| by Jim Meyers |
I am sure not everyone is going to agree that “Oh, What a Night” by Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons was a great song…but, I’m fairly certain everyone will agree that it’s been ‘Oh, What a Year!’
One year ago, almost to the day, most of us started working from home and that was an enormous change for most of us. You remember increasing internet bandwidth, don’t you? After completing every puzzle we could get our hands on, binge watching everything from Tiger King to Queen’s Gambit, and wearing out a path to the pantry and refrigerator, there is really a ton to reflect on.
The last time I traveled by air was to the 2020 ASAE Great Ideas Conference. I will never forget seeing so many attendees on their cellphones all pretty much saying, ‘What do we do? What does the contract say? Is Force Majeure applicable?’ There were many different conversations, but the look on faces was all the same – uncertainty.
As I boarded the plane to go home, wondering when I would travel again, I watched a woman reel out a catcher’s mitt sized handful of Lysol wipes and scrubbed her tray table, seat, and arm rests. That, as we all know now, would be the standard procedure with everything from grocery carts to our own door handles, faucets, etc.
As an organization that provides managed IT services, we quickly realized that our clients had been provided the technical roadmap to navigate the shift to work from home. Laptops, Office 365, Dropbox for Business, hosting services, and accessibility to cloud applications allowed our clients to have some sense of confidence as the migration from office building to home office became a reality…and quickly. Helping guide our clients in this very uncertain time was something we all have looked back on with a sense of pride. It was small snippets of hope and a ‘we’ll get through this together’ attitude that buoyed our positive attitudes pushing forward.
OK, I am not going to quote statistics… of course I am... With 120 million cases of COVID and 2.7 million deaths worldwide, I for one, continue to look for hope and ways to stay positive. I have been a part of a coffee chat, every morning since April 4, 2020 – shout out to Nicole Araujo for organizing - with some brilliant minds made up of association leaders, vendors, partners, and facilitators. I not only look forward to this daily gathering, but I always leave the Zoom ‘squares’ in a positive, more informed way.
Our association clients have had to change the way they do many things. Communicating with members, vendors, and the board has changed. The way meetings and events are conducted has probably been one of the biggest changes and one that has required organizations to not simply dump everything into a virtual meeting platform, but to change the way they are sharing content and education, and how networking and exhibiting is handled. We have seen so many great examples of our clients of providing superior meeting experiences during this pandemic – hats off to you for embracing that hope and providing the member experience that was needed!
I end with my hope, and that is to see you all again very soon with handshakes, hugs, and/or high fives. Stay positive, healthy, and keep the hope alive. |
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| Congratulations to the Bertalmio family on the birth of Grace Anne! Grace was born on Thursday, March 18th, weighing 6 pounds, 6 ounces and is 20 inches long. She is currently being adored by Dave, Julie and big brother Leo and there is a growing list of people wanting to babysit when Mom and Dad are ready for a night out. |
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| In March, our afternoon of volunteering at the Northern Illinois Food Bank was spent packing boxes on an assembly line for distribution to the families that the food bank serves. Our team packed 7,200 pounds of food which provided 6,000 meals. Many more families are currently relying on the food bank due to hardships they are facing during the pandemic and we truly enjoy being able to give back to the community. We are hoping to be able to schedule a future event participating in the distribution of the food at a mobile pantry or pop-up event. We welcome our clients and business partners to volunteer with us. If you would like to join us for an upcoming volunteer event please contact Lisa. |
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| Focus on the work that matters |
Dropbox is a place where all your team's content comes together. Where you can use the tools you love. Where we help you cut throught the clutter and surface what matters most.
As a Select Dropbox Partner, Association Technologies and Dropbox help you meet the challenge of managing distributed teams and their content. They work together to offer one central hub for online file storage, file sharing, and syncing. Whether you’re at work or on the road, your files are synced across your devices and accessible in real time.
In partnership with Dropbox from now until June 30th, we’re offering new or current Dropbox customers 25% off when you upgrade your account to Dropbox Advanced, add HelloSign, or purchase one of their Add-Ons.
Here’s what you’ll get:
Dropbox Advanced - Get everything that comes with Standard plus as much space as you need and added control and security features.
HelloSign - With HelloSign, you can now get an integrated eSignature solution that is up to 2x faster than other eSignature leaders and saves you up to 700 annual work hours.
Add-Ons - Dropbox Add-Ons are licenses that can be added to your base plan, giving you flexibility to personalize your feature set with services like Extended Version History, Data Governance, Creative Tools, Data Migration, and Advanced Team & Content Controls.
To find out more about this exclusive offer or to learn more about Dropbox Business, contact AT or Denise Ribaudo, 631-384-2259, dribaudo@dropbox.com
To learn about more of our partners click HERE |
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| Association Forum Board of Directors |
Congratulations to Vicki Loise, CEO of Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening on her selection for the Association Forum Board of Directors. Vicki will be taking on this new role on April 1, 2021.
"Association Forum is thrilled to welcome this industry leader to our board. We're fortunate to have such talented, accomplished and dedicated leaders in our community. We look forward to their contributions in guiding the continued growth and success of Association Forum." |
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| 2021 Woman of Influence |
Congratulations to Mary Lynn Fayoumi, President & CEO of HR Source on receiving the 2021 Woman of Influence award from Association Forum.
The Woman of Influence Award is a prestigious honor awarded to trailblazers in the industry who have demonstrated with excellence a proven track record of innovation, impact and paying it forward through coaching, mentoring and service to others. |
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| AT Wins Client Satisfaction Award |
All of us at AT were thrilled to receive the Client Satisfaction Award at the 2021 ASI INNOVATIONS Conference.
