Dan's Platform

We all owe a debt to a few founding residents who imagined and built our unique club system and made it what it is today.  So many of us at Anthem Ranch now share a favorite weekly or monthly activity where we get together with friends and neighbors to play cards, to share and build our knowledge, or to contribute our talents.  We gather in our beautiful Aspen Lodge to dance, talk, sing, or exercise.  Or we enjoy our beautiful Colorado outdoors together at the pool, on the pickleball court, hiking our mountain trails, or riding on the many Front Range bike paths.

Since I moved here, I have shown a passion for Anthem Ranch clubs.  It quickly became clear that many residents put a great deal of their time and energy into leading one of dozens of clubs so, from the start, I was determined to be one of them.  I founded the Anthem Ranch Tech Club in my first year, to share my experience in and love of technology.  Over eight years, Tech Club has grown to nearly five hundred members, leveraging the tremendous life experience in the neighborhood to draw presenters mostly from within, and covering a wide variety of popular topics in technology, science, and medicine.  Tech Club innovated by being the first club to have a website with slides from previous presentations, the first to use the flexibility of Google Groups for getting email to members, the first to use Zoom for meetings, and the first to videorecord meetings for posterity and later viewing by members who weren't able to attend or watch the presentation live.

My passion for clubs didn't stop with Tech Club: I joined the hike club, and soon started volunteering to lead some hikes, bringing some new destinations from a Rocky Mountain National Park hiking group to which I previously belonged.  I joined the bike club and introduced and led rides on some new trails I knew from when I lived an hour north in Fort Collins.  I joined the choir (Singers of Anthem Ranch) and relearned the joy of rehearsing and performing with others -- while sharing that joy by provoking an audience to laugh and smile.  And I learned the game of pickleball, thanks to some amazing volunteer "skills and drills" instructors, and have played quite a bit, especially enjoying it during the dark days of COVID.  As the world changed around us, I learned and contributed and debated in the Current Events club; I commiserated and joked with other old farts like me in Men's Coffee; I joined social clubs and attended many MANY exquisitely-planned club events and dinners with great food, often with memorable creatively-imagined activities and games, where I enjoyed developing many new friends.

Along the way, my passion and my technology skills made me popular among other club leaders which got me involved in founding Anthem Ranch's Oil and Gas Education Group (now disbanded), the Water Conservation Group, and more recently rebooting the Colorado History Club.  For these, and many of the other clubs mentioned, I was the club geek, maintaining email lists, establishing web pages, wrangling with the AV system in the MP rooms.

 Most recently, I co-founded ICE, which is Inspiring Club Excellence.  In 2023, I -- along with another Governing Documents Committee member -- helped reimagine and rewrite the rules by which clubs are governed here, along with the partnership with our CCMC Lifestyle partners.  As part of that process, we talked with the leaders of many of our clubs, understood their concerns and challenges, and also their unique contributions.  That experience led us to believe that there was much more opportunity for sharing across the club community.  We recruited a third founder who has a career in executive development, and the three of us founded this new club.  (And I am proud for having created the cool logo! ;-)

So do I have a passion for Anthem Ranch clubs?  You decide.

There's always so much going on at Anthem Ranch and so much to tell you about, and gotta tell you NOW:

There are three weekly email updates from CCMC containing:

• Association/governance stuff such as board agendas and decisions, committee meetings, lodge closings or hour changes, landscaping and lodge maintenance project updates, staff highlights, elections, awards, rules/document review opportunities, weather updates, 

• Lifestyle: summer concerts, special music events, Active Minds, painting classes, holiday dinners

• Club: meetings, dinners, activities, schedule changes, announcements of new clubs, pictures

THEN there's the monthly newsletter, which contains much of the same information as the weeklies, but in an annoying format.  There's sometimes new stuff that you won't find elsewhere, or advance notice for events... better read it now or that ticketed event will sell out!  There's usually  nice summary letters from the board and/or from CCMC;

And THEN if you are a member of one or more of the more active clubs, there's email intended for club members about activities, events

SO MUCH COMMUNICATION TO KEEP UP WITH!  Some residents -- like me -- are information gluttons who try to absorb everything that is sent out.  Others are overwhelmed by the quantity (and detail) of the information provided, can't keep up, don't even open the emails and then miss nuggets that are (or could be) important to them.

There are a few exceptions (such as posters in the lobby) but pretty much  ALL of this information is provided in text form, electronically via email or, if you can find it, on "the website".  Why?  Because this is an efficient cost-effective way to "mass distribute" information.

