Fusion Productions helps clients accelerate communications, learning, community and business strategies by creating transformational Web-based experiences, with powerful results. As a leader and partner to many in the association management community for over 28 years, Fusion helps clients create exciting new ways to deliver valuable member and customer experiences.
Don Dea, Fusion’s co-founder and partner in charge of technology, is well known in the association community as a speaker and author of two ground-breaking studies on Web-based best practices for the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE). Don is an ASAE Fellow, and currently serves as a member of ASAE’s board of directors. PaperThin caught up with Don recently, and he offered his perspective on why Fusion chose to introduce CommonSpot to associations back in 1999, the value of integrating a CMS with an AMS, and Fusion’s vision for the future.
Fusion is one of PaperThin oldest partners, dating back to our initial release of version 1.0. What prompted Fusion to select and introduce CommonSpot to the association community?
In 1997, one of our association technology clients asked us to help them replace their Lotus Notes system with a Web-based, template-oriented publishing system. Using the tools of that era (primarily Perl and SQL), we devoted hundreds of man-hours to understand the intricacies of “real-time” Web-based publishing for non-techies, its scalability, workflow issues, and the importance of development using industry-standard tools. We recognized the need to search for an existing system, but the choices were unrealistic for our clients needs. Most of the content management systems of the day were geared to commercial enterprises, with investment requirements in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. But we searched on.
To find a platform that fit the financial considerations of associations and medium-size enterprises, our due diligence brought us to PaperThin’s CommonSpot and Allaire’s Spectra. Our software engineers used both products for clients to assess their performance, but it was clear that CommonSpot was much farther along the path in functionality and user interface. Following a meeting with PaperThin founder Todd Peters, I was convinced that technical capacity and thought leadership was clearly with PaperThin.
The willingness to establish a strategic partnership was a gut call that Fusion continues to be very proud of. When establishing partnerships of this magnitude, we are insistent that our partners embrace the association community in the way that we do, so that clients will recognize the total focus we have to their mission and desire to provide compelling member experiences. PaperThin has always provided rock-solid support to this end and, as a result, has become the leading CMS for the association community.
Together we were truly pioneers, and today we are true partners.
What rate of adoption has there been among associations since release 1.0?
The adoption rate among associations has been significant. One of the principal reasons has been the partnership arrangement with PaperThin, who exercised a strong willingness to shape its product road map to meet the unique needs of associations -- from user interface to major functional considerations such as metadata, personalization, and Web services. And this continues as we migrate to 4.0 and beyond.
Integration with association management systems (AMSs) — used by many associations — is a crucial aspect in choosing the right CMS. How has Fusion found CommonSpot’s ability to integrate with AMSs?
Integration has always been a key consideration for associations. Right from the start, this was never an issue, since PaperThin and Fusion have consistently been able to work with the various AMS vendors to determine the best approaches for both short- and long term integration issues. The key to successful integration is vendors’ willingness to expose integration points to trusted parties in a way where application integrity is not compromised, and CommonSpot offers the flexibility we need to make this possible.
Fusion has developed a number of innovative applications that dramatically enhance the member experience while improving the speed, quality and cost effectiveness of content delivery. Can you share what these applications are? Can these run in parallel with CommonSpot?
The key to delivering value for associations is looking at core applications that provide unique, customizable and compelling experiences for members and stakeholders. Our focus lies where we can help clients effectively sustain strong member engagement: communities, e-learning, virtual meetings, integrated print publications, career portals, knowledge management, presentation management/calls for presentations, virtual trade shows, surveys, polling, calendaring, and content syndication.
Of course, integration is critical to providing a unified structure for both members and other users to access, authenticate, and personalize their experience so that associations can effectively and proactively manage services for their users and members. Fusion has been able to smoothly integrate all of these applications with CommonSpot.
As a well-known technology and strategy analyst to associations, can you share Fusion’s vision for associations and what they will look like in five years?
Key innovations will be in taxonomy development, search, data mining, Web services, deeper personalization, new applications, and integration. Associations who can focus on member value and use the tools that we have discussed will expand their franchise and establish stronger member loyalty and growth. Five years from now, you will see amazing services, ranging from healthcare and education applications -- to business process re-engineering -- to eServices and personalization.
In many ways, the future is now for many of our clients. Fusion’s core message has always been that associations need to reinvent their relevance to their members, looking at how they deliver value-added services anytime, anywhere. This is also the guiding light of our acclaimed annual digitalNow conference (April 15-17, 2004).
Author, researcher and speaker Jim Collins offered the following recommendation to attendees at last year’s digitalNow: “Be the best at what you do best, and have the right people on the bus” to execute your strategy — whether it’s technology, marketing, education, government relations, etc. Everybody must work together, and technology can make it easier to become faster, better and more cost effective in everything you do.
By ourselves, none of us can control market forces like demographics and fundamental economic shifts. But we know we have to plan for such things, and we must pay critical attention to how technology can enable the fundamentals of advocacy, knowledge-sharing, education, and networking. On day, we will look back and see that the players who had the right strategy and tools to take advantage of communities, e-learning, professional competencies, and real-time application integration will not only have protected their industry or professional leadership positions, but they will have expanded dramatically to serve an ever-widening community of stakeholders as well.”
