Food Protection Trends - September 2009 - 562

from the executive director “COMMENTARY” T his mont h , i t m i g h t b e appropriate to touch on a subject that affects each person in a variety of ways. That is “technology.” Technology is a big part of our lives today and one that we cannot avoid. Many times technology is credited with saving lives, saving time and saving the world! Today I want to talk about electronic technology in the form of our software and use of the Internet. In the association world, we need a few systems capable of working together that can provide our members with the conveniences they expect from a great organization like IAFP. You probably know that we recently redesigned our Web site and in doing so, established a new member directory. To implement the new member directory, we had to rework our membership database software and make a substantial investment to this system. Of course, each upgrade of a system means that reports and items you relied on for years now have changed or must be rewritten (at additional time investment or direct cost). Renewal notices to IAFP members were totally reworked to allow for many, “automated” functions to be implemented. It is nice that our computers can do this work for us now, but there was some comfort in the prior system knowing that we had control over what the system was going to do, because we had to “tell it” what to do before it would perform! Now, the new system does operate under a set of instructions, but they are more automated and directly tied to the online member directory. One nice feature of our new Web site is that a new member can now go to IAFP’s Web site and join; then have immediate access to the member directory and other member only services. Under the old system, a new member would wait between 3 and 10 days to have access to their benefits! Once we get used to the By DAVID W. THARP, CAE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR “Technology is a big part of our lives today and one that we cannot avoid” new system and new reports, all will go very well – we think! The next part of our technology improvements involves the Annual Meeting registration system. Because this is a more “specialized” need for IAFP, it must be handled by a separate system. We integrate the information generated by this system into our membership database to keep an ongoing record of your member activities. We have found the system to be fairly easy to use for our meeting attendees, but surely have found it has its “quirks.” In addition to our membership and Annual Meeting systems, we have the abstract submission system for technical presentations at Annual Meeting. This one entails a whole separate management system to operate. So, to come back to my thoughts about technology, which I know are nothing new; when things are working well together – technology is great. But when things are not working together, technology can cause many pains! We recently experienced a chain of events which caused us great pain, technologically speaking. Our router decided (by itself) that it needed to upgrade its software and in doing so, it reset all settings to its base, initial settings. This wiped out all of our custom settings that told our Web site e-commerce pages how to perform their functions. For almost a week, we were following up with three or four separate technicians from our various vendors to piece this all back together so that the proper functions could be reestablished. Each one, as helpful as they really are, would indicate their part of the system was working correctly – so check elsewhere for the problem. Eventually, the system was repaired and all works well again, but the staff time investment in a problem like this is immense. That is not to mention the direct charges we will receive from the three or four vendors for the time they spent “fixing” the problem. And all of this, because the router decided to upgrade itself! Needless to say, we have now replaced the router so it won’t be doing this to us again. But, what will be the next “technology related” problem we encounter? We know technology is a necessary part of life today, but sometimes we long for the days when we had a little more control over our technologies! 562 FOOD PROTECTION TRENDS | SEPTEMBER 2009

Food Protection Trends - September 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Food Protection Trends - September 2009