Network Ninja

Two views of Collaborate: NCAC and the CACs of Arkansas

2026-05-03T00:00:00Z

In the CAC world, the same software has to do two different jobs. At an individual center it has to fit the actual workflow: therapists, medical staff, advocates, and forensic interviewers all looking at the same client even though they document very different things. At a statewide chapter it has to roll dozens of independent member centers up into numbers that hold up to outside scrutiny.

We sat down with two long-time Collaborate users at opposite ends of that spectrum: Kelli Mukaddam at the National Children’s Advocacy Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and Dawn Meyer at the Children’s Advocacy Centers of Arkansas. The contrast in their answers maps almost perfectly onto the gap the software has to bridge.

NCAC is unusual among CACs in offering in-house medical and therapy services alongside the core forensic interview and advocacy work. Before Collaborate, that meant separate documents for separate disciplines. Arkansas was a different problem: a patchwork of centers tracking work in spreadsheets, with statistics flowing through a state governmental commission and rarely matching what the chapter or its legislators were citing.

What the two views have in common:

A vendor that bends to fit the work rather than the other way around. Kelli’s word: “personalized.” Dawn’s: “outside the box.”
Features built for one CAC become available to others. Each accommodation widens the platform for everyone behind it
Six years of steady cadence instead of big-bang releases
Willingness to take on edge cases that don’t look like anyone else’s, like Arkansas’s unique CAC/MDT split

Read the full piece on collaboratesoftware.com.

The work that happens before the report

2026-03-19T00:00:00Z

AI-powered reporting cut weeks of manual analysis to a 30-minute conversation. That was the headline of MainEvent’s 2025 release wrap-up. But better reports only matter if the data going in was collected right, and that happens in the field, not the dashboard. A brand ambassador opening the app at 9am before a sampling shift. A staffing coordinator deciding which rep to invite to a weekend event. An ops manager running payroll without surprises.

Across 18 releases in 12 months, MainEvent shipped a lot of unglamorous infrastructure that makes everything else work.

Where the changes landed:

Smarter scheduling: distance to event, staff rate, and “completed similar events” columns on the invitation page so coordinators stop booking the wrong person
Field app polish: state/province dropdowns (no more “Tx” vs “TX” payroll cleanup), redesigned event cards, configurable photo permissions
Workflow enforcement in a strict order (check-in, then recap, then check-out, then claim) so claims never reach the queue with missing data
Claims at scale: position-based forms, payroll overlap checking, conflicting-claim detection at the event level
Allocation logging with full edit history so budget changes leave a trail
TDLinx import for the alcohol and beverage vertical, with automatic match-or-create against existing locations
Census demographics on every venue at the census-tract level, the data layer that powers mAInevent Agents store recommendations
Report scheduling by email, FTP, or API for teams feeding Tableau or Power BI

These aren’t demo-stage features. They’re what makes the reports trustworthy at the other end.

Read the full breakdown on maineventsoftware.com.

From two weeks to thirty minutes: how MainEvent changed in 2025

2026-03-02T00:00:00Z

When you’re processing 3,000 to 6,000 events every two weeks, the small stuff compounds fast. A duplicate venue here, a bad address there, an extra click to approve a claim. None of it seems like a big deal until you’re doing it thousands of times. MainEvent’s 2025 release wrap-up covers what changed across four customer operations: TEAM Enterprises, Peralta Experiences, 160over90, and Monster Energy.

The standout change was mAInevent Agents, which lets teams generate reports, pacing analyses, and program rollups using plain language, then combines program data with U.S. Census demographics to recommend where to activate next based on where they’ve already succeeded. Perla Peralta at Peralta Experiences used it to plan a second wave of store activations. The recommended stores performed just as well as the existing top performers. A multi-SKU report that used to take her two weeks now takes 30 minutes.

What shipped behind the AI layer:

AI-powered duplicate detection for photos and recap data with similarity scoring
Address validation via Google API to standardize entries and prevent duplicate venues at the source
Workflow enforcement so claims never get submitted before recaps are complete
Mass approval and decline for claims, plus a two-tier review system separating field managers from client headquarters
Automated alerts with email and SMS, replacing the manual text-message reminders that don’t scale past a few staff members
Saved and shared filters across dashboards so teams running 200 events on St. Patrick’s Day can find what they need
Automated report delivery via email, FTP, or API for teams feeding external BI stacks
Auto-tagging of media at the point of capture so photos arrive pre-categorized

Eighteen releases across 12 months, every two weeks, no big-bang updates. That cadence is itself the commitment.

Read the full piece on maineventsoftware.com.

Tracking client progress without spreadsheets

2025-11-14T00:00:00Z

Case managers juggle complex, long-term client goals. A survivor needs job training, financial counseling, and childcare support. A youth in foster care pursues their GED while managing mental health treatment. Tracking all of this traditionally meant spreadsheets, paper files, and scattered notes.

Collaborate’s Goal Plans gives agencies one centralized system to create templates for common scenarios like educational goals, employment readiness, or housing stability. When a new client starts services, staff customize the template and track progress in real time.

Key capabilities:

Template-based planning for common goal scenarios
Granular status tracking with multiple achievement levels
Team coordination so all providers see progress updates immediately
Funder reporting that aggregates outcome data across hundreds of cases

Goal Plans turns fragmented tracking into organized, collaborative case management that serves clients better and simplifies reporting.

Head over to Collaborate’s website for the full story.

Standardizing 5,000 demos across 32 markets

2025-10-28T00:00:00Z

Via Carota Craft Cocktails faced a common challenge: managing 5,000+ product demonstrations through 16 different agencies across 32 markets. Each agency reported differently, creating weeks of delays and making it impossible to identify which strategies worked.

Every agency was essentially speaking a different language when it came to reporting. MainEvent gave us one standardized system.

Brian Sedra

Chief Growth Officer

Via Carota Craft Cocktails

MainEvent solved this by providing a centralized platform where all agencies input standardized data in real time. Brian Sedra can now analyze outcomes from every demo immediately instead of waiting weeks for emailed spreadsheets.

Key capabilities:

Standardized metrics across all agencies and markets
Real-time dashboards showing demo performance as it happens
Census-based targeting to select optimal demo locations by demographics
AI-powered analysis to scale operations without manual reporting overhead

The result: Via Carota turned sampling into a data-driven growth engine, rapidly expanding into new markets while maintaining operational consistency.

Get the full story from MainEvent right here.

Turning sampling data into actionable insights

2025-06-30T00:00:00Z

For Transformative Marketing Services, MainEvent has become an essential tool in delivering results for top alcohol brands. “Our clients are pushing us really hard to deliver more data, more metrics, and more actionable insights to help grow their business, and MainEvent helps us do that,” says Head of Operations Dante Maciel.

https://vimeo.com/1096552543

Dante and his team use AI to maximize the value of their programs with mAInevent Agents, turning natural language queries into deep analysis of all data stored in MainEvent.

MainEvent doesn’t just streamline reporting - it’s at the core of how TMS manages and scales thousands of in-person events for brands like Bardstown Bourbon and Green River Whiskey. Get the full story on MainEvent’s website right here.

Secure, confidential AI for social services agencies

2025-05-30T00:00:00Z

Data security is paramount for human services organizations - and for the Collaborate team. Collaborate Agents uses Network Ninja’s secure, confidential infrastructure to turn social workers’ natural language queries into deep, AI-powered analysis.

With a secure connection to the agency’s Collaborate case management data, Agents can churn out quick visualizations, complex reports, and interactive dashboards in moments.

HIPAA compliant - Can securely process sensitive data, including PHI.
Easy to use - No data expertise needed.
Unfettered data analysis - Uncover trends, identify needs, and measure program effectiveness with the power of AI.

Head over to the Collaborate website for the entire story.

mAInevent Agents: AI-powered field marketing analysis

2025-04-30T00:00:00Z

Field and experiential marketers are often tasked with proving (and improving) the effectiveness of their in-person campaigns. mAInevent Agents uses cutting-edge AI - within Network Ninja’s secure, confidential infrastructure - to make these data efforts painless.

From market analysis and brand sentiment, to figuring out why certain events weren’t as successful as others, it’s so cool how mAInevent Agents can get us answers so quickly.

