Little by little, a little becomes a lot “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.” I don’t know where I first read it (a google search says it’s a Tanzanian proverb; I’m dubious), but I love the phrase, especially as it relates to data management. One of the many challenges of data management is …
Why do we treat data management differently? A recent post on ASAE’s community read: “Looking for recommendations for assistance with understanding how we can use our AMS more efficiently and effectively. Small international association, no in-house IT, and our staff AMS admin has left. Any suggestions?” On the surface there is nothing wrong with this request. …
Don’t Forget Your Speakers! A phenomenon I’ve noticed over the years is that my clients will manage speaker data outside of the primary AMS. Often this data is managed in spreadsheets or in a third-party event registration system. And too often, this data never makes its way back into the primary AMS. The key data point, that a …
90% of your data is never touched a second time I heard recently on a podcast that 95% of all the art New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art collects is never actually displayed in the museum. It’s stored in a warehouse in New Jersey! Which got me to thinking; how much of the data that we …
Newton’s First Law Part of Newton’s First Law states that “…an object in motion stays in motion…” What does this have to do with data management? Quite a bit, actually. One of the many challenges of data management is the constant grind of keeping data clean. (I refer to this as “weeding the garden.”) With most …
No System is Perfect While it may sound trite, it bears repeating that no data management system is perfect. I have yet to meet an association executive who thinks their system works perfectly. And yet, very often we’ll spend hours trying to find “perfect” software or trying to design the “perfect” data management process. The reality is, if …
Data Accretes One of my very first jobs in the association world was managing the production of a printed directory, a buyer’s guide. Within this buyer’s guide was a list of over 500 different “categories” of equipment. And each time the directory was updated, the number of categories expanded (members always had some new super-special category that didn’t fit …
Don’t be so lazy… One of the things that attracted me to the software world is how good software can really make your life easier. As I like to (half) joke, I’m incredibly lazy, so I like the software to do as much of the work for me as possible. But the reality is, sometimes …
Don’t Try to do Everything at Go-live When implementing a new AMS, there is a tendency to try to get everything done and “in the system” prior to go-live. After all, you’ve got this shiny new system with all kinds of new functionality. Why not go for it and have it do everything it can …
Make sure your system has broad support An AMS vendor pointed out to me recently the danger of buying a new AMS (or any enterprise software, for that matter) based on the passion of one person. As he put it, “I have seen this more than a handful of times, but when that one person drives …