Author Archives: David

RSS for MS CRM

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Microsoft just released some sample code with which to create RSS feeds from Microsoft CRM. I think this is a great development and provides a lot of value to users of the product. Being able to subscribe to a feed for a particular person, or class of persons, in a CRM database allows you to track them within your existing tools rather than having to remember to login to a portal page or application.

In fact, I talk about RSS for association management systems in an article I wrote for Forum Magazine that should be out in the April issue. Below is an excerpt of the bit about adding RSS to AMS:

I believe that the potential of RSS as a communication and productivity tool is just beginning to be fully explored. In addition to continuing to use it share and raise awareness of web-based content, I believe that RSS can be put to use in strengthening the relationship between a member and her association.

One use specific to the association market is around increasing member awareness. Take the common scenario of an association staffer who manages a committee or board and serves as an ex officio member of the group. What if your association management system provided an RSS feed for each member, providing updates every time something new happens with that member. You could then subscribe to the feed of each member on the committee and be immediately updated when they register for a conference, renew their membership, buy a product or miss an important continuing education deadline. Imagine the value of being fully aware of your committee members’ individual interactions with the association in a way that comes directly to your desktop rather than you having to mine your AMS on a daily basis to find the same information.

The same kind of feed could be exposed to your members, secured with their user name and password. This feed could alert them when a product they purchased from you ships, deadlines to renew membership or continuing education credits, etc. This would allow them to be much more aware of what your association is doing for them on a daily basis without having to take overt steps to find it out.

This kind of awareness raising could improve the experience for everyone in the association by making better use of the data that flows through your systems on a daily basis to strengthen the relationship between members and the association.

(Via Scoble.)

Understanding the Potential (and Pitfalls) of Integrating CMS and AMS Systems

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Ever wondered if you should integrate your association management system with your web content management system? Everyone says you should but have you really evaluated the benefits and costs of doing so?

If the answer to that question interests you, then join me and Wes Trochlil for an online event about AMS-CMS integration: Understanding the Potential (and Pitfalls) of Integrating CMS and AMS Systems. This is a must attend event if you are contemplating integration or are not happy with your current situation.

This event is a 90 minute online seminar on April 27, with pre and post activities in an online community for participants. The first 10 registrants will get one free hour of remote consulting with either Wes or myself. Those first spots won’t last long, so act quickly!

The Permeable Nonprofit

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Here is an interesting essay from Nonprofit Online News: The Permeable Nonprofit

People Support Causes, Not Tax-Exempt Corporations

Organizations could respond to this assault on their boundaries with policies of control, as many did with email and are trying to do with blogging, were it not for some critical facts: The people who are in these new networks are their people. The issues being taken up by these networks are their issues. The passion that is driving these networks is the passion they were counting on.

This fits well with some of the ideas I discussed in my Association 2.0 article.

(Via World Changing.)

Paperless Conferences

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Ben Martin has pointed out that ASAE & the Center Annual Meeting will be going paperless this year, which was a rather last minute decision by ASAE. It was pretty obvious that paperless is much preferred, in general, by attendees after they did a paperless meeting at the Technology Strategy & Solutions conferences and then followed that up immediately by a papered Great Ideas conference.

I much prefer not having a bunch of paper to lug around then throw out in the hotel room because I can’t bear to add it to my load of stuff to carry home.

Now they just need to get rid of the speakers. 🙂

Untracking

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In conversations I’ve had with association people (mostly in blogs so far) there seems to be agreement that doing a full-blown unconference is a tough sell to conference organizers.

In thinking about that, I wonder if an untrack would be a good first step (this idea first came up when I was discussing unconferences with Ben Martin). An untrack would essentially be an add-on to an existing conference. The organizers would set aside at least two rooms that have defined time slots and a theme but no set agenda other than that. The conference would kick-off by having people collaboratively develop session topics and leading them as described by Dave Winer yesterday.

The main benefit to an untrack is that I could see an association, typically very risk averse orgs, going for that as an experiment within an existing conference more readily than creating a brand new meeting as an unconference. Just because it is easier to sell doesn’t mean it is the best thing to do, however.

Could this work? I really don’t know if having the unstructured next to the structured would benefit either or degrade them both, or let one win over the other. Someone will have to try it and see.

Dave Winer Defines Unconference

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Dave Winer has posted his current definition for unconference. I say current b/c I’m sure this will continue to evolve as more people experiment with it.

This observation may turn out to be the Fundamental Law of Conventional Conferences.

The sum of the expertise of the people in the audience is greater than the sum of expertise of the people on stage.

Read the whole post.

Purple Search

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Google has posted a video of a talk that Seth Godin, my favorite marketing guru these days, gave to Google employees recently. It is a synthesis of material from many of his books and is great stuff. Seth has been following up with several blogs posts, going into more depth on points he discussed in the video.

I spotted this via about 30 feeds I subscribe to. When something shows up multiple times in several feeds in a short time frame, you know there is something to it.

Blogging Elsewhere Lately

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It’s been a little quiet on the High Context blog lately, largely because I have been posting to two other blogs the past couple of weeks. Check out We Have Always Done It That Way and the Great Ideas Conference blogs for some of stuff I have been writing recently.

I’ll be out in San Diego this coming week for the ASAE Great Ideas conference. Be sure to say ‘Hi’ to me if you read this blog!

RSS TV

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Shawn Lea has posted a list of innovations that hotels are probably going to implement over the next few years.

One thing not on the list that they could do pretty much immediately for meetings is to create an RSS Channel that displays recent entries from an RSS feed designated by the meeting organizers.

If you’ve gone to enough meetings you are probably familiar with the hotel tv channel that provides information about the day’s events, which is usually out-of-date and/or redundant to material you already have in print sitting on your bedside table. Not very useful. A TV channel that scrolled RSS entries created by the organizers would be much more compelling and timely and might even be watched. You could even have a podcast voice-over if you wanted to take it a step further.

It should be incredibly simple to manage something like this. Just point the system at the RSS feed for the event blog (you are event blogging your meetings, right?). Boom, all set.

To whatever industry that provides hotel tv systems, get on the RSS bandwagon!