Alexa Reynoso

Sr. Account Director

Advantage Solutions

Alexa Reynoso, Sr. Account Director at Advantage Solutions, manages a team of 625+ staff executing 13,000+ annual events for Anheuser-Busch. She sat down with the MainEvent team recently to discuss some of Agents’ most impactful use cases.

https://vimeo.com/1074973803

Alexa notes that with MainEvent Agents, all users can:

provide quick answers to brands’ pressing questions,
identify patterns in large datasets, and
generate impressive visuals in moments.

“Non-technical people can log in, ask natural language questions, and get the info they need - it takes the pressure off of relying on specific individuals to know how to navigate the system,” she says.

Get the full scoop from MainEvent right here.

Using AI to Simplify Jargon for Non-Developers

2024-10-29T00:00:00Z

LLMs, in this case Claude and GPT-4, can be used to augment these users, allowing them to leverage our technical infrastructure - and in some cases do things they could never do before.

“How is GitHub Copilot working out?”

Developers also have access to GitHub Copilot, an AI coding assistant we’ve been using for about 6 months. Unlike our chatbots, Copilot integrates directly into developers’ coding environments. It assists by completing routine code snippets and generating new functions based on our existing codebase, rather than through conversational interaction.

One of our Account Managers, Tom Reese, is not a developer. Using our internal AI assistants, he was able to extract our Copilot usage from GitHub, analyze it, and produce a bar chart illustrating code suggestions and acceptances.

https://vimeo.com/1022951553

Step 1

Ask two different models - Claude 3.5 Sonnet and GPT-4 - to write a command to retrieve Copilot usage data.

GPT-4, with its knowledge limited to early 2023, hallucinates an inaccurate answer. Claude, with its updated knowledge, provides a useful one-liner.

Step 2

Run the one-line command provided by Claude, which produces a JSON file containing Copilot usage data.

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
     -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" \
     "https://api.github.com/orgs/YOUR_ORG_NAME/copilot/usage"

Step 3

Upload the JSON file to an AI assistant that has a sandbox to actually run code, and ask it for a summary.

User

Summarize our developers’ usage of Copilot from this JSON file. Be sure to include all days in your totals, and be concise.

AI Assistant

Here is the summarized usage of Copilot across all the days provided in the JSON file:

Total Suggestions: 33,613
Total Acceptances: 8,880
Total Lines Suggested: 117,091
Total Lines Accepted: 13,386
Average Active Users per Day: Approximately 13.04
Total Chat Acceptances: 148
Total Chat Turns: 435
Average Active Chat Users per Day: Approximately 2.93
Total Days: 27

Step 4

Ask the AI assistant to produce a bar chart of the findings.

User

Show me a bar chart image that compares total suggestions and acceptances for particular days. Be concise.

AI Assistant

Here is bar chart that compares total suggestions and acceptances for particular days.

With a handful of prompts and a data file, our AI assistants delivered a summary and visualization of our Copilot usage. Without AI, this would’ve been a higher-effort task with developer involvement, but our assistants reduced it to a low-effort 10-minute task.

	With AI	Without AI
Developer needed?	No	Yes
Turnaround time	~10 minutes	~1 week (based on weekly dev team sprint schedule)
Level of effort required	Low	Low, but slow, and more $

Want to read more about AI/ML at Network Ninja?

Collaborate Team Provides Comprehensive Support for Non-Profits

2024-09-30T00:00:00Z

Human services organizations spend the bulk of their time helping individuals and families. With limited resources, documenting and reporting on their work is a common challenge.

In response, the Collaborate team proudly offers a myriad of help & support options. For independent learners, a built-in Help Widget serves up suggested articles based on where users are in the application.

Users can also submit Support Requests from the Help Widget. Fast support turnaround ensures 80% of requests receive same-day responses, and 90% of requests are resolved within 24 hours.

Dozens of On-Demand Training Videos cover beginner and advanced topics, and those that prefer a live, human touch can register for 1-on-1 sessions, including:

Reports consultations,
Administrator trainings, and
Help Desk appointments for any desired topics.

Meanwhile, dedicated Account Managers are assigned to each agency to guide users from onboarding to ongoing use, and tailor the software to meet evolving needs. When all that help isn’t enough, premium support via Collaborate Concierge offers specialized assistance like data administration and Custom Reports creation.

Head over to Collaborate’s website to get the full story on how their team is helping those who help others.

MainEvent Makes Onboarding New Field Staff a Breeze

2024-09-20T00:00:00Z

With a litany of paperwork to complete, bringing on new staff can be time-consuming for brands and marketing agencies. MainEvent’s Onboarding Module streamlines the process by automating job applications, approvals, and required documentation with minimal manual effort.

https://vimeo.com/990221654

The Onboarding Module includes brandable forms that accelerate all required steps, including:

Populating staff profile fields,
Completing tax forms, and
Reviewing and signing employment/HR documents electronically.

Job applications are sent directly from MainEvent to prospective employees via email and SMS, and once submitted, HR staff can review and approve applicants with one click. From there, new staff can be immediately assigned to clients, programs, and markets to start staffing events.

Dive into the time-saving specifics on MainEvent’s website.

Fair Housing Takes a Big Step Forward

2024-08-30T00:00:00Z

For nearly 50 years, The Fair Housing Center (TFHC) has fought against unfair housing practices throughout Ohio. Looking to leverage technology to better serve their diverse clients, TFHC recently adopted LegalServer - and the upgrade has been transformative, according to CEO and General Counsel George Thomas.

Everyone feels very relieved that we now have a reliable case management system that can be updated immediately when we need it to be. We are also relieved that the grant reporting is easier with LegalServer as we can customize it to meet the needs of the grant.

George Thomas

CEO and General Counsel

The Fair Housing Center

Along with greater flexibility and reporting options, staff can now monitor the status of their work in real-time. “We created an organizational structure within LegalServer that makes it easy to quickly see how many cases we have of different varieties,” Thomas says. “This helps us see the big picture of how the cases are flowing.”

LegalServer’s integrated email functionality has been a boon as well. “LegalServer helps us achieve improved interactions with clients as we can easily see the email communications to date,” Thomas explains.

Head over to LegalServer’s website to see how case management technology assists TFHC’s mission to eliminate housing discrimination.

Collaborate Helps Turn Human Services Goals into Achievements

2024-08-23T00:00:00Z

Collaborate’s Goal Plans are used to track client milestones in social services, like completing education, improving mental health, and securing stable housing. Templated Plans, Goals, and Steps ensure consistent data collection, and make it easy to view progress along the way.

Meanwhile, comprehensive Reports offer data-driven and visual insights into overall Goal achievement and Clients’ progression through individual Steps.

Additional features include Freeform Goals, Multi-Goal Plans, Goal Categories, and the ability to manage multiple Goals per Client. That makes Collaborate’s Goal Plans flexible and reportable enough to handle just about any goal-based scenario.

Get the complete picture from the Collaborate team here.

MainEvent Simplifies Labor Compliance for Event Staffing Agencies

2024-08-16T00:00:00Z

Navigating the various overtime, break, and rest regulations across multiple U.S. states and Canadian provinces can be challenging for field marketing agencies. MainEvent’s Compliance Module streamlines this process by integrating labor laws into daily staffing operations - with zero manual effort.

https://vimeo.com/989545437

The module ensures that:

Daily and weekly overtime are calculated properly,
Managers are alerted before scheduling staff who would accrue overtime or breaks, and
Business rules are automatically updated when laws change.

Combined with payroll integrations and workshift-focused dashboards, MainEvent helps brands and agencies stay compliant, efficiently manage staffing, and properly compensate workers.

Here’s the full account from the MainEvent team.

LegalServer Saves Time, Unlocks Remote Work for New York Public Defenders

2024-08-02T00:00:00Z

Public defenders often face an abundance of demand for their services, coupled with limited staff capacity. Livingston County, New York’s Defender and Conflict Offices recently sought ways to save attorneys time, while also empowering staff to work anywhere they choose.

They found the solution to those challenges with LegalServer.

A significant benefit for us in switching to LegalServer from PDCMS is our attorneys having access to the case management system from home, from court, and from any other location where they may need to access case files or discovery to review and discuss with clients.

Heidi Bermudez

Legal Administrative Assistant

Livingston County Public Defender's Office

By their estimate, the County is saving more than a thousand hours per year with the new system. They’re also able to easily and accurately report their impact to key funders, while monitoring attorney caseloads to ensure each client receives the proper representation.

