Inside ASI-AP

Here are the photos from last week's iBEF Executive Forum held in Sydney, Australia (including professional shots.

We held the first boardroom luncheon in Melbourne office last week on Thursday 21 May. For the last 2 years these have been called the "Managing Director's Boardroom Luncheon Series" and they ran only in Melbourne. For 2009, we have refined the format and renamed them to the "iMIS Business Excellence Luncheon Series"; and for the format, we are introducing other speakers besides just me, and will be running them in both Melbourne and Sydney.

For the lunch last week Mick Varga was the featured speaker, and the audience was IT managers and IT executives from both customers and prospective customers. We also changed the format and made the presentation style a little more hard hitting, less high level and giving more practical advice that can be put into action right away. I spoke for the first 10 minutes to provide the introduction and overview, then Mick spoke for 10 minutes between main course and dessert, and again for 10 minutes after dessert.

ASI Customer Sales staff are hitting the road in June to host a series of face to face Customer Briefings that will coincide with the release of iMIS 15.1.

Perth - Thursday 4 June
Wellington - Thursday 11 June
Melbourne, Brisbane & Sydney dates to be confirmed

The briefings will offer customers the opportunity to catch up with the local iMIS Community and meet with ASI staff.

Presented will be valuable information on:
• New features of iMIS 15.1 - the latest release of iMIS
• The iMIS Get Smart initiative - a roadmap for navigating the economic downturn
• Recession-Buster discounts available to iMIS customers.

Home page for the monthly boardroom luncheons. Links to blog postings and speech transcripts for each luncheon:

2009

Following on from the success of the Software Selection Luncheons held in Melbourne, Sydney and Singapore in March we are hitting the road and taking these events to Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Wellington during June.

The Software Selection Executive Luncheons are currently being run very successfully by ASI around the globe.

The events are specifically targeted to CXO staff at NFPS (prospective customers) to learn how to make sure they have the technology to see their organisation through the next decade.

Hosted by ASI's New Business Managers, attendees will discover:
• How to keep their entire management team accountable for the success of their project

Jay, Amanda and I manned our stand at the Connecting Up 2009 Conference which was held in Brighton le Sands, Sydney on Monday 10 & Tuesday 11 May. The conference was focused on "how technology, social media and networking is changing the way nonprofit orgtanisations operate, communicate and connect with their supporters, members and beneficiaries."

The conference was mainly attended by Social Services organisations who have few supporters (donors) as the majority were fully funded by the government. While the budget was handed down last night, many of these organisations were thinking about how it was going to affect their services, and how they would have to consider cutting some services they offer. Very little consideration seemed to be given to raising funds through the community to continue delivering their services.

The inaugural ArtezInterAction was held in Sydney last Thursday 30th April. It was attended by 69 delegates (inc staff and speakers), with 12 no-shows/cancellations (many of these were freebies).

The opening presentations was given by Martin Gill who was full of energy and very engaging. He's a great speaker. The presentation he gave on the implications of new technology is available here: http://www.artez.com/martin-gill-new-tech (filmed at ArtezInterAction 2008).

Other speakers included Brian Pendleton from CauseForce who provided examples of some of the events they've developed, including raising $13m for cancer research; Sara Mansfield from Pareto Fundraising and Rod Jacka from Panalysis. Three Artez/iMIS Friendraising customers were involved in the master panel on Analyzing Event & Campaign Success Factors. Dave Simms from Leukeamia Foundation explained how they rebranded Worlds Greatest Shave and the idea behind Light the Night which was first tested in SA and WA to "test the system wouldnt crash", then rolled out nationally after being deemed a success.

ASI is pleased to support Artez InterAction - coming to Sydney on Thursday 30 April 2009 at Dockside, Cockle Bay Wharf, Sydney. Details at www.artez.com/aia-aust.

Following on from the phenomenal success of Artez InterAction in North America and the UK, Artez InterAction is hitting Australia!

The one day conference promises to deliver the same highlights as its international predecessors. Artez InterAction is focused on networking, fundraising and new technology and will discuss strategic online fundraising, current trends and its impact. You'll hear from both local and international guests and have the ability to network with leading fundraising professionals.

I hosted our final boardroom lunch of the year this week - 29th October - and we had an invited audience of membership department executives.

Last year we used the theme of "what keeps you awake at night" as a means of getting feedback and prompting discussion. This year I have adopted a new theme based on the business drivers of high-performance non-profits and the iMIS Business Excellence Framework (iBEF). The focus for this presentation was on process management rather than functional management using the "join now" process as the example. See more in the copy of the speech below.

ASI AP will be hosting a series of iMIS seminars for prospective iMIS clients during November.

Details are:

iMIS Seminar for Fundraising Organisations
Wednesday 19 November
9 am - 10.30 am
The Grace Hotel Sydney
77 York Street, Sydney

Thursday 20 November
9 am - 10.30 am
ASI offices
Level 22, 459 Collins Street, Melbourne

iMIS Seminar for Associations
Wednesday 19 November
12 noon - 1.30 pm (includes a light lunch)
The Grace Hotel Sydney
77 York Street, Sydney

Thursday 20 November
12 noon - 1.30 pm (includes a light lunch)
ASI offices
Level 22, 459 Collins Street, Melbourne

I hosted our fourth boardroom lunch of the year this week - 1st October - and we had an invited audience of CEO's and senior executives.

Last year we used the theme of "what keeps you awake at night" as a means of getting feedback and prompting discussion. This year I have adopted a new theme based on the 7 business drivers of high-performance non-profits and the iMIS Business Excellence Framework (iBEF). The focus for this presentation was on process management rather than functional management using the "join now" process as the example. See more in the copy of the speech below.

The Age recently published a great article about ASI client National Breast Cancer Foundation and their selection of iMIS to support their work.

Go to http://www.theage.com.au/news/case-studies--profiles/pink-ribbon-connect... to read the full article.

I hosted our third boardroom lunch of the year last week - 9th July - and we had an invited audience of sales and marketing executives. We tried a new boardroom layout this month with a single long table setup in true boardroom style rather than our 3 separate lunch tables.

Last year we used the theme of "what keeps you awake at night" as a means of getting feedback and prompting discussion. This year I have adopted a new theme based on the 7 business drivers of high-performance non-profits and the iMIS Business Excellence Framework (iBEF). The 2 business drivers I used for this luncheon were "segmentation" and "automation". See more in the copy of the speech below.

Liza and I went to a seminar this afternoon hosted by Xponential where we heard Ted Hart talk about having success in online fundraising.  I hadn't heard of Ted before and I'm not sure what makes you a guru (he didn't talk at all about his success or history) but the content was good.

The presentation was about 4 hours long and was broken into two sections, a review of Web 2.0 and why this is important and then in the second half he did a live review of just about everyone's website in the room.

I hosted our first boardroom lunch of the year yesterday - 30th April - and we had an invited audience of finance managers and finance executives. We had a slightly smaller crowd than expected with a few same day cancellations but overall I was very happy with who was in attendance.

Last year we used the theme of "what keeps you awake at night" as a means of getting feedback and prompting discussion. This year I am adopting a new theme based on the 7 business drivers of high-performance non-profits and the iMIS Business Excellence Framework (iBEF). The 2 business drivers I used for this luncheon were "automation" and "process".