The Modern CNCH
by Joan Near
You may be aware that CNCH maintains a storage unit. It’s in Sacramento. It’s not big. It’s
crammed full. Toward the front, for easy access, are a lot of useful items for each CNCH
conference: extension cords, banners, white boards, and the like.
Farther back: “green binders.” They may not all be green, but those myriad binders represent
one thing: the way things were done in the past. Back in the day, conference organizers would
write up paper reports, duplicate them, stick them in the green binders, and put them in
storage for future organizers.
Later, these reports were placed on CD’s and then thumb drives, and could be snail-mailed.
But still!
This went on way too long, with helpful information lost or inaccessible, until along came
Barbie Paulsen. She is CNCH’s tech heroine, dragging us slowly and surely into the 21st
century, where information is stored and retrievable at the click of a mouse.
“I knew that somehow, there had to be a better way” than the storage binder/CD method,
Barbie says in an email interview. “The other nudge came from wanting a guild membership
update process that didn’t involve paper or manual changes in the rosters.”
Barbie started on this adventure without much shared-workspace tech knowledge, just a
desire to make things easier for all of us, plus “a deep optimism and a stubborn streak.” She
started a couple of years ago, explaining that “CNCH set up a web-based Google Workspace
for Nonprofits. This brings a basketful of benefits,” including shared documents, large and
accessible storage space, files that are automatically kept up to date, easier sharing of info,
and a way to manage privacy and security among and within guilds.
“There will be more,” she says. “We’re all learning new stuff all the time.”
For years, I’ve seen Barbie at various conferences, and she’s held a leadership role at CNCH in
the past. I asked about what brings her back to those gatherings year after year: “I originally
came for the education. And I stayed for the people. There are people I’ve known for decades
and I love reconnecting with them. But I also love the fresh approaches and new faces.”
As a current conference organizer, I have the same reticence about all this new tech as many
others. But so far, whenever Barbie has asked me to take a look at something she’s created to
make things easier, I’ve loved what I find (although we do joke about my allergy to
spreadsheets). And for those of you who will be setting up our fun conferences in the future,
the wisdom of past experiences will be so easy to obtain.
And having a living, breathing set of guild rosters, always current and updated, is making the
unseen workings of CNCH (like taxes, insurance, dues collection, grant disbursement and
more) so much easier for everyone.
So a big thank you to Barbie, who is also very happy to help with questions: email her at barbie.p@cnch.org