Get the full scoop on LegalServer’s website.

With Collaborate, Non-Profit Grant Reports are Always Up-to-Date

2024-07-26T00:00:00Z

The Collaborate team specializes in helping non-profits meet grant reporting requirements - and unlocking new funding opportunities. When reporting requirements change, updates are often rolled out to the community.

A recent example is Collaborate’s revamped “1-Click” NCA Report for Children’s Advocacy Centers, which now features:

More accurate new client counts,
Greater detail for calculation explanations, and
New funder-required breakouts, including gender identities and preferred pronouns.

In addition to regular reports updates, Collaborate users have access to 1-on-1 consultations, self-serve dynamic reports for every occasion, and custom reports to satisfy complex funding asks.

Head over to Collaborate’s website for more details.

MainEvent Helps Level the Field Marketing Playing Field

2024-07-12T00:00:00Z

MainEvent is used by brands and agencies to analyze, report, recap, staff, and schedule their in-person marketing campaigns. From multinational corporations to startups, MainEvent provides tools and support to streamline operations and quantify impact.

Case in point: Peralta Experiences, an agency led by 20-year field marketing veteran Perla Peralta. With a small team, they’re able to provide nationwide staffing, activation management, asset production, and logistics - all managed in MainEvent.

MainEvent has been seriously such a game changer for our team.

Perla Peralta

Owner

Peralta Experiences

The MainEvent team sat down with Perla recently to chat about starting her own agency with a people-first mentality, current trends in the experiential world, and how software keeps her campaigns on track.

https://vimeo.com/945824858

Check out the full interview over on MainEvent’s website.

Law Foundation of Silicon Valley Pivots to Community Advocacy Model with LegalServer

2024-06-26T00:00:00Z

With an eye on productivity & service quality improvements, Law Foundation of Silicon Valley (LFSV) recently completed an exhaustive search for a new case management system. Like hundreds of civil legal aid firms before them, LFSV concluded that LegalServer offered the right combination of tailored features, expert support, and impressive client references.

The other products we considered weren’t close to the level of functionality LegalServer offered out-of-the-box.

Nathan Lingat-Thomas

Director of Impact & Evaluation

Law Foundation of Silicon Valley (LFSV)

LFSV says the key factors in their decision included:

LegalServer’s focus on the non-profit legal space,
A clear onboarding and data migration roadmap, and
Recommendations from many of their peers.

Features like sending emails directly to cases, and the ability to access the system while making client visits, are empowering the firm to serve their community more effectively, according to LFSV Director of Impact & Evaluation, Nathan Lingat-Thomas.

“LegalServer has allowed our work to move to a community advocacy model, providing legal services anywhere in the community without being tied to a desk or an office,” Lingat-Thomas says. Continue reading on LegalServer’s website.

Collaborate Enhances Child Advocacy in West Virginia with Census-Driven Insights

2024-06-14T00:00:00Z

To improve the response to child abuse, the West Virginia Child Advocacy Network (WVCAN) recently looked to better understand service distribution across the state. Leveraging the Collaborate Concierge service, WVCAN integrated U.S. Census data with their client services totals to generate a visual, map-based representation of service reach.

The Collaborate team’s process was to:

Export three years of statewide child advocacy service data from WVCAN’s Collaborate application,
Geocode client addresses in a HIPAA-compliant manner,
Blend in Census data to normalize services at a per-1,000 child population rate, and
Generate interactive maps to evaluate service distribution at the county, senate district, and congressional district levels.

These tools help pinpoint areas in need of additional resources, while equipping advocates with data visualizations they can use to request better funding from lawmakers. Read the full story over on Collaborate’s website.

Oscar Mayer's Photos Shine with MainEvent’s AI-Driven Image Recognition

2024-05-31T00:00:00Z

A fleet of six Oscar Mayer Wienermobiles circle the United States, drawing plenty of smiles - and photographs - across thousands of events each year. To efficiently handle requests for specific photos from sales teams, event contacts, and customers, Kraft Heinz’s Brand Communications team harnesses the power of AI-driven image recognition with mAInevent Vision.

https://vimeo.com/932612315

mAInevent Vision is awesome. We will save countless hours that we used to spend manually sorting photos. Now, we can respond to requests with the speed and accuracy they deserve.

Ed Roland

Sr. Manager Brand Communications

Kraft Heinz

mAInevent Vision transforms a photo library into a digital asset management system by:

Analyzing all photos stored in MainEvent,
Mining the images for insights (including brand assets), and
Providing a natural language interface for searching.

Kraft Heinz can now find the right images in seconds, while location- and relevance-based sorting add additional layers of refinement. Jump over to MainEvent’s website for the full story.

LegalServer Helps Capital Area Attorneys Efficiently Serve Detained Immigrants

2024-05-23T00:00:00Z

Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights (CAIR) Coalition is the only organization in the Washington, D.C. region that primarily works alongside government-detained immigrants, providing full legal representation to over 600 people annually. To optimize their attorneys’ important work, CAIR Coalition recently adopted LegalServer as their case management system.

LegalServer’s robust features have brought more efficiency, better data tracking, and vastly improved reporting capabilities to our team.

Sugeily Fernandez

Deputy Program Director, Detained Children's Program

Capital Area Immigrants' Rights (CAIR) Coalition

CAIR Coalition previously struggled with multiple spreadsheets and 3rd-party systems. With LegalServer, they now have a single solution to:

Track attorneys’ time expenditures,
Monitor and reconcile grant spending,
Manage immigration processes from start to finish, and
Accurately report their impact to funders.

Head over to LegalServer’s website for the complete scoop on how CAIR Coalition leverages technology to help more people leave government detention and stay in the United States safely and permanently.

Simplifying Data Collection for Social Services Agencies

2024-05-10T00:00:00Z

The Collaborate team specializes in solutions that make social workers’ lives easier. One recent feature geared toward that objective is External Forms, which allow people from outside Collaborate to submit important info - like Client Surveys - that are automatically associated with Cases, Services, and Activities.

External Forms submissions, including self-intakes, referrals, and sign-ups for group sessions, are instantly available for staff to review in Collaborate.

While saving time by eliminating manual processes, they’re also easily reportable to help organizations measure impact.

Hop over to the Collaborate website for the entire rundown.

MainEvent Delivers Spreadsheet-Free Budgeting for Experiential Marketers

2024-04-19T00:00:00Z

Budget management is among the most difficult tasks for experiential & field marketing firms, who often struggle to wrangle multiple disparate spreadsheets to track assignments, expenditures, and reconciliation.

MainEvent’s Budgets Module streamlines this process by integrating budgets in the same app that marketers already use to schedule, staff, recap, and analyze events - no spreadsheets needed.

The Budgets Module can handle it all, including:

At-a-glance budget assignments for clients, programs, and markets,
Staff submissions of hours and expenses for each event,
Claims reconciliation across budgetary periods, and
Deep financial analysis via Dashboards and Automated Reports.

Read the whole story over on MainEvent’s website to learn how the Budgets Module saves time while improving transparency and accountability.

Custom DSS Report Enhances Data Analysis for the State of South Carolina

2024-04-12T00:00:00Z

Leading social services agencies are constantly looking to improve the efficacy of their programs. To that end, the South Carolina Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers (SCNCAC) and Department of Social Services (DSS) recently used the Collaborate Concierge service to develop a Custom Report to efficiently evaluate their automated referrals data partnership.

Thanks to the Collaborate team, we have a very professional system that is going to be a model for all other states in the country.

Thomas Knapp

Executive Director

South Carolina Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers

This DSS Report empowers SCNCAC and DSS to:

Compare referral acceptance times across counties,
Pinpoint areas that might need additional resources,
Measure demographics such as age, biological sex, and race, and
Monitor the latency between the acceptance of referrals and the initial Forensic Interview.

Get the full scoop on the latest actionable analytical tool tailored for social services organizations that require in-depth reporting solutions.

Leading Field Marketing Agency Scales Up with MainEvent

2024-03-12T00:00:00Z

Field marketing agencies help brands showcase their products directly to consumers, often through samplings at special events and retail locations. With a track record spanning over 30 years, TEAM Enterprises is a true leader in the space, running tens of thousands of samplings and demos each year.

TEAM’s VP of Field Services, Shannon Romano, sees MainEvent as an essential part of their success.

