Gulo Solutions Blog

IT and your association's website

Fred Simmons — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:35:52 -0600

Ed. note: Here's a post I started and never finished...

The IT department shouldn't be in charge of your association's website. That is absolutely not IT's job. Let me explain.

IT (or Information Technology) is a fairly broad term but in general it covers software, data management systems, and network support. From server administration to network security to setting up email...that's IT.

Not long ago, member data was stored in a database or a client server application - systems which were implemented and hosted on-site; they lived on a computer in your server room. So it made sense for IT to "own" those systems and support them.

Those days are gone. Mature association management software (AMS) (or CRM, etc.) is hosted and supported by vendors and consultants. And that's a good thing. Between wifi, blackberries and supporting remote access, IT has enough to deal with.

I Love Research That Re-enforces My Intuition

Zach Wilson — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 14:52:20 -0600

You know when you do something that feels right and then feel like everyone else should listen to you and follow your lead? We have people ask for the "open in new window" or target="_blank" feature for adding hyperlinks in our WYSIWYG. We tell them, we don't like that functionality because it's bad practice, poor for usability and confuses users. Jakob Nielsen comes to the rescue:

Opening new browser windows is highly confusing for most users. Although many users can cope with extra windows that they've opened themselves, few understand why the Back button suddenly stops working in a new window that the computer initiated. Opening new windows was #2 on my list of top-10 Web design mistakes of 1999; that this design approach continues to hurt users exemplifies both the longevity of usability guidelines and the limited improvement in user skills.

Thanks Jakob, I feel much more vindicated in my advice now!

Add a del.icio.us linkroll to your site

Fred Simmons — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:02:43 -0600

Homepage getting stale? Add a del.icio.us linkroll to your site. A what? If you're not familiar with del.icio.us, read this. Otherwise, proceed...

A linkroll is just a bit of code that takes your del.icio.us account and creates a self-updating feed of links that you can insert anywhere on your site. It's a great way to add value to your site and keep your homepage or news page content fresh and revolving. Here's how to get started:

Sign up for a del.icio.us account for your organization
Start posting industry-specific links to your account - anything you come across that might be of interest to your visitors. You can even post links to your own content.
Go to "settings" within your del.icio.us account and click on linkrolls (it's under the Blogging heading or fifth column).

The linkroll page gives you some display options such as how many links to display at a time, whether or not to display notes, etc. When you have the linkroll customized to your liking, you simply grab some automatically-generated javascript and insert it into your page.

I created an example here.

Eight things most don't know about me

Fred Simmons — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:03:15 -0600

Tagged. Thanks, Mickie. This blog needed a new post.

1. I'm originally from Muskegon, Michigan (where the snowboard was invented).

2. I've always been a decent artist. When I won a regional prize for my art in elementary school, I wore a bow tie and sunglasses to the ceremony. I was much cooler then.

3. I met my wife at the University of Michigan in a History of Art class taught by Walter Spink, a professor both of my parents had for the same class. Spink was a pretty strange guy. In his first lecture, he told us a story about a student of his in the 60's who had taken LSD, broken his pen and smeared ink all over an exam (as opposed to just answering the questions A,B,C, or D). Long story short, the student received a passing grade. I dropped the class two weeks later.

4. I love Bubble Tea. Mostly the milk tea variety with taro. (Joy Yee Noodles has the best bubble tea in Chicago). In the regular tea department, I prefer Earl Gray.

5. I've used a Magnum PI ring tone on my phone(s) for 4 years. Dun nuh nuh nuuuuhh...

6. A couple years ago, I met Saturday Night Live's Darryl Hammond in the Las Vegas airport. Nice guy.

7. I'm currently reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men author).

8. My favorite album of 2007 was Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.

I'll tag David and David.

Association Forum Holiday Showcase 2007

Fred Simmons — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 11:56:17 -0600

Once again, Gulo will be exhibiting (booth #141), taking in sessions, and drinking egg nog at the Association Forum Holiday Showcase. The event is December 11th at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, downtown Chicago. You can register here.

