Looking for Ideas to facilitate group communication on the road

[Bob Elzer]

Have you thought of getting a google voice number, and adding everyone's
cell phone number to it, but just use the number for texting
 
that way one text would go to all phones.
 
There may be some issues to work out, but it might work
 
 

  _____  

From: plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Mark
Phillips
Sent: Sunday, June 05, 2011 12:32 PM
To: Phoenix Linux Users
Subject: Looking for Ideas to facilitate group communication on the road


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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