MainEvent is everything for us, from our prospects and their paperwork, to our staffing and allocations, to recapping and payroll.

Shannon Romano

VP of Field Services

TEAM Enterprises

Beyond its operational functionality, TEAM leverages MainEvent to provide data-driven insights to prominent customers like Bacardi and Molson Coors. “We offer our clients key learnings and opportunities for every program and event we conduct,” explains Shannon.

https://vimeo.com/912978837

After a full decade using the software, TEAM’s MainEvent application is primed to support many more years of growth. “We’ve built a partnership together,” Shannon concludes. “TEAM is very forward thinking, we challenge and we like to build things, and we like to customize. Network Ninja taking the time to really learn our side of the industry, I appreciate that.”

Get the full scoop on how TEAM Enterprises uses MainEvent to stay atop the field marketing industry.

Collaborate Connects Victims of Abuse to Localized Help Across Kentucky

2024-02-26T00:00:00Z

Children’s Advocacy Centers of Kentucky (CAC Kentucky) has used Collaborate since 2018 to track cases and deliver reports to funders. Recently, they partnered with the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS) on a data integration that’s putting child abuse investigation info directly in the hands of service providers.

Using technology to better share child welfare information between the Commonwealth of Kentucky and our CACs has changed the way we serve clients. The technology allows us to enhance communication and improve the efficient response of all team members, ultimately benefiting children.

Laura Kretzer

Chief Strategy Officer

Children’s Advocacy Centers of Kentucky

Replacing a former manual process that involved spreadsheets, phone calls, and emails, Collaborate’s Investigation Feature empowers CAC Kentucky’s member centers to:

Quickly evaluate qualifying investigations,
Generate pre-populated cases from that data, and
Deliver services to more children and families.

Check out all the details over on the Collaborate website.

MainEvent Streamlines Alcohol Beverage Event Management

2024-02-19T00:00:00Z

The product sampling gurus at Public Label - an experiential marketing firm running thousands of beverage events each year - recently faced a conundrum. Amid heavy volume from big-name alcohol brands, their spreadsheet-centric process of divvying up events to regional distributors became unmanageable.

The solution is MainEvent’s new Allocations Module, which allows agencies to easily distribute, track, and analyze all their samplings in one place (no more spreadsheets).

MainEvent helps us make sure that money is being used correctly. We use the Allocations Module to stay on top of how many allocations we have, how they’re being used, and who is using them.

Jessica Nsiah Rushing

Operations Manager

Public Label

Here’s how it works for various stakeholders in the process:

Beverage distributors request allocations, receive automated notifications on approvals, and record key data about the samplings they execute.
Agencies allocate samplings to distributors and ensure programs remain on track.
Brands receive reports with insights on the effectiveness of programs across markets.

Get the lowdown over on MainEvent’s website.

LegalServer to Power Public Defense Throughout Idaho

2024-02-11T00:00:00Z

In 2022, Idaho legislation transformed the state’s model of public defense away from a county-led model into a state-led system. Governor Brad Little subsequently appointed Eric D. Fredericksen as State Public Defender (SPD), who expeditiously sought a statewide case management suite to handle thousands of cases annually for indigent defendants and juveniles.

After an exhaustive search, Fredericksen and his team chose LegalServer.

The Idaho State Public Defender is excited to partner with LegalServer as its case management system. Our discussions have led to an innovative approach to case management that will allow our attorneys to focus more time and energy in serving the needs of our clientele.

Eric D. Fredericksen

Idaho State Public Defender

Office of the State Public Defender

“We believe LegalServer’s focus on the needs of public defense along with its dedication, capabilities, and willingness to think and work outside the box will take the public defense to the next level in the State of Idaho,” Fredericksen says.

The new system will be live by the end of 2024 - get the full story on LegalServer’s website.

Child Advocacy Experts Share Fundraising Wins with the Collaborate Community

2023-12-21T00:00:00Z

The Collaborate team recently hosted a Funding Roundtable, spotlighting how Children’s Advocacy Centers (CACs) leverage technology in their fundraising initiatives. In the live virtual event, a panel of experts representing five leading organizations outlined the keys to their grant writing successes, including:

Mining social services data to prove a need,
Impressing grant funders with targeted messaging,
Quantifying non-profit impact on the community, and
Using performance improvements as leverage.

With Collaborate, we’re able to report on wait times for Forensic Interviews, and we are confident we can obtain additional state funding if we can reduce those wait times.

Thomas Knapp

Executive Director

South Carolina Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers (SCNCAC)

Discover all of their best fundraising strategies - and how case management software can facilitate them - in the full writeup on Collaborate’s website.

Census-Driven Precision to Transform Field Marketing Strategies

2023-12-06T00:00:00Z

Marketers need to get their products in front of the right groups of people. MainEvent’s Census Module offers a comprehensive view of census data across execution venues, which can be included in location-centric reports.

By analyzing states, counties, tracts, and blocks, the Census Module improves campaign planning by identifying optimal locations for audience targeting. Data points include demographics, education levels, and ethnicities, so brands can boost customer engagement and allocate budget more wisely.

Check out the full writeup on the MainEvent website.

State of Nevada Uses LegalServer to Protect the Rights of the Accused

2023-09-20T00:00:00Z

The State of Nevada’s Department of Indigent Defense Services (DIDS) ensures that equitable criminal defense is provided across all 17 counties. A statewide LegalSever implementation streamlines and organizes defense attorneys’ work, while providing real-time reporting to continually improve processes.

The data we are able to gather and the reports we are able to create with LegalServer provide us with invaluable insights into attorney workloads across the state.

Thomas Qualls

Deputy Director

Nevada Department of Indigent Defense Services

Along with helping manage caseloads, DIDS supports Nevada’s counties by:

Providing education & training,
Supplying legal experts, special investigators, and social workers, and
Facilitating uniform statewide reporting.

All these important efforts are tracked, managed, and reported on in LegalServer. Head here for the full story.

With or Without Internet Access, MainEvent Keeps Working

2023-09-12T00:00:00Z

MainEvent is used by marketing teams out in the field, and that sometimes means dealing with spotty internet connectivity. The application’s offline mode ensures that staff can always complete important work like viewing upcoming shifts, completing event recaps, and submitting claims and expenses.

MainEvent’s offline functionality allows our teams uninterrupted access to pertinent information regardless of cell coverage or internet access. This has fundamentally changed the way we operate by eliminating connectivity issues and giving our teams quicker access to the information they need to do their jobs better.

Joey Ramirez

Retail Operations Analyst

Dietz & Watson Inc.

https://vimeo.com/860272405

MainEvent keeps field campaigns running, whether your devices have full bars or no bars. Check out the full story here.

Non-Profit Raises Millions with Data from Collaborate

2023-08-16T00:00:00Z

For many non-profits, federal, state, and local grants are the most important source of revenue. But those funds can be difficult to access without the ability to quantify their work.

The Children’s Advocacy Center of Santa Clara County is using Collaborate to help prove their impact on the community - and the grant money has followed.

Without many of the reports created for us in Collaborate, we couldn’t have been able to apply for several new grants.

Jennifer Puthoff

Program Manager

Santa Clara County Children’s Advocacy Center

With standardized data collection and accurate reporting, the CAC of Santa Clara County has won an additional $2.5 million in the past two years, which is being used to:

Increase staff by 150%,
Expand medical, victim advocacy, and forensic interview services to 24/7, and
Build capacity to create a greater impact on their community.

Head over to the Collaborate website for the full scoop on better funding through data mining.

Using AWS Managed Grafana with Timestream for Observability: Scheduled Tasks & Graph Annotations

2023-06-23T00:00:00Z

In part one, we covered the basics of creating and configuring a Grafana workspace with Timestream as a datasource. In part two, we covered some simple and intermediate Timestream queries for your Grafana panels.

For the final installment, we’ll show you how Network Ninja uses Grafana to:

Monitor the status of scheduled tasks, and
Add graph annotations to mark changes to our server environment.

Our AWS Managed Grafana panels alert us to the status of recurring cron jobs, so we know if scheduled tasks are properly executing - and if not, we investigate why and quickly fix them.

Tyler Lannom

Collaborate Product Lead

Network Ninja

Step 1: Scheduled Task Monitoring

With Grafana, we wanted to:

Visualize our scheduled tasks next to our performance data, and
Know when a job started, how long it ran for, and whether or not it completed successfully.

