Help us spread the word!

AGEHR Website Building on-line Community!

Whether you are a handbell director, ringer, composer or just an enthusiast the AGEHR community is where you want to be!

This vibrant and active community has a long tradition of excellence that is reaching new heights via our website because of the huge success of the New Initiatives Campaign as our membership continues to support us with ideas, volunteer hours and financial support. As you are aware from reading this blog, our journal Overtones and e-newsletters ( subscribe / view back issues) the first stages of developing our on-line community have been launched with the help of our new database management system, NEON. From your log in you can now shop in the store, register for events, post to the forums and manage your account information. Perhaps the most exciting aspect is the idea of getting in at the ground floor as our website opportunities begin to explode over the next few years!

In just the last month, we have already had over 10% of our membership that have signed on to the AGEHR website and created their user name and password. (Hopefully, if you are reading this then this 10% includes you! If not, please take a moment to follow the link below.)

But while 10% in a month is GREAT, we would really like to get the word out and encourage more members and non-members alike to get involved and join in the fun! So that is where YOU come in. We need you to help us spread the word. Whether you are at rehearsal, at a concert, participating in a ringing event or using a social media application, please help us to encourage people to login and become active participants in our on-line community.

So what can you do?? Well. . .

• Right now you could click one of the social media sharing icons at the bottom of this post.
  
  
  
• You could take your iphone/ipad/laptop to rehearsal this week and get your whole group set up. (Non-members can have accounts for free and get our emails for free!)
  
  
  
• You could volunteer to man a kiosk at your next ringing event where you take names and emails via a wireless system or even with an old fashioned pen and paper.
  
  
  
• You could add reminders with links at the bottom of your email signature.

The fact is this is our community and there is such a wide variety of things each of us can do to help spread the word about all the exciting things happening in our world!

Remember:

Members
already have accounts & Just need to

create user names and passwords.

Non-members can create accounts

to join our on-line community!

See you next month. . . with double the numbers????? ;>)

Mapping our future.

While last month we were focused here in the national office on clean up of the membership records to prepare for the upgrades in technology, this month is all about mapping our data to smooth the transition into NEON's system. I know you are very jealous. ;>)

I have been working with Anne Potter of Extreme Consulting going over all of our records. We have begun to decide which information needs to be ported to the new system. We have also begun to map our data to NEON's data management system. What this means is that if you have two tables, Table 1 and Table 2, and want to move data from one to the other you have to be able to say "I want information in Table 1 Column A to move to Table 2 Column A." This is not necessarily a difficult issue but it is time consuming because you have to dig in and decipher how the information is stored. Why? Well, because we have two tables that name things very differently. As an example:

table 1 in our case is Raiser's Edge which labels its column that has our membership's first names in it as:
CnAdrSal_Salutation
Katie
Jennifer

meanwhile, table 2 NEON labels it's column for first names as:
First Name
Katie
Jennifer

So to move this data we have to tell NEON to "map" the column entitled "CnAdrSal_Salutation" to send its information to Neon's "First Name" column. Again, not necessarily difficult but as you can see Raiser's Edge is a bit more cryptic than NEON in its choices which actually is the epitomy of how both data management systems choose to conduct business in general.

Anyway, that process is in its final stages which means that we are one step closer to going live with all of our exciting upgrades in technology and the benefits that will offer our membership! We are all anticipating that by this time next month we here in the national office should be getting ready to begin staff training on how to use the new system which means that we are even closer to opening the new system, new opportunities and new benefits up to you.

More soon: here on the blog, in E-Notes and in the editorials of Overtones!
Katie

21 Century here we come!

"I applied for membership online using my credit card on Sunday. I was
hoping to get on-line into the members only section of the website. When can I expect to receive access???"

All too often, I come into the office on Monday morning and find an email or voicemail like the one above. I can hear the frustration and completely understand. However, until we are able to manually process their membership in the office, this new member is out of luck. Has this happened to you? Nice way to treat new members, huh. {sigh}

This issue is not limited to new members. If your membership expires even by a few hours and you renew your membership online, you are still stuck until the staff gets into the office and has time to process your membership. What about this, has it happened to you? If not can you imagine the frustration? Again, nice way to treat our loyal members, huh! :<(

Needless to say, this is NOT how we in the office want to treat our members. In fact we pride ourselves on serving our community of handbell and handchime ringers to the best of our abilities. Unfortunately, that means that our best is all too often weighed down by the albatross of our current technology.

So, I am VERY excited about the new Neon member management system. By combining all of our records down into one singular data management system, we are able to join the 21st century and finally meet the basic expectation that if you can take my money right now I should have access right now and the ability to begin enjoying my member benefits right now!

The coolest part is that this is only one small part of all the exciting new opportunities opening up to us via the Neon system because of your generosity via the New Initiatives Campaign. What part of the New Initiatives Campaign are you excited about and why??