This award is presented to AiSP’s with the highest Net Promoter Scores (NPS) based on client satisfaction surveys. Thank you to our iMIS clients for completing the surveys and for rating us so favorably. |
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Falcon is the CrowdStrike platform purpose-built to stop breaches via a unified set of cloud-delivered technologies that prevent all types of attacks — including malware and much more. Today’s sophisticated attackers are going “beyond malware” to breach organizations, increasingly relying on exploits, zero days, and hard-to-detect methods such as credential theft and tools that are already part of the victim’s environment or operating system, such as PowerShell. CrowdStrike Falcon responds to those challenges with a powerful yet lightweight solution that unifies next-generation antivirus (NGAV), endpoint detection and response (EDR), cyber threat intelligence, managed threat hunting capabilities and security hygiene — all contained in a tiny, single, lightweight sensor that is cloud-managed and delivered.
Also, as far as reach goes, these are some highlights of who we work with:
44 of the 100 Fortune 100 companies
37 of the top 100 global companies
9 of the top 20 banks
5 of the top 10 largest healthcare providers
The world of cyber security is constantly changing. Threat actors are evolving, improving their methods to steal from legitimate companies. In response, AT is constantly evolving the protection we provide with our managed services and in our hosting environment. As part of this constant improvement, AT now partners with CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike software has been deployed to all AT servers and managed workstations to provide the best possible defense against cyber security threats.
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Brian initially went to college thinking he wanted to go to law school but had a change of heart. Upon graduation, he worked in tech support for a few years and then moved to Indianapolis for a job with Zeta Tau Alpha and began working with their database, which further enhanced his love for the tech world. He first encountered iMIS in 2006 while working at ZTA, and there he met Michele Brandt when she worked for CSI. Brian joined CSI in 2008. After five years there, he left to work as a Python developer at a few different start-ups.
Meanwhile, Michele found AT and later recruited Brian to the AT family. Brian now primarily works on integrations between external products and iMIS. What he enjoys most about AT is doing everything he does as a developer while also interacting directly with the client. He enjoys figuring out problems, finding the technical solution, and then seeing how it helps them and getting their feedback.
Outside of AT, he enjoys board games, plays guitar, and does some at-home music production. He has been with his partner Lyndsay for 13 years, and they are currently enjoying re-watching old favorite shows (Seinfeld, Rosanne) as well as new Netflix shows (Queens Gambit and documentaries).
And now a few questions to get to know a little more about Brian:
Three fun facts about Brian:
- He was born on Friday the 13th
- He had a regular board game group playing Axis and Allies every month (looking forward to getting back together soon)
- He has played guitar for over 20 years, and the pandemic pulled him back into playing more; he purchased too many effects pedals over the last year (thanks, Reverb.com) and is having fun with those
If he wasn't working at AT he would be: Brian's dream job would be playtesting board games; his current favorite games are Scythe and Wingspan. (Fun fact: Brian organized a monthly AT game night as well)
What is his most memorable project at AT: Creating our Virtualizer product was his favorite project to date. It was fun to build, and he enjoyed working closely with Chris Marti at MSCI. He was able to take all of his skills and put them to use, from development to working with the client to making the product better.
If he could spend the day with anyone alive or dead who would he choose: Hunter S. Thompson. Buy the ticket, take the ride.
Photos: (L) Brian and Lyndsay, (R) Brian and his siblings - Jessica & Brandon
To learn more about the rest of our team click HERE |
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| Five Ways To Make the Most of Collaboration Software |
When it comes down to it, making collaboration software such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Asana work effectively comes down to people—not the tool itself.
Read More |
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| Make the Most of the New Facebook Pages |
Facebook is revamping its primary offering for organizations—including associations—this year. Here’s what’s coming and how associations can benefit.
Read More |
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We have an extensive archive of industry related articles
available on our website, click HERE to access them.
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| Association Forum - SmartTech Conference |
Location: Virtual
SmartTech is Association Forum’s annual technology conference, built with association professionals in mind. The education sessions are geared not just for IT professionals, but every person and department in your organization impacted by your technology strategy. |
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| MARCH |
| 30 |
| 9:00AM - 4:00PM CT |
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| asae LMS Demo Day |
Location: Virtual
Join us for the just-in-time virtual LMS demo day. The full day event is March 30th and will feature presentations from a limited number of industry partners that offer LMS platforms. |
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| APRIL |
| 14 |
| 9:00AM- 2:00PM CT |
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| High Road Solutions Spring VirCon 2021 |
Location: Virtual
Data is your Delorean: a one day virtual event focused on helping you tap into one of the most valuable assets you have - your data. |
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| MAY |
| 18-20 |
| 8:00AM-5:00PM CT |
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| 2021 NiUG iMIS User & Community Virtual Summit |
Location: Virtual
NEW year, and an all NEW layout for our Spring event! NiUG introduces a "segmented learning" approach to the entire iMIS Community. We are offering an entire day of training in the following areas:
- Events
- Finance
- Membership
- IT/Technical
- Advanced Technical
- Moving to iMIS 2020 (helping you to plan your move with ease)
- Cloud Only (for those already on iMIS 2020 or iMIS Professional (20-100/200) |
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| High Road Solutions Lead vs Demand Generation |
Location:Virtual
There’s a tendency to use these two terms interchangeably, yet they are unique tactics that stand on their own when it comes to the buyer journey. Join us as we break down the differences between both processes, and the strategy and technology that fuels both efforts and learn how to identify what association marketers need to focus on. |
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| NiUG Discovery Conference |
Location: Arlington, VA
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