Category Archives: Associations

Timing AMS and CMS Implementations

Posted on by David

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.

Association Data Standards Consortium

Posted on by David

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).

What is our strategic direction? And we need more chairs in Salon A!

Posted on by David

The anonymous association CEO who writes View from a Corner Office has posted a brain dump from their annual meeting.

I think the post shows very well how association execs are expected to lead/facilitate the big picture strategy thing for the organization while also making sure there are enough chairs in the proper configuration in the meeting room. To me, that descirbes the art of association management in a nutshell.

Article on an Association Weblog

Posted on by David

Just noticed this article in my referral links (they kindly link to my site at the end of the piece): Case Study: Why the Air Conditioning Contractors of America’s (ACCA) blog is not cool by Debbie Weil in WordBiz Report.

It’s tempting to say the Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA) has a cool blog. But it wouldn’t be true.

What ACCA, the trade association for 4,000 heating, ventilating and air conditioning companies, has created is a highly efficient way of communicating with its members.

It’s a nice piece that goes through why the ACCA blog was created and how they run it. I liked the message to their members that Kevin Holland launched it with:

ACCAbuzz is a new way we will be communicating with our members and the entire HVACR industry. It gives us an easy way to post quick news items, commentary, and links to articles of interest. As time goes on, ACCAbuzz will become the real nerve center of our website, because it’s here that our staff and members can keep everyone in the loop, ask questions, and get real-time feedback. In announcing this new site to our members, we called it a “daily newsletter on steroids,” because it just keeps growing, all day long!

Also see the page of association blog links on my wiki.

Managing Search and Taxonomy

Posted on by David

Lou Rosenfeld’s recent post on where to position search and taxonomy management within the organization was a nice validation of how we have it set up at our office. According to Lou:

To rant a bit, it really drives me nuts to hear people talk of “search and IA” (which they often understand as browsable taxonomies). This is an absolutely false distinction, and leads to poor search design, poor taxonomy design, and perhaps worst of all, missed opportunities to better integrate the two to support finding, IA’s ultimate goal. For example, search often is greatly improved when it leverages metadata tags. Metadata therefore should be designed with search in mind. So why separate teams? I don’t see any good reason, just a lot of bad ones.

At ASHA, we have two teams in the Web Cluster (our label for a division): the Content Management Team (CMT) and the Knowledge and Community Management Team (KCMT). CMT has responsibility for IA, visual design, general content development and managing the stream of content that comes from our 40+ content contributors. KCMT is responsible for managing our search engine, the ASHA intranet, the member community, online events and the ASHA thesaurus of terms. Both teams sit next to each other in our office and have easy access to one another. We also have a full staff meeting every two weeks where the topic of discussion is often on how we can improve the overall findability of content and services on our site by tweaking our search, metadata, etc.

While they are technically two separate teams, they operate as one in effect. I’m very happy with how well this arrangement has been working for us.

Associations: Social Network Concierge

Posted on by David

I had a conversation yesterday that sparked an idea for me of one possible direction associations could move in to remain relevant with their members.

Associations have often served as the social network for a profession, research community, or other group of like-minded individuals and/or organizations. Much effort has been and continues to be put into creating vehicles such as member directories to encourage networking. However, those efforts almost always rely on members proactively providing data via paper and web-based forms and exposing that data to them with anemic search interfaces. Many members choose not to participate or do not provide enough information to create meaningful links.

What if an association focused much of its energy and resources on enhancing the quality of the metadata about each member, their professional activities and work, and the connection of all of those elements to the greater community of members? That web of data could then be made available to members via effective search tools targeted at enhancing professional networking. The association could also develop targeted networking products such as events and meetings that leverage that data.

I’m imagining something like LinkedIn combined with PubMed and your typical association management system data, with a cadre of indexers constantly expanding and maintaining the data. (PubMed being a metadata repository for health care research. Only relevant as a healthcare association example.)

Ultimately the association would serve as a sort of social network concierge, facilitating meaningful and productive connections by working hard to capture and contextualize data about their members.

Content Management Interview Questions

Posted on by David

Below are a set of interview questions that we used when filling the Director of Content Management position in our office. I posted these to an ASAE list today in response to a question and thought I might as well throw them up here.

These are tailored for the mission and organizational culture at our office but might be useful for those of you who interview people for content management jobs, especially those positions that manage other staff and teams.

OPENING QUESTION

1. Why are you interested in applying for this position?

QUESTIONS

2. Please describe your view of the relationships between information architecture, graphic/html design, and content development. What challenges do you see in managing the roles and responsibilities within a team responsible for these areas?

3. What are some unique qualities about publishing health care information on the web as opposed to other types of content?

4. Please describe your style of leadership in the work you have done as a staff supervisor or team leader. How has your style of leadership contributed to the success of your projects?

5. Describe a situation where you facilitated a project that spanned across several departments or functions. What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?

6. What are the unique qualities of publishing to the web compared to traditional print or broadcast media? How does the management of web activities compare to the others?

7. How have you positively impacted the careers of staff you have mentored or supervised? Please cite a specific example.

8. Describe the process of redesigning a website. Please give an example from your past work if you can.

9. How do you explain what works online and what doesn’t when you are working with someone who is not as experienced as you are with html and the Web?

10. Give us an example of an occasion when you found yourself with competing priorities – more to do than you could possibly get done. What did you do to resolve the situation? Would you do anything different now?

ASAE-GWSAE Town Hall Part Deux

Posted on by David

View from a Corner Office has another nice synopsis of the second town hall meeting for the GWSAE-ASAE meeting. Events conspired to keep me from attending this one, unfortunately. The post from mystery CEO also provided a link to an information page on the GWSAE site about the merger proposal. (Note to designer: blue links on a blue background – not good.)

From what I heard at the M&T meeting this week I think there is a lot of resistance to the merger within the GWSAE membership. The vote very well may fail if they don’t provide more specifics of what changes will occur due to the merger.

Update: Jeff De Cagna has chimed in on the second meeting as well.