We have been working with Plone (as our main content management system) for close to four years now.  In that time, we have come to love  Plone and the overall open source movement. 

The only problem we had with Plone is the fact that not enough people knew how great it was.  Despite some of the biggest companies, associations and government agencies using Plone, its popularity has always been overshadowed by other platforms that were not as good technically, but had very good marketing and branding efforts.

But I am pleased to share that our partners at Contextual Corp, along with Netsight Internet Solutions (UK) have writen and produced an excellent overview of Plone.  If you ever had doubts about Plone's heritage and its standing in the CMS market, this is a good reminder of how strong this platform is.

PLONE CMS OVERVIEW

This weekend, I was reminded of my love for and hate of Flash.

Our business partner, Higher Logic, produced a great looking Flash animation that shows the benefits of using an online community.  It is really well designed (see it at: http://hug.higherlogic.com/HUG/HUG/Home/Default.aspx), and more importantly, the progressive thinkers at Higher Logic made the animation, including the source file, available to all partners.  I love this idea of building and then sharing assets for everyone's benefit.

Now, here's my problem.  As we design and deploy new association sites, we are specifically staying away from using Flash.  My rationale is simple (if not, perhaps a little flawed); I don't want to use Flash in a dominant area of any site since Flash does not play on iPhones.  And with the number of iPhone users growing at such a frantic clip, I don't want to have a growing number of users unable to view a key part of one of our sites. 

So when will Apple fix this obvious (and only real) shortcoming of the iPhone? Only Steve Jobs knows that answer... and we all know how hard getting secrets out of him is.

So for now, I will continue to stay away from using Flash but always appreciate a well executed animation (by viewing it on my PC).

Brett

We are in the process of launching a new collaboration center for a confederation of non-profit organizations. The key ingredient to this new collaboration center is that it must be easy to navigate (yet have tons of features and functionality).

So, knowing that site navigation and the site's information architecture are keys to success, we have spent a fair amount of time building wireframes of the site, making sure that we get the site well organized and easy to navigate BEFORE moving to the "pretty pictures" and "rounded corners" design phase.  In the past, we would have used PowerPoint to construct these wireframes.  But while I love PowerPoint for most things, this is a task it is not specifically designed for.  So a month ago, I did a quick search for "wireframe tools" and to my delight, found that there is a whole set of providers of this type of functionality.

Long story short, I began using iPlotz (http://iplotz.com/) and I am here to tell you... it is absolutely worth the $15 a month service fee.  I won't bore you with all the product details (since their demo does a good job of that), but I will tell you that this solution has saved me a ton of aggravation using tools not built for this activity, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who has to design a site and collaborate with others online about the design.

Brett

We are pleased to announce that Kunal and Vrishti Thapar, both valued TCAG professionals, were blessed with the arrival of two beautiful new babies yesterday (October 7th).

So welcome Rajveer and Rimjhim.  You don't know it yet, but you are very lucky kids.

Hopefully photos will follow.

Brett

Had the great pleasure of meeting with many AMC owners and we engaged in a variety of discussions about the best practices we all use to help drive growth within our clients and our companies.

Here were a few that stood out:

• Lock in domain names for your clients on Facebook, LinkedIN and Twitter even if your client is not currently on these platforms.
• Sometimes, as AMCs, we need to fire a client.  Not profitable. Lost of harmony between us and the client.  Many reasons.  But the big idea is that we need to be in control of our company's future.

Staff Development

• Encourage employees to take leadership positions in volunteer orgs
• Support the CAE process
• Create a reading group that educates eomployees on a specific association related topic
• Participate in ASAE's Circle Club
• Develop cross functional teams to create greater efficiencies
• Have team members understand how actions of one staff member affects other team members

Client Management

• Give as much personal attention as possible
• Use a Report Card process to report all activities and outcomes you've produced for your association client.  Tie all strategic initiatives to this Report Card
  

Operations

• Renegotiate contracts with suppliers (like leases/rent) and show savings to client

Just go back from Toronto and the ASAE 09 meeting (and AMC pre-conference).  I was a newbie at both, and wow, was I pleasantly surprised.

I met a variety of really interesting folks and really connected with the overall themes of the conference.  I plan to write more over the next couple weeks, but for now, please enjoy this great example of association professionals collaborating with each other to, in this case, produce a very well orchestrated conference theme song.

This is an extremely popular follow-up presentation on Slideshare.net that explains the impact of social media.  Lots of interesting facts and really nice use of high quality photography and good type treatments.  Take a look.

Matt's article today is a nice twist.  Turning the thoughts and advice of someone who is trying to help proprietary software companies compete with open source developers and using them as food for thought for businesses selling open source based solutions.

Definitely worth the read: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10307348-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Just registered for the ASAE09 conference.

Now I am trying to figure out how to make the best use of my time over an event packed few days.  As an AMC owner, I will be attending the AMC pre-conference on Friday and Saturday.  And I have identified quite a few of the educational programs that I don't want to miss. 

But I also want to make sure that I meet as many folks as possible who might be interested in OPENAssociations.  Decided against exhibiting because I didn't want to be anchored to an exhibit booth.  So I hope to set up as many meetings in advance, as possible.

Are you interested in meeting at ASAE09?  Let me know.

Brett 

We chose Plone several years ago as our standard Content Management System for our association clients.  I can honestly say that we have never regretted that decision.

