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Why INFORMS Connect?

By Mary Leszczynski posted 12-18-2013 08:43

  
I was speaking with one of our members today, asking for assistance on reviewing tutorials on how to accomplish different tasks on INFORMS Connect, and he asked some rather basic questions; What is INFORMS Connect? What does it do? What does INFORMS Connect do for me? He needed these questions answered before he even would get to the tutorials.

So, I will attempt to concisely answer these questions, using the good old 5 W + 1 H method.

WHAT is INFORMS Connect?

INFORMS Connect is an online space where our members can connect with colleagues, participate in discussions related to OR/MS or analytics, add to our common glossary of terms, share documents, conduct INFORMS Committee business, and keep abreast of what is happening in your Communities.

WHY did we create INFORMS Connect?

One of our strategic priorities is to make your online experience with INFORMS more positive. You wanted a place to network, collaborate, and share, so we are excited to provide this newest member benefit to you. Your fellow members are an incredible resource of knowledge and ideas. We wanted to provide you with a place where you could share and learn from one another.

Here at the home office, we have received a lot of feedback about our Community list serves, and not much in the positive column. Discussions will be a new and improved version of list serves. You will be able to select your email delivery preference for each INFORMS group you participate in. Real Time sends you an email each time a new discussion is started or commented on. Daily Digest sends you one email a day that contains all of the previous day's topics. No Email means just that, you won't receive any emails from that group, yet you will still be able to monitor what is going on in your interest group.

Within each of your INFORMS Communities and Committees, as well as INFORMS at large, you will be able to see all of the discussion threads in one place. No more searching through emails. And Community documents can be stored in their library, so you can see all meeting minutes, call for papers, and upcoming meetings in one place. This will increase the efficiency with which our communities conduct their business.

And speaking of efficiency, you can just go to your home page of INFORMS Connect and see all of your latest INFORMS activity in one place. I know I am always looking to cut down on the amount of tabs open in my browser window.

WHO will participate in INFORMS Connect?

Access to INFORMS Connect is based on your paid INFORMS memberships and active dates for committees. There will be parts of this site that you will be able to view without being logged in, but to fully experience everything INFORMS Connect has to offer, you need to be paid up and signed in. You may always opt out of having your information displayed by setting your privacy settings to be viewed by "Only Me."

WHEN is INFORMS Connect going live?

We are slowly rolling this product out to a select number of INFORMS committees for our beta testing. Once we have completed testing, we will implement for other committees and then to our INFORMS Communities.

WHERE can I access INFORMS Connect?

You will be able to access INFORMS Connect from both your desktop and mobile device. 

HOW?

INFORMS Connect will be pulling our member data from our Association Management Software (AMS) which will populate both member profiles and membership in Communities. This is a one way communication, so if members need to update any information, they will do this in the INFORMS Self Service Center (on informs.org). You may then hit the refresh member data link to pull your updated information to INFORMS Connect. INFORMS Self Service is where you will continue to conduct any e-commerce transactions with INFORMS.

No. HOW am I going to use INFORMS Connect?

Right. We are working on developing a series of How-To documents, as well as a series of short (<1min) videos on how to complete certain items on INFORMS Connect. We will also conduct webinars and live training at INFORMS events. 

But I don't "do" social networking...

I don't know if I would classify INFORMS Connect as a social network platform. It's true, you can add contacts, and see what others are posting. But it is much more than that.

Here's a personal example. I'm a member of the Edelman Gala Committee, which plans the event at the Analytics Conference. One of my sub-committees is the Edelman Gala Book committee, when sending the book out to the committee for review, it can exceed the limit of my email client, so I can now just post it in the Book folder in the committee library. We go through about ten versions of the Gala script, and can now store them in one place, easily scanning for the latest version. All of the minutes are there. Any discussion that we need to continue beyond our weekly call can be done so in this same space. Announcements for next meeting time, deadlines for projects are posted in the Announcements section. I view this as a streamlined way to participate and stay current on committee business.

Thoughts? Questions? Please post as I am trying to use this as a base for FAQs.
Thanks.
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