Is there a better way?  I was the first chair of the Ad Hoc Communications Committee (AHCC) chartered by the board from 2017-2019.  I included the following favorite quotes in a presentation:

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. -- George Bernard Shaw

Great communication is measured NOT by the words that are said but by the message that is heard -- Anonymous

The AHCC obtained a lot of community feedback and had a lot of great ideas.  A few were implemented, but the community wasn't ready (according to the board at the time) for many other ideas.  And that list is old... there's probably a lot of new ideas.  We need to revisit the list and update it.

Do I have all the answers?  NO.

Do I have some of the answers? MAYBE. 

Do we as a community have a more optimal way to communicate effectively?  ALMOST CERTAINLY!

For example, here's a few thoughts:

• Should the PRINTED version of the monthly newsletter be resurrected for those that are not as fluent with online information?  Should it maybe be available by subscription (e.g. US mailed for a price)?

• Should you be able to decide and select which weekly/broadcast email types are of interest to you?

• Can we make better use of video (e.g. YouTube) or audio (e.g. podcast) to distribute?

• For some kinds of information, should residents that prefer smartphone messaging be able to get updates that way?

One way to proceed (that I've suggested to the board) is to hire a communications consultant to review what we do in Anthem Ranch and how we can make it better.  That's probably expensive.  But I'll bet with YOUR input, we can save the money, identify some low-hanging fruit and make some basic communications improvements that will benefit the community. 

Input: Most of you have participated in (or are currently answering) the annual community survey.  I am skeptical of surveys like this because it's not hard for the creator of a multiple choice survey to choose wording that pre-determines the "right" answer.  So the data obtained really isn't always very useful to drive improvements or change.  (Some of you are smart enough to work around this by adding lengthy comments... I'm told the board reads every comment!)

And most of you have seen the Two Cent Tuesdays, where a (sometimes silly) question is asked, or a multiple choice question with multiple obvious answers.  Although these have gotten better over time, I don't know that the important questions are being asked.  And one board member confided in me that, when they tried to get the results from CCMC, they were told NO!  Hmmm... what's the point then?

While I am cynical of these two specific methods, I am VERY supportive of a data-driven approach to moving Anthem Ranch forward into the future.  I believe we need to know what YOU need and want!  What you like and don't like.  There are a lot of different opinions but if we don't ask, we don't get the right information to drive important decisions. 

Otherwise the result is like the parable of The Blind Men and The Elephant which tells the story of six blind men who examine one part of an elephant and each come to very different conclusions on what an elephant is. They are all partly right, but also all entirely wrong! (See the graphic elsewhere on this webpage.)  We don't want to be those six blind men, and you don't want us to be!

It's true that this is NOT a true democracy and we can't take a vote on every issue.  And I'm sure you don't want to be inundated with even more emails which contain surveys.  Nor even if we did have a vote can the board always proceed with what the majority wishes... that's why they get paid the big bucks!  (Sarcasm intended: Board members are unpaid volunteers.)

But YOUR input is necessary... and important.  And as a community, we need to better understand the variety of opinions.  I'd like the board to spend more time on making that happen!

Expertise: This plank is titled "community input AND EXPERTISE".  In the last year or two, the board has made some subtle but dramatic changes that I think were badly needed.  I have to applaud them because, in my opinion, the changes are a big step in the right direction.  Exactly the right direction.  But I'd like to take it one step further.  Because we have incredible yet-to-be-discovered expertise in our community covering a broad range of topics.

You see, when I moved here, it appeared to me that pretty much all major projects were delegated entirely to CCMC who would either act as expert contractors (who hire subcontractors to do the grunt work), or be the experts who do it themselves.  Or would decide it wasn't a high enough priority to be done.  For many things, that worked OK.  But, guess what?  Even Anthem Ranch staff members are only humans.  So... surprise... they aren't experts at everything.  The problem was that they tried to be experts at everything, and they did a reasonably good job of conveying that they could be experts at everything, and so we assumed they could be experts at everything.

We also had committees that were experts on some things, and they advised the board where they could.  But in many cases, the data they needed to provide good advice to the board was not available, or was only available via CCMC if CCMC chose to collect and provide it.  So again CCMC served the role as "the expert."