For us, Plone has been a virtual Swiss Army knife... capable of serving up small, content-only association sites or handling complex workflows and permissioning requirements often found within larger associations.

I put a presentation together that highlighted the versatility we have found within Plone.  Please contact me if you have any specific questions.

Click here to view the presentation on Slideshare.

One of the original developers of Plone, Martin Aspeli, has written great overview of Plone and the competitive marketplace it plays in.  Nice to hear that it can hold its own.  And I feel great that Plone is at the heart of our new OPENAssociations platform.

If you are at all interested in CMSs, go read this article: http://www.martinaspeli.net/articles/plone-and-its-competition

Cheers,

Brett

It is still very rough.  Recorded the following version in one take, so I have a lot of editing to do. That said, thought I would post what I have to see if anyone can spare a little feedback. Be gentle.

These days, everyone is talking about the impact and importance of Cloud Computing.  We've been thinking a lot about it here at TCAG because our OPENAssociations platform takes advantage of a lot of Cloud-supported applications.

I found a few resources that help explain Cloud Computing - and its significance to associations.

Cloud Computing 101 - Garry Polmateer from VanDamme Associates does a good job summarizing the concept in this blog post.

Avectra has also put together a series of Cloud Computing educational efforts. A recent webinar provided a comprehensive overview
 

I also appreciated this mini-commercial from Avectra. Might not win any Oscars, but shows their commitment to the concept.

Is your Chicago-based association looking for office space?  We might have the perfect spot for you in the building where TCAG has its offices. 

See the listing below for details.

http://listing.loopnet.com/16294285

One of the advantages of this space is that it comes fully wired for phone, networking and internet access.  And for a stand alone association looking to lower its operating costs, what better neighbor to have than an association management company?

With the launch of OPENAssociations and this darn pesky economy, seems like the To Do list is looking way more daunting than previous Summers.

Which really is kind of depressing, especially when you live in Chicago.  Winters here are no fun, which is not news to anyone who has ever visited in January or February. So us natives spend our entire existence waiting for Summer... then when it finally arrives (which it did this week with vengence), we find ourselves chained to our desks, with major projects and initiatives and a world around us that seems to be traveling at light speed.

So, we will try to sneak in a barbeque or two and a couple trips to the pool (or racetrack), but for the most part we plan to keep our nose to the proverbial grindstone for the foreseeable future.

Now back to work.

Brett 

Working on launching one of our clients on our new OPENAssociations platform.  We have a UI design project that is relatively interesting.  We want to redo the design of our clients' current Plone site  and then carry that design over to our association management system and our social networking site.  Quite a nice little challenge.

We've developed a series of wireframes but now need the help of a talented UI designer to take us the final mile.  Experience with association sites (i.e. lots of dynamic content) and with Plone would definitely be a plus.

Do you know someone who might meet these vague requirements?  If so, let me know.

Cheers,

Brett

What is it about the word "Free" that turns us all into mindless, zombies at its mere mention?

Case in point, we are feverishly working on the relaunch of one of our clients onto our OPENAssociations platform.  It involves a ton of moving parts including installation of a new database, data migration to this new database, and single sign-on integration between multiple applications.  But the most daunting task, because it involves a little creativity and lots of hard work, is the development of a new design for the site. Since I have been through this many times, I know that the best designs take lots of time to develop, test, tweak, deploy, gather feedback, rinse, repeat, etcetera...

So why is it that I was drawn to a recent post that highlighted 35 Excellent Websites for Downloading Free CSS Templates?  Was it the word Free?  Was it the thought that a couple minutes of idle browsing would replace hours of thankless design and development work?  Yes, of course that was the appeal.  Free and Easy was the thought swirling through my head.

But alas, like everything labeled as Free, I just wound up wasting 10 minutes of clicking through a whole host of interesting designs, none of which would work at all for my project at hand.

So if you have a few "Free" moments, take a quick peek. For me, it is back to the drawing board.

Brett

One of the challenges we face with the launch of OPENAssociations is how to integrate multiple applications into one solution. At the heart of this challenge is the need to make all of these applications look the same so that the end user (an association member) never knows that they are moving from one application to another.

Traditionally we do this by creating a design and then "skinning" each application to conform to the design. Usually we do a pretty good job of this and only the more observant folks can notice when they are moving from one app to another. 

But we have been looking for a better way to attack this problem.  A way that will provide a seamless user experience and less "skinning" effort.  While still early in its development, we like what we see in the new Deliverance project from the Plone community (and Nate Aune at Jazkarta).

To learn more, take a look at this presentation at a recent Plone conference:

This is my first blog post on our new TCAG website and I am proud to say that we are using several Plone add-on modules to run this blog.  It features Quills and Scrawl.

I point this out because I think it is important.  Since we run most of our client sites on Plone, it is important that we too try to use it whenever and wherever we can.  This way we can figure out what works, what doesn't and what needs improvement.  All of which can be used to improve our client's experience.

So here goes...

Brett

I have always been a fan of the folks at Idealware.org.

They consistently produce high quality reports that are very helpful when trying to make sense of the overwhelming number of technologies that non-profits and associations use.

In there most recent newsletter, they included a simple overview of "Comparing Options for Collaboration Software".  It's this type of report that is perfect to share with volunteer leaders of associations to help educate them to the various options that exist.

Idealware... keep up the good work!

Brett