Archive for August, 2004
August 12, 2004
Minneapolis
Off to Minneapolis tomorrow for ASAE’s annual meeting. So far I have heard of 5 blogs that will be written from the meeting.
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August 12, 2004
Calendar Standards
Lisa Dusseault has posted about how the CalDAV standard that she proposed is picking up a bit of steam:
This is all great news. Calendaring interoperability has languished except for that burst of productivity back in 1998. People are locked into one calendar application depending on what server technology they have available, since there’s no common calendar access standard. Invitations work, kinda, but in practice the problems with recurrances mean that people must follow up the machine-readable text with human-readable text in case a mistake was made between two different vendors’ software.
Good news, but nowhere near done yet — this is just the beginning. Now we need volunteers. We need people to write specification text, review text, and manage the issues. We need people simply to pay attention to the work being done and provide their experience, or simply opinions, to bring issues to resolution.
I’m excited to hear about this effort. Effective calendar sharing is probably one of the major failings of most personal information management systems, open or commercial. Of course, the OSAF group that Lisa works with is trying to change all that.
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August 10, 2004
The CAE Candidate Blog
When it rains it pours association blogs. Here is a blog by Ben Martin where he is writing about his experience as he prepares for the CAE exam. Good luck Ben! Writing about that in public takes guts since you never know if you’ll pass or not. :) Ben, I hope you’ll keep writing long after you get the CAE.
By the way, my study notes for the CAE are posted on this site. They are a couple years old but should still be useful.
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August 10, 2004
Event Blogging
Dan Bricklin’s essay on the dynamics of event blogging, based on his experience at the Democratic National Convention, provide some useful thoughts for the bloggers who may cover the ASAE meeting:
What we learn from the Convention blogging:
Event blogging is different than normal, daily blogging. In normal blogging, you watch the world go by and pick and choose things you want to comment upon. There is material online to point to and react to. There are ideas that well up and you take the time to write about, but few people may be waiting for them. There are many, many bloggers. Some read other blogs and choose the posts they think others should read. Through popular gateway blogs like some of the well known political blogs, and tools like Blogdex, Daypop, and more, things bubble to the top.
Events are another thing entirely. The time is very condensed and the amount of information is concentrated. If you are “covering” the event, you have to look at it all and provide perspective to a reader who doesn’t see all of the context that you do. The event marches on and won’t stop for you to take time for thinking and writing. Picking and choosing is harder — if you stop to blog, you might miss the keystone piece of what’s going on.
Good stuff. I know I usually have a hard time just keeping up with voice- and e-mail while at a meeting like this, let alone trying to write something coherent.
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August 10, 2004
ASAE Dips Toe Into Blogging Water
The American Society of Association Executives is launching an event blog for their annual meeting in Minneapolis next week. (Not much to see yet.) I’ve been asked to make a small contribution to it during the meeting which I’ll post a pointer to when it goes up. I’m excited that ASAE is experimenting with blogs. Given the sub-domain they have setup it looks like they may have several in the works.
I’ll post here a few times from the meeting as well. Jeff De Cagna sounds like he will be blogging the meeting too. Anyone else?
Update: Mickie Rops will also be blogging from Minneapolis. I created an ASAE Minneapolis blogs wiki page to track all these sites with. Feel free to add to it if you know of others who plan to blog from the meeting.
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August 7, 2004
Keynote’s APXL
Just came across an Apple developer connection article on how Apple’s Keynote presentation software stores all presentation data in an xml document:
At the heart of the Keynote presentation file is the presentation.apxl file, which specifies every detail of the presentation’s appearance and behavior—from the appearance of the master slide and each individual slide to the transitions used between slides and the state of the presentation when the customer first opens it.
The article goes on to talk about some of the nifty possibilities of integrating your databases and applications with Keynote. My own idea is that with a little (ok, maybe a lot) of hacking, you could provide a Keynote presentation feed for your weblog.
I love XML.
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August 6, 2004
Content Management Requirements Toolkit 2.0
James Robertson has announced the release of the second version of his Content Management Requirements Toolkit:
The first version of the Toolkit has been used by organisations the world over, from Fortune 500 companies to government agencies and small businesses. This new version builds upon these successes, and delivers even greater value.
I highly recommend picking up this report if you are embarking upon a CMS selection. It was very helpful to us when we conducted our last CMS selection.
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August 5, 2004
Timing AMS and CMS Implementations
I’ve heard from a couple of organizations in the past few months that are considering deploying their next association management system (CRM for the rest of the world) in conjunction with a content management system.
An AMS deployment alone will suck up all the oxygen in a typical npo IT department, occupying resources for months on end. A CMS deployment is resource intensive as well, especially if it is the first such system for an organization. Both usually drive a lot of business process changes during the deployment process. Trying to do both simultaneously is a big bite to chew.
This is not to say that it isn’t critically important to identify your AMS-CMS integration needs and plan on how to eventually do the integration. It is important. However, that doesn’t mean you have to plonk them both down at the same time in order to have an effective integration. Do one and get it right before you do the other if at all possible.
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August 4, 2004
Switch
I’ve been really interested in Apple’s OS X operating system for quite a while. Unix with a world-class GUI! I’ve also been craving a laptop to use at home and on the road. The moons finally aligned and I picked up a new iBook a couple weeks ago. I’m starting to get around the system a bit more confidently after much experimentation. The iBook also came in quite handy on a trip to Boston for my Dad’s wedding.
iBook + Baby Einstein DVD = Calm Flight.
Now Ella wants to look at pictures and movies on the iBook all the time. :) My toy!
I’m keeping a wiki page of links to useful OS X software, tips and resources I come across as I get up to speed on the system.
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August 3, 2004
Association Data Standards Consortium
The data standards group I have been active in forming now has a web page: Association Data Standards Consortium:
The Association Data Standards Consortium is a forum for identifying and communicating the process, information, and technology standards that facilitate seamless, efficient electronic business integration for associations and the for-profit businesses that serve them. ADSC is working through the X12 organization to develop standards.
The Association Data Standards Consortium uses the term “association” broadly, to include any non-profit member-centric organization or donor-based charity or foundation. Examples include but are not limited to: trade associations, professional societies, public foundations, philanthropic organizations, chambers of commerce, unions, fraternal organizations, and similar organizations.
I serve as the humble Communications Chair for ADSC, which means I approve requests to subscribe to the mailing list and help keep the web page up to date. The hard work of developing the initial standards is being done by the working groups.
These data standards should eventually help eliminate some of the pain that associations experience in integrating various systems with their association management system (CRM for membership organizations).
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