We met once again at the Bayer Center’s office in the Regional Enterprise Tower. The discussion went beyond tech tools and practices into some tech philosophy. Here are the highlights and resources discussed:
- Technology doesn’t fix “people problems.” An organization’s technological inertia cannot be solved by throwing volunteers, interns, or consultants at it (or more tech, for that matter).
- Technology fear prohibits progress. It can be very difficult to deal with users who don’t use tech and remain convinced that other people don’t either. Sometimes you have to prod people a little to get them to embrace and use technology. Including scared non-techies in the entire tech planning and implementation process helps to gain their buy-in.
- It is extremely important to find out what the end users really need and to not assume or guess what they need.
- When dealing with technology, you have to look forward and backward at the same time.
- The “right” technology isn’t always the newest, fastest, best technology.
- Websites do best when there is an organizational champion or advocate pushing them forward.
Open Source Software
Lotus Symphony – http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.nsf/home
Online Registration Tools
Regonline – http://www.regonline.com/
Thriva – http://www.thriva.com/
Certain – http://www.certain.com
Next Meeting:
Please remember that we have no meeting in January. Our next meeting is February 5 at the Bayer Center office on the 26th Floor of the Regional Enterprise Tower. If anyone has any topic suggestions or any issues you’d like to discuss at the meeting, please email them to me at leonard@rmu.edu. The meeting is, as usual, from 8 am – 9:30 am.
2009 Bagels & Bytes Calendar is here
Joe from PATF emailed me about a site where you can send and receive 2 free faxes per day – http://www.faxzero.com