If I’m sending out an internal email keep it short and no room for misinterpretation. If I can’t say everything I need in two sentences then shorten it or just don’t send it and pick up the phone or walk over and talk to people.

I’m to busy doing real work to write a five page essay for interneral consumption that will get misinterpreted five ways and someone will find a spelling error and all of a sudden all the shit is on me… just not worth it.

The problem with relevancy is that the the university or units have to keep their email groups current in order for that to work to a large scale. Someone can write a relevant email to a large group and have all intentions of sending it to only that group. If the proper email list doesn’t exist or they have to guess as to which one to use, it defeats the purpose. Then you have people receiving multiple copies and others not receiving it at all — which goes back to your point I quoted earlier in this comment.

Maybe those emails are better suited for the Intranet anyway.

@Anne – The dreaded listserv! They should do away with them all together. Again, that’s what an Intranet is for! To Nikki’s point earlier, think of some of those listserv’s and the information that would benefit others within the university or even the public.

BTW, I can’t believe I forgot all caps. I can’t believe people still use them and don’t realize how offensive it is to receive an email in all caps.

I wish I were kidding. But no, we were “yelled at” regularly to donate our time, money, and attention.

If this starts to happen in your office, please nip it in the bud. If you don’t, it may become the proverbial way it’s always been done.

You bring up a great point with the budget emails. I think administration is the worst offender. In an effort to get important messages out, they cram 1 email full of every single tidbit possible. Unfortunately, then, less people read it and their goal of disseminating important information effectively has failed.

@Nikki – I agree with you to a point. In a perfect world, I think you’re absolutely right. The problem is that in the real world of higher ed, users may be reluctant to use the Intranet if they realized it was open to the public. Right or wrong, I think that’s the case right now.

That isn’t to say that’s the way it always will be. Just like anything else, higher ed is quite far behind. As we educate our internal folks on the benefits of the Intranet, and, beyond that, the benefits of sharing information, I think we’ll be there. Right now, I just don’t see that as realistic.

You should make sure the emails are relevant and segmented properly as well. We have a huge problem where so many bulk emails go out on campus (plaintext, no real editorial oversight besides the office wanting to send it), and they tend to be so irrelevant to anything people do, that everyone just filters them to a folder (occasionally the trash), and NEVER looks at them.

As a communication tool, it has become actually quite useless. It’s simple legacy keeping it alive: “We were one of the first people to start using this tool X years ago.”

But I’m going to add more fuel to the fire:

Before you lock a conversation behind an Intranet in the first place, consider whether or not it could benefit from a more public conversation.

Some conversations that seem like more internal discussions should be public.

I think Intranets themselves should allow for this level of granularity so that we can share some of our internal work with external colleagues and decide based on context what gets locked down.

While some topics may seem like airing our dirty laundry in public, a little public dysfunction is good if other organizations have experienced these growing pains and can help diagnose and resolve them.

On the flip side, when you do well, it’s important to be able to showcase Internal efforts on more broadly. If a tree falls in the middle of the woods and there is no one there to hear it does it make a sound? The same goes with good Intranet content. I’m sure there is great stuff happening on Penn State departmental Intranets; I just wish we could see it in action across departments or share it across other academic institutions.

Nikki