Going? Stop by our booth and say hi. We'll be demoing the latest version of our content management system Re:Members, talking about social media, and giving away a super great prize.

Online SIG: Panel on Social Media Success & Failures

Zach Wilson — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:44:02 -0600

Association Forum
December 6th @ 8:30 am - 10 am (cancelled due to Holiday Showcase prep at the Forum)

December 19th @ 8:30 am - 10 am

Our panelists will be sharing their experiences and answering questions about their findings - successes and failures - regarding Social Media. This panel is comprised of a good mix of people - some new to this frontier, as well as, a few veterans. The conversation at this session should be good for any level of expertise.

This discussion will explore what some organizations are currently doing in the Web 2.0 space. Come join us for an open panel discussion with Dean Comber of Illinois Parks and Recreation Association, David Patt of Association of Running Event Directors & Debbie Gold of Association Management Center.

Currently these panelists are grappling with technologies such as blogging, podcasting, mash-ups, social networks, second life tackling and social networks and want to share their experiences with you.

Hope to see you there!

Quick Brain Dump

Zach Wilson — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 08:34:14 -0500

Fires. Outside of San Diego they are raging! Well NPR sister station, KPBS, is using free social media tools to get information out to the public:

Google Map of the fire zones and information on what's happening in each place
Twitter to dump updates for users to follow

Security woes. What's the e-commerce of your site look like on the inside? Is it developed securely and has it been hacked? Look at what Google uncovers from your personal information on the web today!

Tangential stuff. A couple weeks ago our neighborhood hosted the annual Around The Coyote Festival during Chicago Artists Month. Yesterday I came across amazing Gorilla made from hangers and wanted to share it.

Lastly, i'm really growing tired of Firefox's memory leaks. Almost 400 Mb, ugh. This has gotten really bad on the Mac and Windows. Safari is really showing me some great things in terms of speed and memory management, give Beta 3 a trial run.

Common design requests to avoid

Fred Simmons — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 11:11:08 -0500

It can tough to evaluate design work objectively and productively. Here are some requests to avoid and why they're bad requests in the first place - from the designer's point of view.

I just don't know; it's just so different.

That's great; different is good! A key aspect to positioning your firm is to find an approach that others aren't employing. It makes sense that you're not sure about it though; new things often make people feel that way...

Also, never...EVER...tell a designer to make the logo bigger.

Another Shot - Social Media Unconference @ the Forum

Zach Wilson — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:48:19 -0500

We believe so strongly in the unconference format, bringing people together to leverage each other's knowledge and sharing our own expertise of social media with the association community that we are going to give this another shot.

The goal is to bring people together to explore the format of an unconference, as well as, discuss social media. The audience here can be anyone: people curious about a unconference or social media, savvy social media individuals or anyone in between.

We would like people intending to attend to post questions they have about this subject in the comments. Please visit some example questions from a similar unconference in D.C..

Be there or be left behind...

Date: Thursday, November 8, 2007
Time: 8:30 - 10:30 am
Location: Association Forum on The River

Addictive Website Analytics & Metrics

Zach Wilson — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:27:24 -0500

While Google Analytics was initially a godsend, other analytics companies have come along and are doing some terrific things with usability and analysis. One we completely fell in love with and find wildly addictive is Reinvigorate.

Google is great if you're running ads and tracking data regarding parallel AdWords Campaigns, however, we find the organization and hierarchy extremely cumbersome.

Reinvigorate is fast, clean and extremely intuitive. One enormous advantage with this application vs. Google is the real time information accessed online or via their desktop client. The real addiction, without a doubt, is the desktop client application - Snoop. This allows registered users to watch their site get accessed in real time and check out important things like visitor IPs and referrers.

You can also add custom events to your pages. This way, when someone preforms a certain action (posts a blog comment, makes a donation) you define with a simple addition to the code, Snoop plays a noise to notify you of the action. Pretty slick. -Fred

We did a launch yesterday and have been glued to the Snoop since!

*typo: called Reinvigorate's client Scoop, which should be Snoop