Some years ago, I served on a Board for a residential community – something I haven’t put on my CV and don’t intend to – and everything was falling apart, largely because the lessor wasn’t doing their fair share, which is another story altogether.

While I was on the Board, I took interest in the office because information, which we didn’t have much of because of the lessor, needed to be stored. The phone the property manager used belonged to the old Chairman, the administrator (when we had one) didn’t have a phone, and no information of use was stored in the office – yet it was central to communicating with residents and shareholders. They were using Outlook, and subscribing to a service that didn’t allow them to email beyond a quota which is just… well, Microsoft being Microsoft.

So I created a Google Group for the Board, and wrestled people onto it after I volunteered to do it enough times that I just got sick of it. Residents weren’t getting emails, and it was obvious to even the dullest nail in the box that the problem was the Microsoft quota. The general response, it seems, is to just pay more for Outlook, but I suggested using a Google Group because that way we could split communications between residents and shareholders as needed, we could allow people to access old conversations easily and refer them back to things, and we could build a knowledge base based on these things. It was not rocket science. It was very late 1990s technology I was talking about: Send one email to the group, Google delivers it to everyone. Presto magico.

Being a volunteer Board, you never know who you’re going to get on it. I pressed on those things and then Covid-19 happened, and so nothing really happened. We did manage to get the administrator a phone and get the property manager his own phone, and frustrated with the way things were going I left the Board.

After leaving, I had an open invitation to assist the Boards that came after with everything, but stayed out of their way.

That was 2020 or so. It’s 2024 now. People are still sometimes not getting email because of the same issue, something I told every single Board about for the last 4 years.

It takes only a few minutes to set up a Google Group. There’s nothing complicated about it. I walked by the office as a local expert was explaining why emails were getting bounced back.

His response I overheard was that they needed to pay more for Outlook.

Sometimes, you can lead a horse to water and can’t make it drink – but there are times when you lead a rat to water and wish to drown it.

This is why I hate dealing with local companies in Trinidad and Tobago, and don’t offer any services here. It’s somehow stuck in time. I have loads of stories like this.