As I write this column in December 2019, the ASM Renewal is concluding successfully, and we are preparing for our next three-year improvement cycle, titled “The ASM Realization.” When we first described the Renewal back in late 2016, we identified a progression of improvements via concentric rings, first starting within the Dome with our Digital Transformation, and then extending outward from the Dome, reaching our affiliates, chapters, committees, and other stakeholder groups over the threeyear timeframe. We asked for patience from stakeholders in the outer rings, and are grateful that patience was extended to the Operations Team.
In order to demonstrate future improvements, we executed some out-of-phase, outer-ring experiments to see if we could help chapters, committees, and communities in limited ways prior to the final year of the Renewal. Deployments such as STEM Premier—now “Tallo” after acquisition, short for “talent locator”—in 2017, and our seven initial digital courseware offerings in late 2018, were intended as early offerings used primarily by chapters to drive student market development and generate revenue. We also deployed a functionally limited community module of our MemberNation software, which we called ASM Connect.
STEM Premier is still under license and available to all chapters, as are our digital courses, which we will expand in number into the Realization. However, we are now live with a significant upgrade to ASM Connect, which is based upon the Higher Logic extended enterprise software, as opposed to MemberNation.
Higher Logic is a private, professional social networking tool, which was designed specifically to enable workspace development and member-driven operations for professional associations. Our implementation, titled ASM Connect V2, will provide significantly improved functionality for communities, chapters, committees, governance, and other common interest groups within ASM’s membership.
Two examples of improved functions: The new and improved version of ASM Connect will support a general file hierarchy, ranging tops-down from communities to libraries to folders to subfolders, all of which are searchable within the site. Additionally, member profiles from MemberNation will automatically populate the profile section of ASM Connect V2, so that when members access it, they do not have to re-input profile information already contained in MemberNation.
The new ASM Connect platform was deployed out of test in November 2019, went live for committees on December 31, and will be live for the general membership January 15, 2020. I look forward to your utilization and feedbackon ASM Connect V2.
William T. Mahoney, CEO, ASM International
[email protected]
This excerpt is from the January issue of Advanced Materials & Processes (AM&P)
