There’s an old saying: “There are those that back up, and those that will.” And as I mention here, it’s critically important to back up your data. I learned the lesson the hard way, many years ago, when I deleted all the data from a database I had been working on for two days. Ever …
There was a thread on the ASAE technology listserver a few weeks back about whether an association should choose an AMS based on .net or PHP or something else. There was some interesting responses, but one of the best was from Bob Nedbal, Director of IT and Web Services, at the American Educational Research Association. …
It was 20 years ago this June that I took a summer job at my college alumni association. I had no idea I would some day be in the association management business, but there I was, doing “data entry” for an association. And what did data entry entail, exactly? Well, it was three other guys …
Update: Many thanks to Lisa Junker at ASAE for sending me her copy of this post. I published a post yesterday about doing data entry at my alumni association. I've accidentally deleted that post and there is no back-up for it. (Don't ask, I'll explain in a later post.) If you happen to have the …
I’ve ranted in the past about getting your mass emails right. Well it seems that even the big guys have problems when it comes to this stuff. I received an email from Gartner today offering a free report. I clicked through and got to the web page that was offering a pdf download of the …
On Wednesday of this week I spoke at ASAE's Marketing & Membership Conference. Another sold-out show for the MMC, which has become a premier event for membership and marketing folks. My presentation, along with Mary Pat Paris of IRP, was on managing the email opt-out process. One of the points that struck me as particularly …
On Nick Senzee's blog, he writes about his experience with ASAE's Annual Meeting registration process. Nick raises some good points about the registration process that all associations should be aware of. Nick's primary complaint is that ASAE asks a lot of intrusive questions during the registration process. Ben Martin adds that ASAE should be able …
You may recall an episode of Seinfeld where Jerry is having his kitchen re-done. Whenever Jerry asks his carpenter what he should do, the carpenter offers all kinds of options and then says "I can do whatever you want me to." Jerry gets so exasparated that he tells the carpenter to do whatever he wants. …
I'll be speaking at ASAE's Marketing & Membership Conference in Baltimore next Wednesday, June 20. General information on the conference here. Program details here. If you're at the conference, please stop by and say hello to me after my session at 10.15am.
As I mention in this post, having an issue tracker is a key tool for managing all the different issues that arise during the implementation and live usage of an association management system. But for some reason, until just recently, most of the AMS providers did not provide any kind of online system for submitting …