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I just saw this on the schedule for the Conf in October - I know there are lots of us ready and willing to give imput
Designing Blackbaud ApplicationsSession Level: IntermediateSpeaker:Brenda Murray and Jame PooleSession Description:Do you ever wish you could spend time with a Blackbaud software designer to communicate your ideas about how applications could be designed to meet your needs? Now is your chance! Join a group of analysts, designers, and Design Managers James Poole and Brenda Murray — all of whom work with The Raiser's Edge®, The Financial Edge™, The Education Edge™, and small college solutions. They’ll listen to your thoughts and opinions on improving the Blackbaud application user experience. Participate in small-group dialogs about creating solutions for your most pressing issues. You’ll provide the perspective; we’ll provide the whiteboards for capturing ideas.
__________________ Elaine Tucker Stewardship Coordinator St. Mark's School of Texas USA www.smtexas.org
I just saw this on the schedule for the Conf in October - I know there are lots of us ready and willing to give imput
Designing Blackbaud ApplicationsSession Level: IntermediateSpeaker:Brenda Murray and Jame PooleSession Description:Do you ever wish you could spend time with a Blackbaud software designer to communicate your ideas about how applications could be designed to meet your needs? Now is your chance! Join a group of analysts, designers, and Design Managers James Poole and Brenda Murray — all of whom work with The Raiser's Edge®, The Financial Edge™, The Education Edge™, and small college solutions. They’ll listen to your thoughts and opinions on improving the Blackbaud application user experience. Participate in small-group dialogs about creating solutions for your most pressing issues. You’ll provide the perspective; we’ll provide the whiteboards for capturing ideas.
Well, how bout that??
I'm counting on those that are going to give them a few thoughts and opinions!
I'm not able to go to the Conf, but would dearly love to hear how anyone attending this type of session succeeds in getting something designed to meet their needs.
__________________ Anne Marie
I was born with nothing, and I still have most of it.
I just saw this on the schedule for the Conf in October - I know there are lots of us ready and willing to give imput
Designing Blackbaud Applications
Session Level: Intermediate
Speaker:Brenda Murray and Jame Poole Session Description:Do you ever wish you could spend time with a Blackbaud software designer to communicate your ideas about how applications could be designed to meet your needs? Now is your chance! Join a group of analysts, designers, and Design Managers James Poole and Brenda Murray — all of whom work with The Raiser's Edge®, The Financial Edge™, The Education Edge™, and small college solutions. They’ll listen to your thoughts and opinions on improving the Blackbaud application user experience. Participate in small-group dialogs about creating solutions for your most pressing issues. You’ll provide the perspective; we’ll provide the whiteboards for capturing ideas.
I am definitely considering going to this one. It all depends on what else is going on at the same time.
I wonder if I'll be able to come up with any improvements.
Drew
__________________ J. Drew Allen
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Crystal Reports and SQL Server Consultant
It is better to live your destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.
If someone wants to attend, I'm sure we could put together a pretty good list of things they need to fix, and things they need to STOP f'ing breaking!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
__________________ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Doug Creek
RE Database Administrator
University of Alaska Foundation sndgc@email.alaska.edu
If someone wants to attend, I'm sure we could put together a pretty good list of things they need to fix, and things they need to STOP f'ing breaking!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Will we be able to pare it down to a list that we can cover in the allotted time, though?
Drew
__________________ J. Drew Allen
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Crystal Reports and SQL Server Consultant
It is better to live your destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.
Will we be able to pare it down to a list that we can cover in the allotted time, though?
Drew is right, we probably need a seperate session just for us.
But since we don't have that perhaps after Elaine compiles it, we can figure out a way to rate the importance of things to all forum users.
And even if all the points can't be shared at the session, at least we could submit it to BB with all our names attached . . . though after hearing Mica's recent comments on another thread, I have little hope that they really care.
I will be attending this session with Elaine as well. At our hospital we had a software package that the company had an annual user's group meeting. At the meeting we broke out into groups and discussed improvements and suggestions to their software and at the end of the conference we had a ranking for the company to work on for the next year. BB conference in the past was never like that at all. It was a session that you could pick up some tips from other users and BB folks on how to use the software. Shawn Sullivan's sessions were geared to what might be coming 5 years from now. With the new President maybe we are seeing the first signs of actually listening to the ones who know the software the best, the users. At last years conference on the evaluation form I suggested that they make Intermediate and Advanced sessions for RE users. Maybe some other people then myself suggested it, but this year they have those sessions. We cannot go down there with an attitude, as us versus them, but that we want to make a win, win for both parties. Hopefully they will listen to us.
Drew is right, we probably need a seperate session just for us.
Well how about we work on that? I'm not sure I can take the lead on planning the group session this year that we did last year so if anyone else cant ake the lead i'd certainly help. Last year we had my account manager come to attend but maybe (just maybe - no promises) we could get a software designer to attend. Who can volunteer to call BB and ask the conference organizer if a) we can get a room like we did last year and b) how we would go about getting a software designer to come meet with us.
Drew is right, we probably need a seperate session just for us.
But since we don't have that perhaps after Elaine compiles it, we can figure out a way to rate the importance of things to all forum users.
And even if all the points can't be shared at the session, at least we could submit it to BB with all our names attached . . . though after hearing Mica's recent comments on another thread, I have little hope that they really care.
Here's what we did with my last vendor. I should note that the last vendor had only about 100 clients when we converted, so it was much easier to coordinate.
A user group first formed in the Northeast. One of the things that they organized was an enhancement request list. One person would compile a list of the enhancements and would distribute about a month before the meeting. Every organization then voted for their top ten. Everything else they could vote as high, medium, low, or veto.
As the number of clients grew and this idea took off, other regional user groups formed around the country based on this model. I was a co-founder and original co-chair for the Mid-Atlantic group. Each group handled their own enhancement list. By the time I left my last job, there were three established groups and two or three more talking about forming.
With the differing needs of the different regional user groups. They were also talking about forming a national user group, which I was asked to co-chair until they found out that the Chidren's Hospital of Philadelphia had decided not to go with that product.
I've been thinking about trying to do something similar with RE, but I see a few obstacles. The user community is much larger and much more diverse in terms of both size of organizations and types of organizations. BB also seems to be much less receptive to user input, but part of this may be that any one organization gets drowned out. With an organized user community, this would be much harder to ignore.
Drew
__________________ J. Drew Allen
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Crystal Reports and SQL Server Consultant
It is better to live your destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.
