Random Thoughts

I’ve written before about the amazing advances in technology that I’ve seen in my lifetime (and I like to think I’m not that old!). But the other day I was reminded that, as a child some 40 years ago, the mailing list that was used for monthly mailings of the newsletter that my 4-H club […]

This is not an uncommon question for me to hear from my new clients. As we start digging into how they manage data, a lot of oddities and unusual practices are discovered (often along with a lot of GOOD practices!). Very often, as we dig into a particularly unusual process, someone on staff will say

I sit in a lot of meetings with my clients. These could be meetings where I’m interviewing them, or they could be meetings with my client and a vendor, during a sales call or an implementation kick-off. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that the most successful communicators in the room are those

My question: Why do associations frequently “hide” audience feedback from speakers? When I work with my clients, a common discussion point is capturing speaker feedback in the database. Typically associations want to do this via an online survey (which makes sense). But quite often, someone on staff will say “But we want to be able

I continually surprise myself when I make what are seemingly minor changes in how I do something and find that it has a huge impact on my efficiency, effectiveness, or mindset (or all three!). Some simple but telling examples: We’ve got small recycle bins from our waste removal company, in which we are supposed to

My friend and colleague Ray van Hilst at Vanguard Technology is conducting an association benchmarking survey about website redesign. Ray is using this information as part of his presentation at the ASAE Tech Conference in December. (I’m also presenting twice at the Tech conference; you can get all the details here.) To respond to Ray’s

This is the last of five blog posts on my favorite technologies. Evernote, quite simply, is a place to put electronic files when you can’t think of anywhere to put them. For example, in the days before Evernote, I would keep a file of blog post ideas in a Word document. This was a single

This is the fourth of five blog posts on my favorite technologies. Simply put, Logmein is an online service that allows me to access my office computer from my laptop. As long as my office computer is turned on and connected to the Internet, I can access the entire computer from my laptop. This is

This is the third of five blog posts on my favorite technologies. Since opening my consulting business over a decade ago, I’ve always operated with two computers: my office computer (desktop) and my laptop. I use my laptop for meetings with clients and when I travel. In the good old days, I would carry around