GFOABC ONLINE FORUMS

AS A GFOABC MEMBER, ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL TOOLS AT YOUR DISPOSAL IS OUR ONLINE FORUM.

Through the Online Forum, local government finance professionals can access an archive of information going back to 2016, ask or answer questions to and from fellow finance professionals, and share pertinent documents. We reached out to several GFOABC members who have made visiting and engaging with the forum a part of their day-to-day and will be sharing their takes over the course of the next four newsletters.

This quarter, we have Mike Olson

Director of Finance for the District of Hope. Prior to his role in Hope, Mike spent his time as a Controller within the manufacturing and construction industries, and has been a long suffering San Francisco 49ers fan.

Here are his answers to a few of our questions:

WHY DO YOU COME TO THE FORUM? IS LOGGING ON PART OF YOUR DAILY ROUTINE (LIKE CHECKING YOUR EMAIL)?

I come to the forum to find out about discussions that are currently happening in our industry. Being new to municipal government I use the forum as a place to see what people were saying were current issues. The theory of “you don’t know what you don’t know” applies to me. As a result, the forum is a place where I flag issues that I did not know were coming due or issues that others have been faced with that I may need to be concerned about.

My morning routine is to log on to the forum as one of the first things I do in the morning. I like to do this as it gives me a vibe for the day. Now, sometimes that vibe is I did not even know this was an issue, but it is a vibe none the less. Overall, I find this is a great way to start the day.

HOW DO YOU THINK EXPANDED ENGAGEMENT ON THE FORUM AMONG GFOABC MEMBERS CAN HELP THEM IN THEIR DAY TO DAY?

An expanded engagement on the forum amongst GFOABC members can only help people in their day to day. Engagement can come in a variety of forums in which people use the forum. I am for most the part the classic lurker. To be clear, lurking in a forum is still a very valuable engagement for someone who is new to their role and for those that are hesitant to post.

If we as group increased our overall access to the GFOABC forum we could truly leverage all of our knowledge and experience. I see how the community interacts on the board and see how positive it is and the depth of knowledge sharing that is there. Knowing how many people were at the AGM in June this year, I can tell that we have a lot of people who are silently lurking or not using the forum. If we can get more people to contribute, we will be able to hear from more voices which will be fantastic.

WHAT FEATURES OF THE FORUM DO YOU USE THE MOST (POSTING DISCUSSIONS, COMMENTING ON EXISTING DISCUSSIONS, SEARCHING THE DATABASE FOR INFORMATION ETC.)?

The area of the forum that I use the most is reviewing of the discussions, and searching the database for information. Logging in daily, gives me that feel for the current issues. As I have gone along, I am starting to post responses to people’s discussions as I want to enhance the discussion with my posts. By being more active, my goal is to help others, as there is no need for any of us to recreate something new when one of us has had to have seen the scenario that is being posted about.

The forum is a great resource for research. I use the search function to look for topics that I am currently dealing with. With the search function it enables searching through current and archived discussions. Although, I find the more current discussions the most relevant, there have been a couple of times where I have found information in an archived discussion to be very useful.

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR PERSONAL BEST PRACTICES WHEN IT COMES TO ENGAGING ON THE FORUM?

Some of the best practices I find are as follows:

• Use a detailed discussion title, for example, with Permissive Tax Exemptions, there were many topics with the label Permissive Tax Exemption, but if the headline holds a little bit more detail, such as “Permissive Tax Exemptions vs Grant?” it enables users to easily see the topic. Essentially, I treat the Discussion Title as an email subject, making it clear and distinct.

• Use Tags for the discussion. For all of us who use social media, hashtags are a way of life in communication. In this instance, we can use hashtags to find discussions and make them easier to search. A good example of a popular tag on the forum is #propertytax

• Please provide a template or answer the query in the chat. There are a few times where people have asked for templates, and the responses are that they have emailed them off. This is great for the individual who asked the question, but for the inquiring minds that did not get the response, we can only imagine what was sent

• And finally, know that this is a safe place and any question is a good question.

Thank you to Mike for his contribution for this article and his ongoing engagement on the online forum. Look out for part three in our forum series coming out in March, where we’ll hear from another highly engaged forum member.