New technologies have the potential to strengthen our communities, but they also have the potential to challenge and weaken them. Video conferencing tools like Zoom can empower Friends to transcend the limitation of physical separation. Commercial online event management software can dramatically streamline logistical aspects of managing yearly and regional meetings. Online accounting systems can help monthly meetings accept donations via credit cards.
The potential positive benefits of adopting these kinds of technologies are clear. However, the potential negative unintended consequences and burdens associated with them may be less well understood.
When a Quaker meeting is considering whether to adopt a new technology, two distinct sets of skills are critical to identify within the meeting’s membership – the first relates to planning, the second to operations. Both are necessary for navigating successfully among the potential benefits, costs, and burdens of a new technology.
Planning begins by seeking unity around the nature of the issue that seems to be calling for a technological solution. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Implementing technology is disruptive and can impact the entire community, even when the work is needed and is done well. It is important for everyone to understand and have unity regarding why such change is needed and what it will take to do it right.
Frequently, the idea of adopting a new technology emerges out of a larger and more general planning process undertaken by a meeting – a meeting-wide committee reorganization effort, a “Quaker Quest” style self-examination, etc. That type of broad effort can clarify the meeting’s goals and values as well as the issues and opportunities confronting it. Such information is invaluable for focused and effective planning for technology implementation.
Once an appropriate technological project has been discerned and committed to, it is important to carry it out well. This requires a different set of skills than planning does. It is quite possible that a great planner might not be a great doer. It is inappropriate to expect the meeting’s technology committee (or communications committee) to necessarily have members who can do the hands-on work of implementing and operating new technologies.
The technology committee’s role is to do the fundamental work of clarifying the scope and priorities of a new technology project, to help the meeting maintain unity and support for the project, to assure adequate funding for the project, and to provide guidance to the meeting during the inevitable growing pains associated with the change.
The actual hands-on work of implementing and operating technological systems for the meeting should go to a separate committee or subcommittee. This can be just a few people who are empowered to act independently without needing to vet every decision through a full-scale corporate discernment within a larger body.
It might seem unfair for the technology committee to define a wish list of technology projects and then “dump it” on a smaller group of technologists to implement. But if the planning process has provided this small tech subcommittee with clarity regarding the scope and priorities of the work expected of them, then this approach will be far more supportive of them than just leaving it up to them to figure out how do their work without a plan.
Tom Vosburg is the Tech Lead for Intermountain Yearly Meeting and a member of Fort Collins Friends Meeting in Colorado.