Episode summary
Moira is the President of Ellipsis Partners, which works exclusively with associations and nonprofits on digital and technology strategy. She has over 30 years in association technology, 15 of them as a senior association staffer before she started advising them, and she has no platform to defend.
In this episode she and Riley Miller walk the whole arc. What actually breaks before a leader starts a search, and why trust is the thing that goes first. How to tell a requirement from a feature. Why the champion of a new membership system should almost never be I.T. And why the vocal person everyone labels change resistant is usually the one who knows exactly where the system fails.
In this episode
- The elephant, and the octopus on top of it. Why replacing an AMS feels impossible: it is often the accounts receivable system, so all revenue flows through it, and it reaches into events, certification, learning, committees and volunteers at the same time.
- Trust breaks before the system does. Tickets that sit for three or six months. Changes that break something else every time. Integrations that are developer led and cost a fortune. The specifics vary, but the pattern is always the same, and once trust is gone it rarely comes back.
- Requirements are not features. Leaders arrive wanting the longest feature list. What predicts a good outcome is knowing what your organization does better than anyone else in the world, and whether the system can support that.
- Unique, critical, expensive. The three things Moira listens for on a discovery tour, and the same three things a leader can look for on their own before any consultant walks in.
- Your champion should not be IT. The best person to lead a new system is senior enough to get the leadership team’s ear and junior enough to still know the details. Often a director. Sometimes a VP and a director working as a pair.
- Listen to your mavericks. The vocal person labeled change resistant usually knows the problems more intimately than anyone. Ignore her and you either build the wrong system or she never adopts it.
- The demo that dazzled, and the system they picked instead. A certification organization fell for beautiful reporting. Moira brought them back to exam cycles and eligibility tracking. Ten years later they are still on the smaller system they chose, and still happy.
Hosts & Guests
Riley Miller – Host
Sales and client success lead at Bursting Silver, helping membership organizations modernize iMIS, data, and AI workflows across North America.
Moira Edwards, MS, CAE – Guest
President of Ellipsis Partners, which works exclusively with associations and nonprofits on their digital and technology strategy. She joined Ellipsis Partners after 15 years as a senior association staffer, and has over 30 years of experience leading technology strategy and software implementation. She volunteers with ASAE, chaired the ASAE Technology Council in 2017, and currently serves a second term on ASAE’s Technology Professionals Advisory Council. She is a co-founder of AWTC, Association Women Technology Champions. Hailing from Dublin, Ireland, she holds a BA in Business and Economics, an MS in Psychology, and is a Certified Association Executive.
Resources
- Ellipsis Partners — Moira’s firm. Articles on community platforms, AI, and data analytics, plus a running list of the AMS solutions they are aware of in the market: https://ellipsispartners.com
- AWTC, Association Women Technology Champions — the community Moira co-founded: https://awtcglobal.org
- ASAE Technology Professionals Advisory Council — the council Moira sits on
- Good to Great by Jim Collins
- Starts With Why by Simon Sinek
- The ADKAR model from Prosci — the change management framework Moira’s team uses
- Ep 6 — Community User Groups: Getting More from iMIS Through Peer Learning — Ellen Turner, who recommended Moira for this episode: https://www.burstingsilver.com/podcast/ep6
- Ep 12 — The System Is the Smallest Part of the Change — the change management conversation Riley references: https://www.burstingsilver.com/podcast/ep12
The metaphor index (as promised on air)
Here they are, in order of appearance.
- The landscape. Rising above the farms and streams to see how it all fits together, then coming back down to walk the potholes with you.
- The elephant. Getting your arms around a system replacement. Or hugging it, depending on the day.
- The octopus on top of the elephant. Tentacles into every part of your operation.
- Turtles all the way down. Moira’s Terry Pratchett upgrade to the octopus.
- A bit of a zoo. Some wild animals in here, but there is a path through it.
- Matchmaking. You are not looking for the perfect partner, just the one you can live with.
- Wound around the axle. What happens when a selection becomes a hunt for every feature.
- The baby and the bathwater.
- Repaving the cow path. What some vendors say. What Moira says back.
- The closed road and the detour. Chosen change is fine. Enforced change hurts.
- The right people on the bus. Jim Collins, by way of association technology. And this one is a bit of a party bus.
