Just got back from Chicago and the ASAE Annual Meeting. I think ASAE outdid themselves once again with this meeting. I'll go so far as to say that the opening general session, with "An Association Musical" as its theme, and featuring Lee & Bob Woodruff, was the best ASAE opening session I've ever attended (and this one marks my ninth). The way ASAE interwove the business portion of the meeting (e.g., delivering news about what the association has accomplished, talking about upcoming initiatives) was very well done. And the Woodruffs were moving and inspiring.

Another highlight for me was Lieutenant General James L. Campbell, speaking on leadership. If even half of the world was as passionate about their work as General Campbell is, there would be nothing we couldn't accomplish. Absolutely fascinating stories and a truly remarkable man. I watched him talk to the 30+ people who lined up to greet him after his presentation, and I was amazed at how he locked eyes on every person who spoke with him, and listened like they were the only person in the room. Very impressive.

But my favorite part of this meeting, as it is every year, is re-connecting with friends and colleagues. I really enjoy catching up with people I haven't spoken with in awhile, and seeing the vendors out on the show floor showing off their latest goods. Everybody who is somebody is at this meeting, and if you're not attending, you're really short-changing yourself. If you're serious about your association career, ASAE's Annual Meeting is a must-attend!

I'm off to ASAE's Annual Meeting in Chicago. I serve on the ASAE Technology Section Council, so I'll be in that meeting on Saturday, and then generally wandering around for the rest of the conference. (This is one of those rare years that I won't be speaking at a session.) If I see something of interest, I'll try to blog about it.

I'm told by knowledgeable sources that attendance could exceed 7,000, making it the largest ASAE Annual Meeting ever. I've been pretty impressed with the content of the past few meetings, so those numbers don't surprise me.

I hope to see you there.

In the storage room of my house is a box from a printer that reads "Data Processing Forms." The picture on the outside of the box is of paper that has those "tractor feed" pinholes on the sides, for feeding through a dot matrix printer. Mind you, this box is no more than 15 or 16 years old. This reminded me of how far we've come, in such a short amount of time.

At my first association job, all of the invoice printing (for membership or other products) was done on a tractor-fed dot matrix printer, in triplicate. Two copies to the member, one copy for our files. Today, we email the member, they pay online, and we barely have to touch anything. How far we've come.

In a matter of about 15 years, we've gone from DOS, to Windows, to web-based products that can be viewed on handheld smartphones. Go back just 20 years and if the association had a database at all, it was probably a unix-based mini-computer. How far we've come.

Keeping up with technology, especially at this kind of pace, is difficult. But the amazing advances have allowed us (should allow us) to focus our energies on servicing the member, developing new products and services, and delivering on our association's mission, rather than spending time printing and mailing invoices in triplicate. Is your association there, or are you still working in the 20th century? How far we've come, and yet how far we have to go…

A colleague of mine tells me that his hard drive on his laptop has crashed, and it's unlikely he'll be able to recover it. The kicker is that he hasn't run a back up on that drive for almost a month, so he's probably lost a month's worth of work.

What's amazing is that even in this age of "instant" online back ups, I still run into this problem fairly frequently. Either the organization is not backing up its data, thinks it is backing up the data when it is not, or just doesn't have any idea. See here for my rant on backing up. (Note that this rant came as a result of my not backing up a data source.)

Do you know if your database is being backed up (and the rest of your organization's digital files)? What about files on your own computer, including the computer desktop? Are you sure they're being backed up? And are they being backed up frequently enough so that when the inevitable drive failure occurs, the damage is minimal?

I was on the phone today with a hotel, confirming my reservations. The reservations agent asked me for my name and then said "Let's see how they have your reservation set up."

"They"?

If I'm calling your hotel, isn't it "we"?

I come across this too frequently when talking to association staffers about what they need to do in the database. I'll often hear things like "…they want…" or "…they have set it up this way…". Maybe I'm overreacting, but if you work in the association, then you're part of a "we," not a "they." And if you really feel like it's us against them, then perhaps you should find another job.

Granted, you may not have power over all decisions, so in some cases "they" might refer to senior management. But more often than not, I think "they" really means the person saying it doesn't feel like they're part of the team. And that's a problem.

What about you? When you refer to the organization that employs you, do you say "we" or "they"?

After nearly 20 years of working with associations on their databases, I've come to one conclusion: No one loves their database. OK, that's an overstatement; I've met three or four people over the years who truly loved their databases (these are strange people). The reality is, most of us tolerate our database programs, and many of us actively despise them.

But this is important to know. Everyone struggles with their data management sytems. There are a lot of different reasons for these struggles (see this post, for example). But the fact is, databases are "living documents," forever changing, and ultimately created and managed by human beings. This means they will always be a challenge.

So it's critically important to keep your database challenges in perspective. There will always be problems, challenges, and bugs (or there better be, or I'm outta work!). The important thing is to keep that in mind and focus on what is working. Keep working on what needs to be fixed, but don't forget that you're succeeding in spite of the problems. And that's a good thing.

I recently conducted an unscientific poll of my clients and contacts, asking them one simple question: What database issue are you being challenged with right now?                                             

I received over 120 responses to this question. Interestingly, the answers fell almost evenly into five broad categories:

1. Reporting/querying – 26%
2. Data integrity – 20%
3. Web Integration – 20%
4. Integration of multiple data sources – 17%
5. Training/documentation – 16%

I wrote two articles for Association Trends on my reactions to these results, the first of which you can read here (the second is yet to be published).

I've been a long-time user of X1 Technologies desktop search (more here). There used to be a free version of X1, but now they only sell the "professional" version for $50. I'm telling you right now, it's the best $50 you'll ever spend.

I know Yahoo and Google provide free desktop searches. I've tried them both, and I find the interface on the X1 product much more user-friendly and easy to navigate. (Interestingly, X1 provides the technology for Yahoo's tool.) But if you're not inclined to pay for desktop search and you're not yet using it, get it NOW! Once you've got it, you'll never know how you lived without it.

On a fairly regular basis I find myself searching for things I haven't accessed in years. Just today I had to find an email receipt for a Palm program I purchased more than a year ago (since I just updated my Palm software, which conveniently wipes all programs from your Palm). Using X1, I found the email receipt immediately. I would have never found it without a desktop search tool.

Full disclosure: EDM is an independent third-party consulting firm. This means we have no financial relationship with any of the vendors mentioned in this blog. We provide unbiased opinions on what we see.