuable posts in our Forums and Blogs
Tools for Event promotion and communication.

They are not up and running yet, but you can influence how they are set up and organized for your needs.

Our Vision is a Shed for every man who wants one, but our friends in the far North have challenges getting together, so we will also support Virtual Sheds where all meetings need to be online.

This is such a broad field, with so many skills required to do it right. We need someone who knows what needs doing and to start us on the path to spreading the word. We need to build lasting relationships through email marketing automation, where we deliver personalized content and targeted communications that will keep our audience coming back for more. Some of the skills we are looking for:

Capturing and Writing Web Content, Press Releases, etc.,

Encourage then proofread Member-generated content, which includes discussion posts, articles, and other resources created exclusively by your members.

Collect related material from your members and stitch it together to provide a more comprehensive look at your industry or promote events.

Campaign Managers,

Graphics Artists,

Experience with web-based:
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Online Community Builders,
Membership Administration tools,
Running Webinars,
Recognizing and rewarding members who are making the most valuable posts in our Forums and Blogs

Event promotion and communication.

Chances are, you already know what we need before we do.

Members are our organization’s best advocates, especially if they are actively involved in events and your online community.

We know our members are already helping with member challenges or providing guidance.

We need to identify and capture that expertise so we don't burn out our best as we scale to a truly nationwide organization.

Your objective is to draw members in and show them how they can contribute—encouraging participation taps into intrinsic motivation, helping members feel special. It also provides exclusive content and demonstrates both the value of our organization and the ways members can participate at a higher level.

Are you capable of finding, encouraging and growing these resources? Are you one of these resources? Let us know.

We need to ensure information exchange with members is not a one-way street.

We need feedback — our members know best which benefits work for them.

It’s empowering for members to see their feedback implemented, have their opinions matter, and play an active role in influencing an organization.

We will provide the online tools, but we need people to open a dialogue with our members for better engagement and value in the long run, building trust and transparency for your members.

We need you to pave the way for better member feedback channels:
• Surveys and member interviews
• Dedicated discussion forums in an online community
• Recurring, in-person meetings
• Live events
• Blog posts

For some, this is a process. For others, it is a calling. In either case, we need your talents.

We need to agree upon a definition of the stages of a Shed in terms of its status when forming, operating, and on rare occasions, its shutdown.

At the end of the current ill-defined "Start-Up" phase, when does a Shed become a Shed, with respect to them claiming their One Shed-One Vote Status? What criteria, if any, do we apply?

During their Operating Phase, it might also be helpful to further categorize by its chosen form of governance:
e.g. Doug Mackie gave us a start, suggesting:

An independent men's shed has a somewhat formal structure with an executive elected or assumed, a bank account, a constitution/by-laws, and regular meeting places and times. Determines their own activities.Raises their own operating funds. Can request grants independently. May or may not have programs out in the community. In BC and Manitoba, they maintain liability insurance coverage for their sheds and members.

A sponsored men's shed is "located" within an established community-based organization that has an elected board, constitution/by-laws, and bank account and usually "their" Men Shed is only one of many other programs. No need to raise funds or an individual bank account. Usually limited programs off-site or in the community.

An in-house men's shed is a program usually run by a recreation/activities person within a senior's residence mainly for male residents.

More?

We need help in gaining consensus on these definitions via input from across the country.