About Bursting Silver
Bursting Silver is a fully remote consultancy specializing in modern CRM, iMIS, and AI solutions for membership organizations across North America. We’re a 3-time Great Place to Work Certified company that helps associations, unions, and regulatory bodies modernize legacy systems, improve data quality, and deliver better experiences for staff, members, and registrants.
Our unique ability is finding the simplicity in the complex.
The Modern Membership Org Podcast
Full Transcript
Moira Edwards (00:00)
We really have to understand what is unique about us, what’s tricky about us, and what’s unique and tricky that is part of that member value, part of that competitive advantage in the marketplace that does have to be supported by the technology we’re getting. Because an AMS supports a membership organization’s competitive advantage.
Riley Miller (00:49)
Welcome back to the Modern Membership Org podcast. My name is Riley with Bursting Silver, and I am joined today by an extra special guest, highly recommended from a previous guest on the podcast, Ellen Turner, as well as members of the team. We have Moira Edwards here today, who is the President of Ellipsis Partners and works exclusively with associations and nonprofits on their digital and technology strategy.
She joined Ellipsis Partners after 15 years as a senior association staffer. She volunteers with ASAE and is a co-founder of AWTC, Association Women Technology Champions. Hailing from Dublin, Ireland, she holds a BA in Business and Economics, a master’s in Psychology, and is a Certified Association Executive. Moira, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for coming on.
Moira Edwards (01:40)
Thank you, Riley. I’m so pleased to be here, and thank you for inviting me on.
Riley Miller (01:43)
Not a problem. With such a decorated resume, I’m happy to have you on. I feel like you have a lot of value and insights to pass on to our listeners here. The podcast is intentionally set up to provide insights, industry trends, and to answer a lot of those questions that association leaders are afraid to ask or don’t know where to start. So I feel like you’re going to be able to speak to a lot of that today with your experience.
Moira Edwards (02:10)
That sounds very juicy. Yes, let’s dive into that.
The view from the association’s side of the table
Riley Miller (02:14)
Getting right into it, then, pulling up our sleeves. Before we get into it, you sit on the association side of the table rather than a vendor. What does that seat let you see that nobody else sees from a system perspective?
Moira Edwards (02:28)
I think it lets us do two things. It lets us rise up to a very high perspective over the entire landscape, because we don’t have a foot in any one piece of land. The landscape’s a good metaphor. If you think of all the farms and the streams and all the things happening below, we’re not stuck in the mud there. We can rise up and see how it all fits together and guide people through.
But I also think that by coming down to earth and really going through the process with each organization, we do understand where the pitfalls are in that bigger landscape. Where the potholes are, the trip-ups, or how to get through it well, how to do it so you travel fast and light and get where you need to go. That’s a lot of strain on one metaphor, but I just really enjoy that ability to be both in it and above it.
Why replacing a system feels like hugging an elephant
Riley Miller (03:32)
Being able to see the big picture. I’m a big fan of metaphors as well. One of my favourite metaphors is what organizations deal with when it comes to changing their systems or improving their systems. There’s a lot of moving parts in addition to the regular operations. And that can feel like you’re trying to embrace the change, but that change feels like an elephant. You can’t get your arms around it.
You’ve sat with a lot of leaders at that exact moment too, when they’re taking on this challenge and moving through that process. So when you work with association leaders and they’re deciding to move systems, what’s the most overwhelming part of getting started?
Moira Edwards (04:14)
All of it, which is why I think of it sometimes like the elephant. Because it is a huge part of your organization. For many associations, the AMS is the accounts receivable module. So therefore all your revenue is going through this one system, and any changes that you make to it can have a big impact on revenue.
And then maybe it’s like an elephant with an octopus on top. Let’s really mix our visualizations here, because there are tentacles into every part of your operation. Into your events and your certification and learning, as well as membership, as well as your committees and volunteers. It impacts all of your areas of operation. Certainly if you’re a small, mid-size, even an early large-size organization, that AMS is doing a lot of lifting for you.
So imagine how overwhelming that feels, to visualize changing something that key, that embedded in your organization. And all the people who now have to give up how they do something and take it on in a new way. It is overwhelming, and that’s why it feels like this elephant sitting on your chest as well. Oh my god, how am I going to do this?
And I have great empathy. I think that’s probably why I am doing this. I just really feel for the people that are like, my god, how do we do this? And my favourite thing to do is to say, let’s break this down into manageable chunks, let’s understand, let’s lay a path through it. It’s not actually an elephant. It might be a bit of a zoo. There may be a few wild animals in here, but there’s actually a path through it.