While bravado is sometimes good leadership, in this case (at least in my opinion), it led to a number of problems.  Projects were completed based on expediency (because when you are an expert at everything, you never have much time for any one thing) rather than what was best for the long-term future of Anthem Ranch residents.  Some projects were completed more "half-assed" than they should have been.  And some projects that were ignored or deemed low-priority were set aside while the problem slowly got worse, and more expensive to fix.  For these latter items, we are now paying the piper, which is why your HOA dues went up so much this year, and will probably continue to go up.

So what's different now?  Three things:  First, the board instituted and hired an "owner's rep".  This is someone OUTSIDE of CCMC that we are paying to provide the expertise.  This person has identified novel solutions for major projects, knows how to optimize the work of contractors for cost and time efficiency, and has likely already saved us a lot of money.  Second, the board has re-examined the existing committee structure and has given some committees more opportunity to demonstrate their expertise.  Other committees have been (or will be) replaced by temporary "working groups" who collectively expertise more focused on specific problems that the board would like to get solved.  Unlike standing committees, these are created as necessary and disbanded when done.  (As outgoing chair of the now-"sunsetted" Governing Documents Committee, I was in complete agreement that the working group model was superior for the tasks my committee was assigned in 2023.)  Third, the board is more actively seeking residents that are experts in various areas, and is calling on them and their expertise when needed.

So what is "one step further"?  I am concerned that there are a lot more experts in our community that could provide great benefit for Anthem Ranch.  And many are more than willing to provide their expertise.  But we don't yet have a good way to identify them and organize them.  One friend of mine posits that we could benefit from having a pool of thirty such experts.  Can we do that?  How do we do it?  We need to figure that out!

Remove Speedbumps?

Speedbumps are the analogy I use for all the little inconveniences that get in the way of getting things done when using a computer, or any technology.  Speedbumps are a barrier for success, they are annoyances, they slow us down.  If you are driving a car, you quickly learn to slow down just enough so that your bones aren't shaken.  But try going over a speed bump on a bicycle!

Those of us that are tech-savvy,  that have been doing battle with computers for much of our adult life are like the car driver; that is, each speed bump is an inconvenience or annoyance.  But for many -- even most -- residents of Anthem Ranch, they are riding a technology bicycle, and for those residents, speedbumps can be a real barrier, a hazard, a roadblock.

That's why I think its important to identify and remove unnecessary speedbumps wherever possible.  And, to be blunt, CCMC staff AND most of our active residents can't really relate.  They may not consider themselves but they are thinking "I figured it out and so can everyone else!"  

In my DanTheGeek business, I was astonished to learn just how many residents that are riding a technology bicycle over speedbumps.  While it's true that we don't have control over very many computer speedbumps, we really should make more of an effort for the ones we CAN fix.   A case-in-point came up a couple of years ago when a large club with many tech-challenged members decided to use myanthemranch for event ticket sales.  They did everything right, but when their members clicked, as they were told, on the "click here for tickets" in the announcement email, they were asked to first sign in.  But then when they DID sign in, they were taken to the myanthemranch home page, NOT to the ticket purchase page.   The result was that many club members were distressed that they could not sign up for the event.

I provided a workaround to the club leadership, but they didn't understand the problem and thought it should just work.  (They were right.)  You and I may have learned long ago that the workaround to this annoyance, is AFTER logging in to go back and click on the "click here for tickets" a SECOND time.  Sigh.  In fact, years ago I reported this to the Lifestyle team, and because of my tech background, I was able to investigate the symptoms  and create a precise problem description which should have pointed any software engineer to a simple fix.  I re-reported this to the next Lifestyle person the next year.  And then again to another new Lifestyle person.  Sigh.

Sorry to rattle on expressing my frustration but I have to wonder how many residents riding a technology bicycle have given up on attending an event -- an event they REALLY wanted to attend -- because the speedbump was insurmountable.   And worse, they then blame themself for not being a "techie", when the problem is that the website is broken.  And there are a few of these speedbumps.

So, as a board member, I will insist we FIX THE DAMN WEBSITE.

There are other technology and process speedbumps unrelated to the website.  Why are club meetings repeatedly plagued with non-working microphones? Why the repeated difficulty starting a Zoom meeting, or getting the "Neat Bar" working.  Why does the lodge wifi sometimes work and sometimes not?  Why does amplified music sometimes play in the wrong room?

Or more generically... how do we find all of the speedbumps, prioritize them, and fix them?   We need to start by asking YOU.

So... I'm asking... what are the speedbumps that annoy you, or your club?

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