Looking for Ideas to facilitate group communication on the road

[Alan Dayley]

http://belugapods.com/

While they showcase the iOS and Android apps, works fine with just a
text messaging phone too.

Alan

On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 12:32 PM, Mark Phillips
<mark at phillipsmarketing.biz> wrote:
> This group always has great suggestions for my odd requirements, so here I
> go again....;-)
>
> My two club softball teams are going to out of town for nationals at the end
> of June (~26 families). (We might even make ESPN...) We need a way to send
> messages to each other, and as a group. Up to this point, I have been
> running a private group email list that everyone can use to send and receive
> emails for the group. But not everyone has Internet or email on their phone,
> so the group email list is not the best option for everyone. My android
> phone can send a text message to a group, so I can handle the issue of
> schedule changes. But, not everyone's phone on the two teams can send a
> group text, which makes those impromptu 'team lunch' difficult for someone
> in the group to schedule, unless I become the group sms operator, which is
> **not** something I want to do! I am wondering if there is some open source
> technology that can help us....
>
> My requirements
> 1. Send sms to a whole group, part of a group, or individually
> 2. Work on low end cell phones - ie no Internet plan or email
> 3. Does not require a lot of setup, either for me or for each person going.
> The people on the trip are not techies, but parents of 11-15 year old
> softball players (and the players as well).
> 4. Free, or really low cost as I only need it for ~10 days.
>
> I have a Debian server on Linode for our web site, so I could add some more
> software....
>
> I thought of these ideas:
> 1. pass out a cell phone list to everyone. That solves individual sms
> messages, but not group/sub group messaging for those who don't have that on
> their phone
> 2. twitter - maybe a private group? I have not used twitter before, but I
> will have challenges getting everyone to sign up for an account.
> 3. some other sms micro-blog app on my own server?
> 4. Face to face communication.....how old fashion!
> 5. Phone trees......from my experience, only works in an emergency.
>
> I am focused on sms only because it seems to be available to every player
> and parent on the trip. I am open to any other suggestions y'all may have!
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mark
>
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