Riley Miller (06:10)
As overwhelming as the idea is, an octopus sitting on top of an elephant being my to-do list.
Moira Edwards (06:18)
Or Terry Pratchett would say it’s turtles all the way down.
Frustrated with your system, or actually ready to leave
Riley Miller (06:22)
You raised a really good point about how many stakeholders are also involved. I’ve had a couple of speakers on where we talk about change management, Ellen being one of them, and how you manage that change with your people is extremely important. It can raise a couple of concerns, it can raise new problems, it can unpack a lot of things that you as a leader aren’t ready to dive into.
So when an organization is looking at where they need to go or what they need to do, there’s a thin line between an organization that’s frustrated with their system and one that’s genuinely ready to leave. Out of that package of items that is popping up from the team, the things they’re frustrated with, what is usually the thing that tips them over the edge to go to a new system?
Moira Edwards (07:05)
I think the thing I hear time and time again would be encapsulated in the sense that the trust is broken.
For many organizations, and I’m thinking of some that I’ve sat on Zoom calls with, they talk about very specific issues. Maybe they talk about, we submitted a ticket and it’s still sitting there three months, six months later, it’s not fixed. Or every time we change something, it breaks everything else. Or we’re trying to integrate something, and every change we need or every integration is highly developer-led and costs an arm and a leg.
So these are the sorts of things that come up as specific reasons. But I would say the overarching reason is not as specifically about the system itself, so much as it is that I don’t trust that this solution, and the people we’re working with in that solution, are going to solve our problems. Because they will wait a week, two weeks for a ticket to be fixed. They will work with their partners. But there comes a time when it’s like, I just don’t, my trust is gone.
And that’s when it’s very hard for us to say, well, would you consider working with them again if they did a re-implementation, or maybe we brought in a different partner? And they’re like, no. Can’t face it. The entire staff would revolt. It’s really hard. When that trust is gone, it’s very hard to get it back.
Riley Miller (08:36)
Working in the nonprofit and association sector, a lot of it is built around the passion for the work that we do. And if your partner can’t see that, you’re holding them back from their mission. Or you repeatedly fail to deliver on your promises. It’s really hard to rekindle that, as trust goes in any business relationship.
Moira Edwards (09:02)
Sometimes I think of us like matchmakers. During a selection we’re introducing them to suitable partners. But it’s so interesting, you’re not looking for the perfect partner, you’re looking for the one you can live with.
Similarly, a marriage or a partnership in personal life goes when the trust is gone. That is the breaking point for many of us in many parts of our lives. This could be a therapy session, Riley.
Riley Miller (09:33)
It could be. Changing through systems, I feel like some leaders would agree that it is a therapy session.
So when we’re identifying these issues, whether it’s trust or whether it’s the system, how often is it really just one thing or the other? Or is it usually an embodiment of many problems that have pushed them over the edge? For example, if the processes are broken, or the system hasn’t been updated in enough time, or the data is gone. When do you see those things lining up? When do you see them most frequently? And is it usually a single item or a lot of items that are pushing these leaders to change?
Moira Edwards (10:10)
You pinpointed it. It really is a number of different items. It’s the rising cost to get things changed or fixed or done, and the length of time. And perhaps a sense of not getting the support needed. And that whenever they have a new program initiative, it’s really hard to fit it into the system. So they have a sense the software maybe is not meeting their needs. It kind of gets bundled together into a breaking moment.
Requirements tied to strategy, not a feature checklist
Riley Miller (10:39)
On the note about rising costs, or the system doesn’t meet their needs, I find oftentimes that leaders are looking for the new shiny solution, the new fix, and then it just tacks on and on and on. So when people are looking at a feature list, they’re looking for maybe a unicorn of a system that solves all their problems. And when you’re pushing people towards a requirements-tied strategy, what’s the difference here between having the system that fixes all their problems and having a system that can get them to what they need?
Moira Edwards (11:14)
As a consultant I can say that’s where consultants are really handy, because we can help them not get wound around the axle of it needing to have every feature. And we do that in a few different ways.
One of the first ones is to have them understand themselves and what the priorities for success are. Not every little feature is going to determine success. How will we know when we are successful? So setting that high-level end vision.
