Archive for Fraternity

Air Bob

Posted Friday, September 9th, 2005 at 3:28 pm

During the PA conference, I had a chance to catch up with a few inter fraternal friends. One of whom was Bob London.

Bob was my first boss out of college. He was the director of chapter services for Lambda Chi Alpha, was a great mentor, and has remained a friend.

During lunch, a few of us were swapping travel stories (which I often do) when Bob came up with a great one that I’d like to share.

On this particular day, there were several flight delays in various airports across the country. One particular airline needed to get a plane and crew to Kansas City to accommodate some flight changes.

Bob was on his way to Kansas City, but was scheduled to get there via connecting flights. He decided to ask a flight attendant if there was room for him to take the newly-created direct flight instead.

The flight attendant laughed a little, said sure, and issued Bob a ticket. Not thinking anything of it, Bob strolled down the walkway expecting to be the last passenger to board the plane. Instead, he was the only passenger.

When he boarded the plane, a 737, he was greeted by the captain, “Hi, I’m Captain Smith.” “I’m Bob,” Bob replied. “Welcome to your flight, Bob. Have a seat anywhere you like; we’ll be departing in a few minutes.”

To Bob’s pleasant surprise, he was in fact, the only passenger. Sure, there was a crew on board, who had a lot of fun catering to just Bob, but he was it.

Bob, maybe someday you will make it big and will truly have your own plane and crew. Until that day comes, I’ll get a good laugh thinking about the day you flew Air Bob. Good seeing you pal.

PFA Meeting

Posted Thursday, September 8th, 2005 at 2:00 pm
PFA Meeting

Today — right now, in fact — I’m giving a presentation on electronic communication to the Professional Fraternity Association at its conference in Orlando, Florida. I took this photo and posted this content via my cell phone to demonstrate how easy it is to publish content on the web. When they read this on my live site, they’ll either think I’m pretty cool or a super geek. Could I possibly be both?

My Workshop

I promised to post my PowerPoint presentation online, so here it is: PFA IT Workshop (September 2005)

fraternalrelief.org

Posted Wednesday, August 31st, 2005 at 9:21 pm
fraternalrelief.org

The staff at the office asked me if there was anything we could do online to better facilite Hurricane Katrina relief efforts for Lambda Chi Alpha members.

After a quick stand-up meeting, I decided to build a wiki for all fraternal organzations: www.fraternalrelief.org.

If you like the skin I built for this MediaWiki, I simply made some improvements to my FraternityManuals.com skin.

Feel free to download this new fraternityrelief.org skin anytime.

Obituary: Edge, Raiser’s age 10

Posted Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005 at 5:26 pm
CIMG0078

Edge, Raiser’s
August 23, 2005

Raiser’s Edge, age 10, Indianapolis, passed away August 22, 2005 at Lambda Chi Alpha’s headquarters.

Raiser’s Edge was born and first installed August 29, 1995 in Indianapolis to the late VAX network.

Never married, survivors include one offspring, iMIS of Indianapolis (born August 1, 2005); three servers, Cole, Lightner, and POS; 13 desktops; and 22 laptops.

Still an infant, baby iMIS will be cared for by Jason Alexander Pearce of North Carolina and Joshua Allen Bennett of Virginia, and godfather Douglas Morris of Illinois.

Raiser’s Edge loved and cared for nearly 250,000 Lambda Chi Alpha members and their digital records.

Funeral services will be at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday August 24, 2005 at the Lambda Chi Alpha conference room directly following a conference call with godfather Doug Morris.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in Raiser’s Edge’s honor to the Lambda Chi Alpha Educational Foundation of Indianapolis — the company it served for 10 years.

Staff Begins Using iMIS

Posted Monday, August 8th, 2005 at 10:59 pm

Today, our staff began using the Live version of iMIS, Lambda Chi Alpha’s new CRM.

Aside from a few bugs and missed procedures, our staff and iMIS got along just fine. Three of our team members spent most of the day processing membership status changes while JB and I tackled the biggest bugs.

I just want to publicly thank the team members involved with this project:

  • Joe Klimek, CFO, deal closer, and backup techie / project manager
  • JB (Joshua Bennett), SQL guru and lead developer
  • Doug Morris from CSI, our reseller, vendor, and support
  • LCA Staff, for being patient and supportive as we switch from a 10-year-old CRM to a new way of managing our members and information

Thank you all. We still have a lot more to accomplish, but the beginning is finally here.