Yes it's time to get WhatsApp, Telegram or other

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I see it will have to be a whatsapp group

-- *Eng. Osbert Atwijukye (MUIPE)* *MSc. Civil Eng., Mak, BSc. Civil Eng. Mak.* *Tel:+256(0)779233939, +256(0)703909751* *Skype: osbert.atwijukye*

It would be possible to take the RSS feed from this forum and automatically post with it to a Telegram group for those that prefer that to email updates.

There is for example this bot that could be used: github.com/Rongronggg9/RSS-to-Telegram-Bot#using-the-public-bot

Hello everyone, On the social media issue, I suggest we go with telegram. This is because it can accommodate more members as against whatsapp which is limited in the maximum number of persons who can be on a group at a time! This is only if the leadership of SuSan A can confirm the number of members they are expecting to enroll in the group. However, if the number is less than 250, then I suggest we go for whatsapp and after which we can still migrate to telegram as the case may be!

Duru Nicodemus

The effectivenes and security oissues depend on the size of the community and how well people know and trust each other. These solutions are great for smaller communities where this is already the case. For associations where people also come and go and like SUSANA where there are thousands of members i do not think this is appropriate. A mobile only chat should be part of the overall communications and knowledge sharing solution for the community that has both content and a web based solution. The whole idea of sharing knowledge needs such a solution. Chat threads are for quick, fast uncomplicated comms. Not knowledge sharing. 

Let's do it ASAP....for sharing important issues in the context of water and sanitation.

Regards.

Alpha. Kigoma. Tanzania.

Thanks Sean and Trudi for rightly pointing out the privacy concerns. In my limited experience of being member of a couple of such WA groups, I have found people posting only relevant information. Have also benefitted from direct access to peers. It may off course not be the same for all. It can be intimidating for young professionals and early career researchers to share virtual space with very experienced and stars of the sector. But it also offers opportunities for faster communication and engagements as premananda also pointed out.

We could begin with creating such groups and inviting people to voluntarily join from links shared on the forum. Both silent and loud groups could be created with only admins posting in the silent ones.. Depending on their preferences and availability of time, members  can  choose to join either of the groups.
 
Does this sound feasible?

Regards
paresh

I think, it would be better to be on Telegram to accommodate huge number of members of the group. It should be started, as soon as possible to have minutes to minute update about all information, queries, issues, innovations, announcements, RPFs 0r EoIs, any other interviews...etc

I strongly believe on that.


Regards,

I founded and have been running the largest open access platform for water professionals for over 10 years (TheWaterNetwork.com) and spent a lot of time reviewing how to best organize communications to meet this need. We have more than 117,000 members and reach 500K water pros a month. We have an open access, open core platform. The most important thing is to have a platform that provides knowledge sharing (answering questions, access to experts, finding information ala content management) AND communications. I strongly advise against using WhatsApp, Telegram and SLack because of privacy issues, ownership, and if you want to manage that cost because the free versions are not scalable. No one mentioned video, but that is critical today, ala an embedded Zoom or Jitsi. We can set up a private space for SuSana in a few minutes. Our new native mobile app will be available 3Q this year. Happy to discuss with whoever is the appropriate contact. 

AMCOW set up WhatsApp groups for Africa Water Week at the end of last year. The advantage was that the secretariat (Maimouna Tall and colleagues) were able to respond quickly to delegate queries. The group still exists, but I agree with Julius that it is a privacy nightmare because the group's 224 members can see my mobile number and I and I can see theirs. There have also been a few spam attacks that the AMCOW Secretariat has had to clean up so anyone wanting to post a link or advertise something has to go through them first. So these security/privacy risks have somewhat undermined the advantages of having a chat group. I'm still in the AMCOW group because I'm observing how it works to help us with conversations like this.

nityajacob wrote: If there is a unified way to post to WhatsApp and Telegram

No such thing exists as Facebook (=WhatsApp) blocks all external access unless you pay for the expensive business API access. Telegram is much more open in that regard.

In general I would strongly advise against WhatsApp as it requires sharing the phone numbers which is a serious privacy concern.

Hi,
This is a brilliant post, thanks.
If there is a unified way to post to WhatsApp and Telegram, I would pick that. If not, WhatsApp, since that seems to be the most popular. And a link or feed into the SuSanA Forums.
Nitya