And then we do need to get into the details. There was one organization that we worked with, and there was one feature in their last implementation that they never got. Something pretty simple. It’s like an integration with Outlook, or something. Not hard. But it was never properly delivered the way they wanted it. And so a few years later they’re going through a reselection, and it made sense in the context of that organization, because they interacted a lot with very high-powered people and groups. So they really needed very good email, direct communications from very savvy staff to very high-powered people. They needed those email lists done well.
I got it. It was amazing, though, the second time around, that this then became a key criteria for success.
So I think we have to understand the overall, what we’re trying to achieve. We have to understand what makes them unique. What is the thing that they offer value to members on that nobody else does in the same way? In this case, it was that collaborative work of high-powered people. And therefore, what are the specific needs that arise from that?
And so down in the details, we are prioritizing as A’s, B’s and C’s, but you can’t miss any piece of it. You have to have all of it in line to make a really good selection. Does that make sense?
What does your association do better than anyone in the world
Riley Miller (13:37)
When I had Al on the podcast, we talked about associations and how their member relationship is also by choice. So they have to deliver value. And there’s an inflating expectation in today’s economy that you’re meeting those needs, whether inherent or philosophical. And I think from a leadership perspective too, you look at these features as, I am purchasing something that my members are going to value. And there’s now a fixation on the feature to be part of the organization’s identity and being able to service that well.
Moira Edwards (14:12)
Right. So if we’re back to Jim Collins, Good to Great, what is it that an organization does better than any other organization in the world? Our good friends, the Texas Association of School Business Officials, give Texas-related education and certification to school business officials better than any other organization in the world. So they are very good at what they do. So you’ve got that sense of what you do, what the unique value you offer in the world is. And is your AMS helping support that?
Sometimes I think we think of an AMS as just like a financial system. It’s the same system, so associations do the same sort of work. And that’s not true. The value, as you said when you were talking about Al, the value that we offer to members is our competitive advantage.
So for example, if I’m a healthcare association and I offer this really cool group registration to our conference where you bring people from each of the different departments. So now I’ve got admissions in my hospital coming together with radiology, and there’s members of the team coming from each of my different departments. And I really want them to be a team. Now I’ve probably got a complex group registration process that allows me to bring them all in and swap them in and out. And maybe they have to reach a certain level, and they have to indicate that they’ve brought people from this cross-departmental team.
This may be a pain to code, but this could be a critical part of their member value, because it’s in that cross-departmental learning that they all come away from the conference going, my mind is blown.
So we really have to understand what is unique about us, what’s tricky about us, and what’s unique and tricky that is part of that member value, part of that competitive advantage in the marketplace that does have to be supported by the technology we’re getting. Because an AMS supports a membership organization’s competitive advantage.
Breaking the elephant into bites
Riley Miller (16:28)
As much as it is that lifeline for the fees and the dues and what drives the business, it’s also that tether to value and what you’re delivering.
So going back to our high-level view, metaphors on metaphors, when we’re looking down and we see the farm, everything that goes into what makes this change. For a leader taking that look, now they’ve got this high-level view, and you’re working with them as a consultant to identify that MVP. How do we actually now break this elephant into bite-sized chunks? How do we manage the plate, so to speak? And what’s that first step?
Moira Edwards (17:11)
For an organization, it’s self-reflection. So for us coming in, it’s a listening tour, it’s a discovery process, it’s requirements gathering. It’s sitting down with each department and going, how do you do your work? But also, let’s start. Who are your members? Why do they come to you? What’s the member value? How do they join? How do they pay? How do they renew? Do you prorate? We’re going through all of the details of operations. How well does technology work for you now? What are the pain points? What would you like it to do? What would it be like in the future? And we’re doing that for membership, for events, policy and advocacy, learning, all the different areas.
And what we’re listening for, the key things we’re looking for, is where are you unique? Where are you different than most other associations? Where is something really, really important for you, that if you don’t have it, that’s going to really break the system? Or where are you expensive? Where do you do something that if we really did get in the system, it’s probably an expensive change?
So that’s what we do as consultants. So if I’m a leader, I should think you should be looking for the same three things. Where are we unique? What is unique about us in the market? Where are operations critical, that have to be done the way they’re done? We meet a lot of organizations that have some very complex dues structures. There’s this group and that group, and I can add one and these seats.
