What does digital transformation mean for an association or non-profit? What does this transformation look like? These were two of the questions posed by Teri Carden, Founder of ReviewMyAMS and organizer of AMS Fest 2017, held a couple of weeks ago in Chicago. AMS Fest is a conference devoted to bringing together Association Management Software […]
I read a lot of RFPs and I attend a lot of website redesign kickoff meetings. The most important questions I ask are, “Why redesign? Why now?” I usually get answers like: Our website needs to mobile-friendly The website needs a faceted search Our site search sucks The website isn’t user-friendly While these are all […]
A few years ago, Matrix Group Creative Director Alex Pineda suggested that we ditch PowerPoint and move to Google Slides. The reason? Collaborating on a PPT file is really hard. We used to pass around huge files via email or rely on the network share. Alex came up with a beautiful template and the rest […]
I attend a lot of kickoff meetings. For redesigns, mobile apps, custom databases, you name it. The best kickoff meetings are the ones where the CEO, Executive Director, the EVP or President attend, participate actively and provide insight. Why? When the top person in the organization attends a meeting, staff know that meeting is […]
Last month, some of the largest AMS (association management software) companies (YourMembership, Abila, Aptify and NimbleAMS) joined forces to create Community Brands, which they describe as “a powerful and unified family of brands and a connected eco-system of software and services to better serve associations, nonprofits and government entities.” One can quibble over whether or not […]
A few months ago, the office space committee met to discuss conference rooms at Matrix Group. We have a standing committee that is thinking about the future of work and we decided that we needed more collaborative space, complete with a screen and projector since we’re always looking at wireframes, designs, applications or code. It […]
I was trying to get my 6-year old out of bed the other morning. He wouldn’t budge. Finally, he challenged me by asking, “What’s special about today?” That stopped me my in tracks. “What IS special about today?,” I thought. I named a few things: “I’m picking you up early. You have TaeKwonDo. I’m making […]
One of the best parts of my job is conducting user interviews. Nearly every Matrix Group project starts with a User Persona exercise where we interview staff to glean their most important target audiences. Then a team of Matrix Group staff interview people in each group. Whenever I can, I help conduct these interviews because […]
Teri Carden, Founder of ReviewMyAMS, has a unique take on conference sessions. She crowdsources several of the sessions at AMS Fest. AMS Fest is an event that brings together AMS (association management software) vendors with association executives looking for a new AMS. It’s basically corporate speed dating. Teri held AMS Fest events in Chicago and […]
I blogged recently that Matrix Group switched over to Google Apps. I have had a personal Gmail account for many years now and my family can’t function without our shared family Google calendar. So now I have Gmail at work and I’m loving it. I especially love Gmail’s inbox configurations. Here’s how it works. You […]