To get there, we wrote a wrapper script that executes our jobs, and submits that information to Timestream for viewing in Grafana via a Gantt chart panel.

The wrapper script: task-run.sh

ENVIRONMENT="prod"
PRODUCT="product-X"

# Run time vars
START_TS=$(date --iso-8601=seconds)

# Arguments
if [ -z "$2" ] ; then
    echo Usage: $0 TASK_NAME COMMAND ARGS ...
    exit 1
fi

# Run task
TASK_NAME="${1}"
BEFORE=$(date +%s)
shift 1
eval $*
RET_CODE=$?
AFTER=$(date +%s)
END_TS=$(date --iso-8601=seconds)
DURATION=$[ ${AFTER} - ${BEFORE} ]

if [ ${RET_CODE} -gt 0 ] ; then
    STATUS="FAIL"
else
    STATUS="SUCCESS"
fi

JSON="{ \"DatabaseName\": \"${DATABASE_NAME}\", \"TableName\": \"${TABLE_NAME}\", \"CommonAttributes\": { \"Dimensions\": [ { \"Name\": \"server\", \"Value\": \"${HOSTNAME}\", \"DimensionValueType\": \"VARCHAR\" } ] }, \"Records\": [ { \"Dimensions\": [ { \"Name\": \"end_time\", \"Value\": \"${END_TS}\", \"DimensionValueType\": \"VARCHAR\" }, {\"Name\": \"start_time\", \"Value\": \"${START_TS}\", \"DimensionValueType\": \"VARCHAR\" }, { \"Name\": \"status\", \"Value\": \"${STATUS}\", \"DimensionValueType\": \"VARCHAR\" }, { \"Name\": \"ret_code\", \"Value\": \"${RET_CODE}\", \"DimensionValueType\": \"VARCHAR\" }, { \"Name\": \"task\", \"Value\": \"${TASK_NAME}\", \"DimensionValueType\": \"VARCHAR\" } ], \"MeasureName\": \"duration\", \"MeasureValue\": \"${DURATION}\", \"MeasureValueType\": \"BIGINT\", \"Time\": \"${BEFORE}\", \"TimeUnit\": \"SECONDS\", \"Version\": 1 } ] }"

/usr/local/bin/aws timestream-write write-records --cli-input-json "${JSON}"

Note: the above script requires a V2 AWS CLI tool to be installed for the timestream-write command. We use the wrapper to execute our jobs by invoking them like this:

/usr/local/bin/task-run.sh TASKNAME COMMAND ARGS ...

For example:

/usr/local/bin/task-run.sh DBTASKS /usr/local/bin/db-tasks.sh 'full'

To view this data, add a new panel to your dashboard and set the type to Gantt in the upper right hand corner.

Then use the following query:

SELECT * FROM "my-timestream-db"."scheduled_tasks"
 WHERE (from_iso8601_timestamp(start_time) between 
  from_iso8601_timestamp('${__from:date:iso}') and 
  from_iso8601_timestamp('${__to:date:iso}')
     or from_iso8601_timestamp(end_time) between 
  from_iso8601_timestamp('${__from:date:iso}') and 
  from_iso8601_timestamp('${__to:date:iso}'))
       AND server='${server}'

Under the Dimensions section on the right:

Set the “Text” field to task
Set the “Start time” field to start_time
Set the “End time” field to end_time
Set the “Color by” field to status

Under the Color mappings section, add a color mapping for SUCCESS and set it to a green color. Add another color mapping for FAIL and set it to a red color. It should look like this:

Click the Save button and visualize your scheduled tasks.

Step 2: Add Graph Annotations

Annotations - which are notes to explain or comment on graphs - are useful in a variety of situations. We use them to mark deployments, configuration changes, and attribute performance behavior to specific events (like making rollback decisions, so others know when and why you made them).

You can submit graph annotations to Grafana using a Grafana API key. To create a key, select the API keys option from the configuration gearbox menu on the left.

Click Add API key, and give it the Editor role. At the time of this writing, you’ll need to put 30d, or shorter, as the Time to live interval, because AWS Managed Grafana doesn’t support longer-lived API keys (this is unfortunate because regular Grafana doesn’t have this limitation). You may wish to add your voice to ours by letting AWS know this is artificially short!

Save the API key and handle it with care.

Next, we wrote this script to submit annotations to Grafana: annotate.sh

#!/bin/bash
SERVER="my-server"
PRODUCT="my-product"
ENV="prod"
APIKEY="YOURAPIKEY"
GRAFANA_URL="https://YOURGRAFANAWORKSPACE.grafana-workspace.REGION.amazonaws.com/api/annotations"

if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
    echo "Usage: $0 tag1 tag2:value tag3 ..."
    exit 1
fi

# Seconds from the epoch times a thousand.
TIME=$[ $(date +%s) * 1000 ]

# Get our message text.
read MESSAGE

# Using a sed hack here as a quasi join() function because json doesn't like
# trailing commas.
TAGS=$(echo $* | sed 's/ /\", \"/g')

# Assemble our json.
JSON="{ \"tags\":[\"${TAGS}\", \"${SERVER}\", \"${PRODUCT}\", \"${ENV}\" ], \"time\": ${TIME}, \"text\": \"${MESSAGE}\" }"

# Submit the annotation.
curl \
    -X POST \
	-H "Authorization: Bearer ${APIKEY}" \
	-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d "${JSON}" \
    $GRAFANA_URL

You’ll need to substitute the variables at the top of the script to suit your needs, or add secret handling as appropriate for your environment.

To view annotations on your dashboard, go to your Grafana dashboard settings and click the Annotations tab.

Click the + New Query button. Add a Name, such as “Deployments”, and choose Grafana as the Data source. Choose a color, and add a tag (for example, your server name) in the Query box.

Next, run the annotate.sh script on your server like the following:

/usr/local/bin/annotate.sh tag1 tag2:value tag3 ...

$ echo "This is a test" | /usr/local/bin/annotate.sh test test_version:1.2.3
{"id":108,"message":"Annotation added"}

Finally, view the annotation on your dashboard.

Quick Recap

In this guide, we:

Created a wrapper script for scheduled task monitoring,
Added a Gantt chart in Grafana to visualize that task data, and
Set up graph annotations to provide additional context for our graphs.

This concludes our article series on Network Ninja’s approach to using AWS Managed Grafana for server observability. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out part 1 and part 2.

Good luck, and happy monitoring!

We’re hiring. If you want to join our 100% remote (work from home) crew, check out our current job listings.

Using AWS Managed Grafana with Timestream for Observability: Writing Timestream Queries

2023-06-21T00:00:00Z

In part one, we covered the basics of creating a Grafana workspace and configuring it to use a Timestream datasource for your server metrics. For the second installment, we’ll explore some basic Timestream queries and Grafana panels.

What is Timestream?

Timestream is a fast, scalable, and serverless time-series database service that makes it easier to store and analyze trillions of events per day.

We use Timestream to query our application servers and feed that data to Grafana for fancy dashboards, which allow us to measure and monitor important application server metrics like:

Network activity,
CPU usage,
HTTP status codes,
Database utilization, and
Disk input/output performance (IOPs).

Our AWS Managed Grafana panels have alerted us to critical events like database connection errors and high database utilization - allowing us to quickly fix problems before they become major issues.

Tyler Lannom

Collaborate Product Lead

Network Ninja

Step 1: Get Familiar with the Timestream Query Editor

You should use the AWS console query editor to explore your Timestream tables and craft some basic queries. The error output is particularly useful for debugging query syntax.

To get started with a query, choose the Preview Data option from the Query Editor in the Timestream console. Navigate to your Timestream ⭢ Query editor page, and select your database from the dropdown box. On the left hand side click the ellipsis next to a table and select Preview data. That will populate the query editor with a basic SELECT statement for you.

Clicking Run on the above panel will return 10 rows of data from the CPU table in the my-timestream-db Timestream database. From here you can modify a query to suit your needs - see the the query language reference for Timestream for more.

Step 2: Modify Timestream Queries for Grafana Panels

When altering your console-generated queries for use in Grafana graph panels, use Grafana variables. For instance, you should use something like the following in your WHERE clause:

WHERE time between from_iso8601_timestamp('${__from:date:iso}') 
               and from_iso8601_timestamp('${__to:date:iso}')

This step will limit your data collection to the current time window for the dashboard.

