‘IT’ Archives

The Future of the AMS – A free e-book

I participated in a panel discussion of AMS experts on the future of the Association Management System (AMS) hosted by Aptify. An e-book was created from that discussion and is available for free from Aptify via this page: Click here and scroll to the bottom If you're thinking about the ...

More Best Practices: Creating and Executing Exception Reports

Here's a quick (under three minutes) video from me, via TMA Resources, on creating and executing exception ...

Best Practices in Association Technology from TMA Resources

If you haven't already, be sure to check out TMA Resources' video series, Best Practices in Association Technology, featuring some of the brightest minds in the association market. (I say that because I'm one of the brilliant minds featured!) Each clip is 3-4 minutes long and ...

Technology philosophy #7 – Have a disaster recovery plan

This one isn't so much a philosophy as just a sensible business practice. You MUST have some type of disaster recovery plan in place. And not just for your technology, but for your entire organization's operations. (By definition this includes all of your technology.) Back in late 2001, a ...

Technology philosophy #6 – Everything comes with a tradeoff

This is somewhat related to philosophy #5, in that no matter what decision you make about technology (or any other decision you make in life!),  you're going to have to make trade-offs. In philosophy #5, I pointed out that "free" doesn't mean "without cost." In this case, the trade-off for free ...

Technology philosophy #5 – Just because it’s free doesn’t mean it has no cost

The internet is awash in free software. I love it, of course. So much software, so little time! But just because software is free does not mean that it has no costs associated with it. Even the simplest of software will have some level of learning curve associated with. That means you've got to ...

Technology philosophy #4 – Outsource when you can

If you're like me, when you have some type of internal challenge with managing information within our organization, you may first look to technology as a potential solution. For example, I have dozens of clients in the course of a year, so naturally, I have dozens of invoices I need to manage. I've ...

Technology philosophy #3 – “Less, but better.”

I first came across this line in the great Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. "Less, but better" was the design mantra of Dieter Rams from Braun. Braun, of course, designs all types of household appliances (I use a Braun electric razor myself!). And his design philosophy was that all things ...

Technology philosophy #2 – Just because you CAN automate it doesn’t mean you should

Because I'm a tremendous geek and love software, I'm always open to exploring new software programs that may somehow make my life easier. Over the course of nearly 25 years, I've probably tested more than four dozen different "task managers." You know what I'm talking about: these simple programs ...

Technology philosophy #1 – More effective, not just more efficient

Last month in Dallas I had the opportunity to speak at the AMC Institute on Technology Issues Facing Association Management Companies. As part of the presentation, I offered my philosophy on technology, which I'll share with you over the course of these next seven blog posts #1: Technology ...