Riley Miller (18:49)
Yes, I have too.
Moira Edwards (18:51)
And sometimes we go, could you change your dues structure? And one of the things is, yes, but only after years. We worked with one organization, they had a very complex dues structure. They did end up having it coded in their new AMS, but then they came back to us and we helped them with an analysis and data gathering process that we then took out to their members, and had lots of feedback in town halls, until they got a new dues structure that was much simpler but still reflected the need of some members to have lower dues because of their practice area in underserved communities.
So some things are just hard to change. So know yourself, know what’s important, know what’s hard to change. The more that you as a leader reflect on what makes you different as an association, the more that you can have those informed conversations with potential vendors and companies.
When a selection gets treated as an IT project
Riley Miller (19:53)
As you’re describing that, kind of going back to what makes an organization tick, it reminded me of a book, It Starts With Why, where you’re working back into that root. It talks about there’s the what you do and the how you do it, but really coming back to the main question, the why you’re doing it, can help drive that conversation further.
So when we’re looking at a selection now, for an organization changing, a lot of them might look at this as an IT project, because it’s their system, it’s what they’re operating on. But really, as a consultant, you’re working with them to get to the root of it, to figure out what actually makes them tick. So what goes wrong then, in those examples when you’re working through these questions and talking to an organization, where there’s a misalignment in figuring out why they’re actually doing what they’re doing?
Moira Edwards (20:47)
The number of times we’ve come in and we’re told IT made this decision. Or sometimes marketing made this decision. Somebody has somebody to blame who didn’t listen widely and didn’t involve people enough. Typically you’re then looking at four to five years later. That’s about as soon as you can replace a system. If you pick a system and you go through implementation, you go live with it. And then the first year you’re just going to get in place, and the second year, it’s probably about the third year before you’re going, wait, this really is not working, no matter what we do. And then you do another selection, and then you do another implementation.
It takes four to five years to replace a mistake. That is a long time of pain.
Who should champion a new system, and why it is not IT
Riley Miller (21:44)
That comes back to the misalignment. It can go wrong because they’re steering in the wrong direction. And it’s for those questions where you’re asking what you’re serving your members, what you’re delivering, what your value is. If there’s a miss on this simply being a website, an IT project and not an organizational change. Without naming names, have you seen an example of an organization driving towards a change for the wrong reason?
Moira Edwards (22:12)
One of the things that this triggered was the idea of who’s the champion of a new system. And if that champion is IT, that is going to be a very difficult transition. If the system that’s being put in place is a membership system or a learning system or a marketing system, really the ownership has to be within those departments.
And that’s even true in smaller associations. I remember coming into one small organization, and they had some small little systems dotted around and not really linked up. And truly the problem was not the technology. The problem was that there was no sense of ownership of the technology. Now, in a larger organization IT has a certain level of ownership, but in fact the people who really know if it’s meeting business needs are the business owners.
So your champion for a new system ideally is someone who’s senior enough in the organization that they can talk to senior leadership and get their buy-in for the change. Senior leadership trusts what they’re being told by somebody that they’re senior enough. But they’re also junior enough in the organization that they can look down and make really good technical decisions based on business needs.
Which is why I like to see, in a large organization, a champion who maybe has a director title. Not so far up that they’ve lifted off the details, but not so far down that they can’t get the ear of the leadership team. And when you have that level of ownership, that kind of a champion who’s in the business side, those are very successful projects.
When you don’t have that, and that can sometimes be two people, it could be like a VP and a director level together, working together, and so they are mind melding to cover both the strategy and the details.
But that’s when we see a project go skewways. When there’s an IT person leading it and business feel like they’re not being heard. Or there’s a very senior person leading it and they’re not really paying attention to the details. Or a very junior person leading it who’s really the project manager, not the champion, because they don’t have the credibility in the organization to get the kinds of process changes done that are needed. Does that make sense?
Riley Miller (24:50)
Absolutely. I think that what you’re describing sounds like a sympatico relationship. Understanding where the organization needs to go, but also understanding what’s going well and what’s not going well. Because you can get that from an executive position where you’re so focused on where you need to be, you forget about what’s already working. You can kind of throw the baby out with the bathwater. And vice versa, with somebody who’s fresh, or they’re into the details, maybe they just have one sight focused on the organization and they’re not seeing what needs to change in order to get them to the next level.