Step 3: Step 3: Add a CPU Panel

Click the Add panel button on your dashboard, and select Add an empty panel.

Select the appropriate Timestream region in the Data source dropdown box, and add the following query where $server matches a server name you have tagged in your Telegraf output:

SELECT server, BIN(time, 60s) AS time,
   ROUND(AVG(measure_value::double), 2) AS avg_usage_user
FROM "my-timestream-database".cpu
WHERE measure_name = 'usage_user'
   AND server = '$server'
   AND time between from_iso8601_timestamp('${__from:date:iso}') and from_iso8601_timestamp('${__to:date:iso}')
GROUP BY server, BIN(time, 60s)
ORDER BY time ASC

Note: you can replace $server in the query above with text, or use it as a Grafana variable on your dashboard.

Pro Tip: Use the Timestream Macros

Timestream’s query editor accepts a number of macros, including:

$_database to specify the selected database,
$_table to specify the table, and
$_measure to specify the measure.

We’ve found these very useful in building our panels - and you probably will, too.

Click the Graph refresh button and you’ll get a preview of the data:

To provide more context to your graph, we suggest to:

Add a title on the right hand side under Panel options and click the Save button.
Change the Unit under Standard Options to Percent (0-100).
Optionally, add another query by clicking the +Query button, and paste in the query we just used, but with usage_system instead of usage_user.
Under Graph Styles, enable the Stacked mode.

Step 4: Add an HTTP Status Panel

If you’re using a Telegraf plugin to process your web server logs, you can make a panel that displays your traffic by HTTP status class using a variation on the following query.

Create a new panel, then add the query below, where web_log is the table your web logs are in. You may need to change the measure_name to match the column where your status codes are logged.

WITH binned_timeseries AS (
 SELECT BIN(time, 60s) AS time,
   COUNT(time) AS status_count
 FROM "my-timestream-db".web_log
 WHERE measure_name = 'status'
   AND measure_value::bigint > 199
   AND measure_value::bigint < 300
   AND server = $server
   AND time between from_iso8601_timestamp('${__from:date:iso}') and from_iso8601_timestamp('${__to:date:iso}')
 GROUP BY BIN(time, 60s)
 ORDER BY time ASC)
 SELECT CREATE_TIME_SERIES(time, status_count) FROM binned_timeseries

Click on the Panel name, which should default to A, and rename it to ‘2XX’.

Use the Duplicate query button to add three more panels. Change the ranges on the WHERE clause to match the 300-399, 400-499, and > 500 ranges. Modify the query names to 3XX, 4XX, and 5XX to match the ranges.

Under Graph Styles, change the Style to Bars, and set Stack series to Normal.

Set the Display name to ${__series.name} - this will add the name for the query in the panel legend.

Define the color scheme for the panels to differentiate them (and to prevent the colors from being auto-assigned). We went with green for 200 codes, blue for 300 codes, and orange for 400 codes.

Finally, click on Save in the upper right hand corner.

Step 4: Add a Delta Query

Some stats are only available as counters that reset at system boot, when an application is started, or under various other limited conditions (for example, the linux networking stats you see when running netstat -s). Often, to make use of the data for graphs for alerting, we need to measure the changes of those values in a given time window.

Let’s say you’re using the PostgreSQL input plugin to collect information from your Postgres database, and you’re interested in your average tempfile size. The two counters, temp_files and temp_bytes, represent the total number of temporary files and volume of temporary data in bytes since the last statistics reset.

One way to display your average temp file size would be to simply create a stat panel that divides temp_bytes by temp_files. That will give you the overall average. But, if you’re looking to see changes in the average temp files size over time there’s a better way: use the MIN() and MAX() functions to calculate the change in a given time window.

To add a stat panel, create a new panel and then set the type to Stat in the upper right hand corner drop box.

The query below first calculates the changes for temp_bytes and temp_files by subtracting the MIN() value from the MAX() value from our time window, before dividing them for the average. The NULLIF()'s are there to stop any dividing by zero nonsense.

SELECT NULLIF(temp_bytes, 0) / NULLIF(temp_files, 0) FROM (
 SELECT MAX(measure_value::bigint) - MIN(measure_value::bigint) AS temp_bytes
   FROM "my-timestream-db"."postgresql"
   WHERE measure_name = 'temp_bytes'
     AND db = '${server}'
     AND time between from_iso8601_timestamp('${__from:date:iso}') and from_iso8601_timestamp('${__to:date:iso}')),
 (  SELECT MAX(measure_value::bigint) - MIN(measure_value::bigint) AS temp_files
   FROM "my-timestream-db"."postgresql"
   WHERE measure_name = 'temp_files'
     AND db = '${server}'
     AND time between from_iso8601_timestamp('${__from:date:iso}') and from_iso8601_timestamp('${__to:date:iso}'))

Here’s our completed stat panel in all its glory.

Pro Tip: Use Intervals to Fix Slow Loading or Failed Panels

When adjusting the time window for a dashboard to cover a period longer than a couple of days, you may find that some Grafana panels are taking a long time to load or fail to load. When that happens, it’s likely that you’re loading and graphing too many data points.

For example, if you have a static interval of one minute, and are trying to view a month’s worth of data, you need to load 43,200 values for each metric - and it’s unlikely you need a resolution of 1 minute to make sense of that data across a month. Setting the $__interval value for your queries will allow the resolution to match the dashboard appropriately, reducing the number of data points, and speeding up load time considerably.

Step 5: Use Delta Queries with Window Functions

What if you want to show changes as they happen over a time window, instead of in total across the whole thing? One way to do it is by using a window function, and Timestream supports several. The query below uses the LAG() function to calculate changes over time by subtracting previous from current values.

SELECT server, BIN(time, 60s) AS time, SUM(delta)
FROM
   (SELECT server, name, time,
       ( measure_value::bigint - LAG(measure_value::bigint)
  OVER (ORDER BY name, time ASC)) / 60 AS delta
    	  FROM "my-timestream-db"."diskio" 
   	  WHERE measure_name = 'writes'
            AND server = '${server}'
            AND time between from_iso8601_timestamp('${__from:date:iso}') and 
                             from_iso8601_timestamp('${__to:date:iso}')
        )
GROUP BY server, BIN(time, 60s)
ORDER BY time ASC
OFFSET 1

Here’s an example of a panel showing read and write IO from the diskio plugin.

Quick Recap

In this guide, we:

Covered the basics of using the Timestream Query Editor,
Modified some Timestream Queries for Grafana panels, and
Added a few panels to track our data, including examples with delta queries.

Coming up in part 3, we’ll show you how to monitor scheduled tasks with Grafana and use graph annotations the Network Ninja way.

If you’d like to work on cool stuff like this with us, check out our 100% remote (work from home) job openings.

Using AWS Managed Grafana with Timestream for Observability: Infrastructure Setup

2023-06-02T00:00:00Z

Network Ninja software engineers recently implemented the AWS Managed Grafana Service as a fully managed internal dashboarding solution, allowing us, among other things, to monitor network traffic across hundreds of applications (example of the final result below).

We chose Grafana because:

It allows us to visualize and analyze data from multiple sources,
It co-exists with our AWS infrastructure (allowing us to manage access via IAM policies), and
It supports single sign-on (SSO).

Since there wasn’t a comprehensive guide to accomplishing what we wanted, we wrote one - and broke it up into three digestible sections. Part 1 (which follows below) covers setting up Timestream and connecting it to Grafana, while Parts 2 and 3 will explain Timestream Queries and Scheduled Tasks & Graph Annotations, respectively.

Tech Infrastructure

For simplicity, we chose to use a combination of AWS Timestream and Cloudwatch for our metrics datastore. Using a push-based model instead of polling means no inventory and service discovery to worry about - that works well in a cloud environment where instances may come and go. We also like the balance of memory and magnetic storage, since most of the time when we’re looking at dashboards, we’re looking at recent history.

If there’s a downside to using Timestream in Grafana, it’s the lack of a query builder. However, in practice, building the SQL queries for the dashboard panels is fairly straightforward. We also went with Telegraf to collect the metrics on our systems. It supports Timestream as a backend directly and has a ton of plugins, including a statsd plugin for any ad hoc metrics.

TL;DR

This guide covers the setup of AWS Managed Grafana using:

Timestream for time-series data,
Cloudwatch for application and infrastructure monitoring, and
Telegraf as the service agent to collect and send metrics from our applications.

