Recent Headlines

I’ve posted a new article on my website. When I meet with association management software (AMS) vendors to discuss their products and companies, I’ll typically ask them “What advice would you give your current customers in order to get more value from your product?” Invariably, the ...

If you have a car that was manufactured in the past ten years and you've taken it into the shop, you've probably noticed something interesting: One of the first things your mechanic does is plug your car into a handheld computer, to run diagnostic tests. Today's cars have so many computers on them ...

I recently viewed demos from two new AMS vendors (well, new to me), which I've added to my list of software vendors providing membership management software. The first addition is MemberNation from Fonteva, which has built an AMS on top of the salesforce (force.com) platform. This marks (at ...

I've served as a volunteer for ASAE for many, many years. (My first volunteer effort was writing an article for their print(!) membership section newsletter back in 1994.) Over the years I've written many articles, spoken dozens if not hundreds of times, and served on three separate committees, ...

I've written many times about the importance of training. (I've even done a teleseminar on it!) And far too often, training from AMS vendors ranges from mediocre to really bad. So I was pleased to have the opportunity to sit through some very good AMS training from Aptify this week, while working ...

I'll be speaking at the upcoming New England Society of Association Executives' Technology Conference on Friday, March 30, 2012, in Waltham, MA. I'm presenting the opening general session entitled "Managing your Data and Finding the Gold" and a second session entitled "Selecting a New Association ...

One of the greatest dangers of having access to the latest and greatest technology is over-engineering. That is, searching for ways to automate processes that really don't need to be automated. I was reminded of this last week by an email from a friend, which he has given me permission to quote ...

I’ve posted a new article on my website. I recently received an email from a past client (and current colleague!) of mine, asking me if I could help her and her organization with some data management issues they are having. She outlined her needs and ended the email by asking, "Are these even ...

One of the most important things you can do when training new users in a database is to provide context. That is, prior to actually training someone on how to do something, take just a minute or two to explain WHAT you're going to be doing, and WHY we're using the database to do this. Too often ...

I was sitting in a  meeting recently for an organization I do volunteer work with. The organization was explaining that they are tracking "face-to-face" engagement by tracking in-person meeting registrations. When I asked if they were also tracking face-tof-ace meetings like the one I was sitting ...