Communication... or lack thereof...

As I pulled my car over at the Unitarian Church's parking lot tonight, I was a little dismayed to see that there were only four cars parked. I walked over to the big glass door and read the sign saying that the Coffee House is at 7.30 to 10 pm or something like that. I went in with no expectation. I've told myself that I need to start getting involved in the community, so I chose to come here instead of spending hours at the gym or being a recluse at home. But this... this is just sad.. The dimly lighted auditorium was relatively quiet. It was devoid of energy. I was greeted by a lady who turned out to be one of my acquaintance's partner. I sat down and introduced myself to the only 5 people there. The first few minutes was torturing. But the six of us finally warmed up and started conversing about different things. Eventually we realized that nobody else was going to come and we might as well have fun.

Later, I checked the event list on OUTLinc and there it is: KARAOKE HAS BEEN CANCELED because the karaoke machine was broken. Somewhere along the line there was a miscommunication. According to them, the karaoke machine was indeed broken, but later on they were able to source another karaoke machine. The former information (that the karaoke machine was broken) was conveyed to the community, and unfortunately the latter wasn’t. If I hadn’t checked the website, these people would’ve probably thought that the low turnout was due to some other reasons.

Something similarly frustrating happened at the LGBTQA Resource Center this morning. An event for the Project Kindle was set to happen on December 2 from 6 to 9. First of all, the flyer made for this event did not have a location. When I went to the website to check, there is little to no information regarding the details of the event. (Fortunately enough, I could get the information from Pat). Secondly, my co-volunteer at the RC got a facebook message from a guy saying that the time of the event was wrong and that it is supposed to start at 7. And after a few emails we finally got the right schedule of what goes when (I’m not sure if they changed the time for a reason or if we just got the wrong time info to begin with).

These examples might be very trivial, but I just wanted to point out that these wonderful events could go to waste just because of poor communication. It’s understandable that there are various aspects to planning an event and it could get really stressful very easily, but imo, we should take time in ensuring that the essential information is out there. And not only that, it is also important that the information be consistent, which means that if there are changes, it should be communicated within the committee responsible for the event and also out to the target audience.