Step 1: Configuring Timestream

Create your Timestream database(s). Note that:

Both Cloudformation and Terraform support Timestream.
You can also create Timestream databases through the AWS console.
You will need to create a Timestream database per region.

Next, create (or augment your existing) EC2 instance roles to allow writing to your Timestream database. We chose to allow our instances to create tables, so we could easily add new stats. Here’s an example policy with needed permissions and a resource constraint on the specific Timestream database:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Action": "timestream:DescribeDatabase",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Resource": "arn:aws:timestream:::database/my-timestream-db"
    },
    {
      "Action": "timestream:WriteRecords",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Resource": "arn:aws:timestream:::database/my-timestream-db/table/*"
    },
    {
      "Action": [
        "timestream:CreateTable",
        "timestream:TagResource"
        ],
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Resource": "arn:aws:timestream:::database/my-timestream-db/table/*"
    },
    {
      "Action": "timestream:DescribeEndpoints",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

Don’t forget to attach your roles, if needed.

Step 2: Create an AWS Managed Grafana Instance

Navigate to Amazon Managed Grafana in the console and click Create workspace.

Choose your settings and click Next. We chose to let AWS manage the permissions.

Select your data sources and click Next.

Review your options, and click Create workspace.

Enable SSO.

There are several pre-baked solutions for SAML you can choose from. You might find this AWS recipe for using SAML with Google convenient.

Add a Timestream data source for all of your regions. Obtain the URL to your Grafana workspace from the AWS Console, and login as an admin user. Then click the AWS icon on the left and select Data sources.

Select Timestream for the service and your region. Then click Add data source.

Step 3: Configure Telegraf

Install the Telegraf agent.

Configure the /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf file. We’ve found it’s useful to tag the hostname, environment, and product name. Any tags you add here will get added as a column you can use to filter your Timestream queries by.

Here’s a basic configuration that adds a Timestream output, and collects CPU, Disk usage, Memory usage, and Disk IO metrics:

[global_tags]
  env = "production"
  product = "MYPRODUCT"
  server = "MYSERVERNAME"

[agent]
  interval = "10s"
  round_interval = true
  metric_batch_size = 1000
  metric_buffer_limit = 10000
  collection_jitter = "0s"
  flush_interval = "10s"
  flush_jitter = "0s"
  precision = ""
  hostname = ""
  omit_hostname = false

[[outputs.timestream]]
  region = "MYREGION"
  database_name = "MY-TIMESTREAM-DB"
  describe_database_on_start = true
  mapping_mode = "multi-table"
  create_table_if_not_exists = true
  create_table_magnetic_store_retention_period_in_days = 365
  create_table_memory_store_retention_period_in_hours = 24
  create_table_tags = { "server" = "MYSERVERNAME", "env" = "production", "product" = "MYPRODUCTNAME" }

[[inputs.cpu]]
  percpu = true
  totalcpu = true
  collect_cpu_time = false
  report_active = false

[[inputs.mem]]

[[inputs.disk]]

[[inputs.diskio]]

Take a look through the available plugins list for additional data sources.

Quick Recap

In this guide, we:

Configured Timestream,
Set up AWS Managed Grafana and added Timestream as a data source, and
Set up Telegraf to write metrics to Timestream.

Coming up in part 2, we’ll discuss writing some basic Timestream queries to build panels for your dashboards. Stay tuned!

Want to work on cool enterprise software solutions like these with us? Check out our job openings.

Project Success is a Team Effort

2023-03-31T00:00:00Z

Here at Network Ninja, we pride ourselves on hiring and retaining folks that bring exceptional skill sets and perspectives to the table. Natalie Simons, Project Manager for MainEvent, has shown a unique ability to address client needs while maintaining project scope, so we sat down with her recently to discuss her keys to success.

According to Natalie, a combination of creativity, collaboration, and flexibility are paramount - along with a dependable framework to work within.

https://vimeo.com/805573083

Natalie’s elements for success also include:

A willingness to embrace risks and creativity,
Protections in place to mitigate those risks, and
Giving team members space to express themselves.

A flexible and open environment that encourages participation and engagement is crucial for a team's success.

Natalie Simons

Project Manager

MainEvent

For more insights on solving complex problems, and the importance of celebrating individual and team wins, check out the full story on the MainEvent website.

Addressing the Need for Specialized Non-Profit Legal Software

2023-01-26T00:00:00Z

For-profit law firms tend to focus on three things: billing, billing, and more billing. The bulk of legal case management systems, in turn, center around billing as well.

That simply won’t do for non-profit legal organizations like Housing Justice Center (HJC), however. HJC needed a system that was flexible enough to handle its various programs, while providing accurate grant reporting to their funders. That’s why they implemented LegalServer, which was designed exclusively for non-profits.

LegalServer has provided HJC much broader use, designed in a way that functions closely to the work we do at HJC.

Zaria Whitlock

Paralegal

Housing Justice Center

The transition to LegalServer was simple, according to HJC Paralegal Zaria Whitlock. “The LegalServer Onboarding process provided the staff at HJC time to build familiarity with LegalServer and proved essential to the success HJC has experienced in using the system,” she says.

Get the full scoop on how LegalServer’s focus on non-profits helps Housing Justice Center preserve and expand affordable housing nationwide.

MainEvent’s Automated Notifications Keep Field Marketers Informed

2023-01-11T00:00:00Z

Field marketing campaigns have many moving parts - from vehicles and staffing to payroll and accounting - so communication is paramount. MainEvent’s Automated Notifications make it simple for brands and agencies to keep staff updated on important items like:

Events being created or canceled,
Upcoming shifts starting soon, and
Payroll address updates.

Notifications can be configured in just a few clicks, and automatically sent to any staff member when triggered. By cutting down on manual back-and-forth messaging, field marketing firms are saving time and money while improving communication between teams.

Get the full story on notifications from the MainEvent team.

Maximizing Staffing Efficiency for Social Services Organizations

2023-01-04T00:00:00Z

The Collaborate team is focused on using technology to make social workers’ lives easier. Streamlined processes and data-driven insights often lead to efficiency gains that positively impact staff and clients alike.

Collaborate has simplified our work, made our team more efficient and improved our process and program outcomes.

Jennifer Puthoff

Program Manager

Santa Clara County Children’s Advocacy Center

Staffing is an especially common pain point for social services organizations. With tailored reports created via the Collaborate Concierge service, the Santa Clara County Children’s Advocacy Center ensures they have adequate resources on hand when needed most.

From optimizing staff scheduling, to measuring performance and monitoring operations, the Santa Clara County Children’s Advocacy Center is making a bigger impact with Collaborate.

Document Management Made Easy with LegalServer’s SharePoint Integration

2022-12-08T00:00:00Z

Software integrations are among the LegalServer team’s specialties, and integrating Microsoft 365 SharePoint - which holds a prevalent place in the legal community - has made life simpler for thousands of legal advocates.

LegalServer makes it easy to see and find the documents relevant to a case and open them right from Legalserver to make any edits.

Ashley Holliday

General Counsel

West Tennessee Legal Services

When new cases are created, LegalServer automatically creates an associated folder in Microsoft 365. From there, users can add documents to the folder through multiple means, like creating case notes, or generating files via LegalServer’s document templates.

For added convenience, LegalServer also saves emails to the case’s SharePoint folder as they are received. This holistic approach to document integration completely eliminates the need for duplicate uploads - saving legal teams lots of time in the process.

Making Cybersecurity Fun with a Capture the Flag Event, Part 2

2022-10-05T00:00:00Z

In Part 1 of our Capture the Flag (“CTF”) writeup, we explored the social and business value of running a hacking competition. Now, let’s take a behind-the-scenes look at the technologies we used to run the event (and if you’re feeling brave, try to hack your own way to victory).

Test your hacking skills now

This Github repo - and accompanying CTF primer - is your ticket to attempting our CTF 2022 challenges, with a few notable alterations:

21 total challenges - We limited our contest to 10.
No time limits - We had 10 minutes for easy challenges, and 20 minutes for medium ones.
No hints - You’re on your own.

Have fun, and happy hacking!

Sudo: a fickle beast

Our resident Site Reliability Engineer, Bob Micheletto, has a penchant for finding flaws in poorly written sudo rules. He initially wrote 21 sudo-based challenges, but to keep things simple, we pared them down to 10 for our contest. (Note: you can try all 21 here.)

