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