What is a Circuit Rider and why would I like to join their email list?

I find the UKRiders email list a useful source of information specifically aimed at the charitable sector and thought you might too.

As iT4C volunteers we know you are interested in IT for charities and other socially conscious/not for profit organisations.

You are an invaluable source of support and advice for organisations that may otherwise not be able to make use of IT (due to a lack of money and skills). All the volunteer opportunities we offer are for organisations who would like to use IT to better support their work/clients or for those organisations for whom their IT causes problems and makes them being able to work very difficult.

You are not alone. There are other technically minded people working hard for the charitable and community sector to help them make use and sense of IT. These people are often called circuit riders (a term borrowed from the United States).

You may not only know of them, you might be one. In the UK there is a healthy circuit rider movement that communicates nationally to share ideas and support, they met up a few times a year for conferences and other events also. Mostly they communicate via their UKRiders email list.

If you want to take a look before you subscribe you can browse a recent archive of messages from the list. Don't worry that you might be inundated with email - the list averages between 30 and 50 messages a week and all messages have [ukriders] in the subject so you can filter them if your email client supports it. You can also setup your subscription to receive only a weekly digest.

Subjects tend to be about suitable solutions, new products and software, technical questions and advice about technology being used for and by charities. Please feel free to join and use the list in the spirit to which it is intended.

Anne Stafford, iT4Communities Development Consultant