Listen to your mavericks
Moira Edwards (25:25)
I want to say there are people that we meet in many projects that I consider the maverick. They’re the very vocal person, and sometimes they’re labeled the change resistant. But what I have generally found is that they are people working at a sufficient level of detail that they know the problems very intimately. They are very close up. Maybe it’s with member calls or login problems. They really know how things are not working well.
And if we don’t listen to them, if we just kind of go, well, Mary never wants to, she wants to do it her own way. If we don’t listen to them, then that’s when you put in place a new system and either it won’t work the way needed, because we didn’t listen to what Mary knew it needed to do. Or Mary won’t actually adopt it, because you’ve completely changed how she does her job but not actually given her the tools to do it successfully.
So I love to bring in, in addition to these folks who are leading change, we want those mavericks on the team. We want them saying out the problems. We want them heard. I want them to see their problem identified as a requirement, and every vendor checking off, can they address it. And that not only lays the path for change management, but it lays the path for a system that can actually do what it really needs to do.
And I know some companies, some vendors, are like, you’re just trying to repave the cow path. And again, I would say, you do not understand an organization the way they do. They’ve been running it for many years and you’ve just come in.
It behooves you, great word, to listen first and understand. Seek first to understand, and then suggest process changes. I get a little tired sometimes with technology visionaries who think that they only want that feature because it’s always the way it’s been done. You better understand why. Back to your why. It was done that way in the first place, before you decide it can be thrown out. And there’s a baby in bathwater image about to come. We have so many metaphors coming in this conversation.
Riley Miller (28:00)
We’ll have to list them in the show notes so people can reference.
But you’re touching on a lot of good things that Ellen also spoke on, just about involving your team in the process and letting the team also grow to the idea of change. Because there’s nothing worse than surprising your team with something that is going to dictate the rest of their work and not being able to be involved. Even asking, I think, goes a long way, more than the surprise change for a new improvement that leadership thought is going to improve their system, absent of their involvement.
Moira Edwards (28:35)
You don’t need a change management model to know that if I choose change, if I choose to drive a different way to work today, it’s fine. If somebody enforces it upon me, they close the road and send me down a detour, that’s when it’s painful.
Of course, just handing out new systems and new ways of doing things is going to create resistance. So how do we, and there’s many, we use the ADKAR model from Prosci, but there are many good ways to think about how you bring people along so that they can use the technology well at the end. Your beautiful shiny new system, you won’t be able to use it.
Build your own criteria before you sit through a demo
Riley Miller (29:14)
Exactly. So now, just in consideration for a leader who’s listening to this and thinking, our system’s holding us back. I see X organization and they are doing things much better, we can improve. What is the one thing you would put on their Monday morning to-do list, to check in with their team or start their week off right, before they even sit through a demo or start pen to paper on a request for solutions?
Moira Edwards (29:42)
We’ve been thinking about this a lot, because there’s a lot of interesting demo opportunities available now through ASAE, through Association Trends. And so you can see demos of systems, or you can go to YouTube probably for some of them. But the problem is that when you go in and you see all these cool things, they’re dazzling.
The main thing that you can do is have some sense of an internal set of criteria against which you can measure what you see. So that would entail some level of self-reflection. And it’s great if you can bring your team together and say, what are the three biggest things holding us back in our technology right now? What are the three biggest things that we would change tomorrow if we could? And then what are the three things that we think we could do if we had better technology? Where are we going with this?
And then, back to what’s different about us? What are the things that we need that other associations might not? So any level of self-reflection, of just noting down, here’s what’s important to us, here’s what’s unique about us, here’s where we’re trying to go.
I remember sitting in a demo with a small organization that was a certification organization, and they were looking at a demo from an AMS system, and I could see that it was a lovely system, but it wasn’t going to really meet their certification needs. But then they showed them this very cool feature. This is some time ago. Basically that they could have Excel spreadsheets that would automatically update with new data. And then the reporting. They had dashboards. This is again some time ago, so they had dashboards before dashboards were common. The reporting was, it really was one of the most beautiful demos that I think I had seen at the time.
And they were sitting there going, whoa. And they come out of that. Did you see that? Wow. And I said, yeah, but you remember what we said our key goals were? Our key goals are to support a certification process with multiple exam cycles and have track eligibility. That’s what we’re really focused on. That’s what’s successful.
And reporting is great. Reporting is important. It is often one of the things we hear from organizations leaving a system. We can’t get our data out. So reporting absolutely is critical. But there are many ways to achieve reporting. There are not so many ways to support a complicated certification lifecycle.
And they were like, yeah, okay, right. And they did, and they picked a much smaller, fit-for-purpose certification system. And actually this is now ten years ago, and they’re still on it and still happy with it, because we got them away from the dazzling shiny reporting.
Riley Miller (32:46)
That’d be the first time I’ve seen somebody wooed by a spreadsheet, myself included. So I understand.
Moira Edwards (32:51)
Well now, a good spreadsheet is a thing of beauty, right?
Riley Miller (32:57)
Yeah, something to be appreciated.
Thirty years in, what still makes her optimistic
Well, just looking at the time, we’ve burned half an hour quite quick there. Thank you so much. I do want to end on this, because you’ve now been in the industry three decades and you have an excellent grasp on where we’ve come from and obviously where we’re going. What still makes you optimistic about the direction that association technology is heading in?
Moira Edwards (33:21)
It has to be the people. I am lucky enough, I’m on ASAE’s Technology Professionals Advisory Council. This is my second time going on to the council. I was originally a chair a decade ago, but now I’m on as just a member. And I’m back because of what I’d seen before, and it’s still there.
The brilliance and the passion, the absolute energy of association technology people. And it’s a wonderful mix of association staff, of people who work with suppliers, with consultants, and everybody’s just thinking about how do we make association technology better? What’s the knowledge people need? What are the tools and the skills? And the energy there is just amazing.
I think we are still attracting into the association space really good people. And so we’re back to Jim Collins, get the right people on the bus. And there are some amazing people on this bus. And it’s a bit of a party bus, right? We’re having a bit of fun at TPAC. And TPAC is linked to AWTC, as you said, Association Women Technology Champions. That’s a bit of a party bus too. So I just think the energy here is great. I think we’ve got a bright future ahead of us.
Riley Miller (34:47)
Nothing quite like having the right people for the job. I’ve been there with conferences in the past. I’ve had my time as a chair of a conference board, and when you’re in a room full of like-minded individuals, magic happens. So I’m happy to hear that rings true across organizations and associations as well.
Moira Edwards (35:06)
Yeah, absolutely.
Where to find Moira
Riley Miller (35:08)
Well, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it, Moira. It’s been lovely having you on and sharing your insights. Are there any closing remarks or things to look forward to that those listeners here might be able to follow up or check out, or reach out to you for more information?
Moira Edwards (35:24)
Absolutely, thank you for offering that. So we’ve gotten much better at putting articles on our website. And so after we do a webinar, after we do some thinking about things, our team just really captures that knowledge. And so we’ve got some amazing posts on community platforms, on AI, on data analytics. We’re really beginning to offer out to people the knowledge that we have.
We also have a list of all of the AMS solutions that we’re aware of in the market. So I would say, come to our website, which has way too many L’s and P’s and S’s, but it is ellipsispartners.com.
Riley Miller (36:07)
Well, that’ll be in the show notes, so we don’t have to worry about spelling mistakes.
Moira Edwards (36:10)
Yeah. I used to always Google it. I couldn’t spell it myself. Before I ran Ellipsis Partners, I was a client, and I used to always Google the name.
Riley Miller (36:20)
I still Google my own spell checks as well, so no harm.
Riley Miller (36:26)
Well, I’ll leave it at that. Thank you so much for being on again, and I hope you have a fantastic day.
Moira Edwards (36:33)
Thank you, Riley.
Riley Miller (36:34)
All right, that’s a wrap for the Modern Membership Org podcast. My name’s Riley once again with Bursting Silver. Thanks so much for listening. And thanks to Moira Edwards there for jumping on from Ellipsis Partners. Fantastic insights and an excellent way to look at hugging an elephant.
If you want any information that we talked about today, that’s going to be in the show notes. Or feel free, if you liked this episode, to give us a follow. We’re on Spotify, Amazon Music, iTunes, YouTube, you name it.
If you’re going to be at ASAE this week, this is coming out on the Tuesday. We’ll see you there down at the Exhibitor Hall. And for everybody else listening, we’ll see you next week. Releasing every Tuesday. Have a good one.
Modernize Your Organization With Confidence
You deserve a modern platform that supports your mission without increasing complexity.