Several of these challenges were derived from exploitable sudo rules I've encountered in the wild throughout my career.

Bob Micheletto

Site Reliability Engineer

Network Ninja

We decided that participants in the event would:

SSH to a preconfigured server,
Examine the /etc/sudoers file, and
Attempt to gain root access by exploiting those sudo rules.

If and when they got root, hackers would run a special /root/ctf.sh command, which would send a secret hash and automatically update the leaderboard.

Come work with us!

We’re 100% remote and loving it. Check the jobs page for opportunities to join our diverse team.

Technology to run the event

Server setup

We considered a few hosting options:

Docker containers with screen recording & manually submitting solutions, which we ruled out because they’d be too difficult to support. (Note: if you want to attempt the challenges yourself, you will be using Docker.) ❌
Shared AWS ec2 instances, which were nixed because it’d be too easy to accidentally disable the system for all - plus folks might leave clues to challenges laying around. ❌
Single AWS t2.nano instances for all, to be refreshed every day. It cost less than $5 for a server month, and we’d only keep them up for a couple weeks anyway. Perfect. ✅

TL;DR - folks would ssh to their own t2.nano instance each day, and figure out the challenge from there.

Spawning the servers

Each challenge server was provisioned using AWS CloudFormation and configured using our agentless Puppet configuration. Our cloud-init script fetched the Puppet configuration from code-commit and applied the appropriate challenge tailored for a specific user based on the EC2 instance tags.

User accounts & authentication

We used a Puppet module to create users on our servers, and user assignment is done through Hiera, so we generated a bunch of configuration files for the challenge servers that put only User X, on Server X. “We didn’t want anyone to be tempted to log into another user’s challenge server,” Bob explains.

We added our users public keys using the same module that adds our users. The snag was, we were going to be deleting and recreating these servers 10 times a piece. To avoid users running into SSH warnings about changing host keys, we decided to preserve the keys and provision them through Puppet.

Time limits

To enforce the time limits for challenges - with automatic logouts after a specified time - we used a shutdown trick from Unixdaemon.net. “We needed a way to keep the challenges short and sweet for our contestants,” Bob says. “Adding time limits - 10 minutes for easy challenges, and 20 minutes for medium ones - proved ideal.”

Here’s the Puppet template we used to create the timer events on login:

#!/bin/sh

if [ "$PAM_USER" = '<%= @user %>' ] ; then
    # Start the events
    echo /usr/local/bin/shutdown_timer.sh | /usr/bin/at now
    echo /usr/local/bin/hint.sh | /usr/bin/at now
fi

exit 0

Note: we still wanted the ability to login to these servers with administrative user, so we check the PAM_USER environment variable - and only kickoff the events if the challenge user logs in.

Here’s the Puppet template file we used to generate the shutdown:

#!/bin/sh

# Shutdown Delay
sleep <%= @shutdown_delay %>

cat /usr/local/shutdown_message.txt | /usr/bin/wall

/usr/sbin/shutdown -h now

Note: the duration of shutdown_delay was different depending on the difficulty of the challenge (10 minutes for easy ones, 20 minutes for medium).

Scoring

For automated scoring - with a leaderboard contestants could check at any time - we wrote a script that:

Sent out a statsd metric, and
Sent a verification email (using AWS SNS) with a secret string for verification, unique per user, per challenge. Without this, anyone could “hack” the leaderboard by spoofing statsd messages - and that’s not the type of hacking we’re looking for here.

We then built a leaderboard using AWS managed Grafana, and allowed our users to login to the leaderboard using their usual SSO logins. Here’s a glimpse of the final standings:

“Automating the scoring process took a bit of wrangling, but saved us a lot of time and manual work in the end,” Bob concludes.

Providing hints

Automated hints appeared for contestants halfway through each challenge using wall. The hint timer was set at the same time as the shutdown timer (on user login). “Frustration would ruin the fun, but we also didn’t want to give away too much,” Bob says. “Our hints provided just enough info to point folks in the right direction.”

Here’s the Puppet template we used to send the hint:

#!/bin/sh

sleep <%= @hint_delay %>

cat /usr/local/hint.txt | /usr/bin/wall

exit 0

The hint.txt file was also configured via Puppet, and was specific to each challenge.

Network Ninja branding

A special flourish for contestants was this custom Network Ninja ANSI MOTD that appeared on login.

Support, documentation, & fun provided via Slack

Each morning at 9am ET, we’d announce the daily challenge in our company Slack at #ctf2022.

Contestants had 24 hours to complete each challenge. For educational purposes, we also provided reference solutions for the prior day’s challenge in the channel.

https://youtu.be/G8dk5tBHMUQ

Some challenges had multiple possible solutions, and it was cool to see people figure out their own solutions I hadn’t anticipated, too.

Bob Micheletto

Site Reliability Engineer

Network Ninja

“I accidentally trashed the sudoers file”

Here are a smattering of contest highlights from Slack. Note to the reader: don’t do the following.

Hacker creativity reigned supreme.

After several lockout notices, this warning attempted to keep people from harming their own shells…

…But not everyone listened.

Seriously, it’s really easy to break things with sudo/sudoers!

When stuck, extra help was available upon request.

In contrast, others gloated about their hacking prowess, in song form.

And now, a final song to send us off. We can’t wait for #ctf2023!

CTF FTW

Throughout the competition, we had fun, collaborated together across product teams, and learned some things about security along the way. Be sure to check out Part 1 of our CTF event writeup if you haven’t already, and if you want to participate in the competition next time, come work with us.

Making Cybersecurity Fun with a Capture the Flag Event, Part 1

2022-08-25T00:00:00Z

Capture the Flag, or “CTF”, is a low stakes, medium difficulty, security challenge contest. In the summer of 2022, we held a company-wide CTF event and invited all Network Ninja developers across our three product teams to participate.

Similar to Wordle, our hacking contestants logged in daily to solve a new puzzle, without a big time commitment. Challenges involved exploiting intentionally placed vulnerabilities in a specially designed system to capture a “flag" - a piece of code to prove they solved the puzzle. Across ten business days, we competed, laughed, and collaborated together - and learned some things about security along the way.

Key benefits of CTF 2022

Fun - Based on the participant feedback below, CTF was a big success. This was our main concern!
Security - CTF is a security training. In our case, developers’ eyes were opened to the dangers of poorly-written permissions rules.
Technology - Our software pros used tools and techniques that many were previously unfamiliar with - or hadn’t used in a while.
Cross-product collaboration - Three product teams - which typically don’t interact much on a daily basis - came together to compete, share strategies, and get to know each other a bit better.

CTF 2022 by the numbers

17 Developers participated
63 Collective challenges solved
100% Enjoyed the event
100% Think we should do another CTF
1 Champion

Above: MainEvent developer Mike Matz with spoils of his victory, a custom trophy.

What participants liked most about CTF

Actual feedback from Network Ninja developers.

Camaraderie.

Challenging! Definitely stretched my knowledge and broke it many times.

The solutions!

The different ways of thinking about the challenges was a lot of fun.

It definitely took me out of my comfort zone!

I was so proud and inspired by everyone’s creativity, what a sight. Also, the event itself was extremely pro while remaining actually fun and jovial. It had a special feel, legit felt ‘cool’.

Elements of CTF success

Planning. We put a lot of thought into factors like technology, timing, communication, and documentation. For example, Network Ninja has Summer Fridays 🌴 from June through August, so we stuck to Monday through Thursday. Here’s an excerpt from our invitation email:

An introductory primer video entertained and educated participants about rules and strategies for the contest.

https://youtu.be/QH1qUETNQOk

A dedicated Slack channel was used to announce daily challenges and provide live updates and hints. It was also a hub for folks to socialize and brainstorm.

A live leaderboard kept contestants engaged and informed. It was a competition, after all - so we needed to track who was winning.

Daily solutions were posted for each challenge after completion. This resulted in a lot of “Ah-ha!” moments for contestants who weren’t able to complete the puzzle.

Wrapping it up

A combination of thoughtful planning, good communication, technical wizardry, and the participation of many talented Network Ninjas employees made CTF a big success. We:

Had fun,
Learned about security & technologies, and
Engaged with folks across our three product teams.

Now, speaking of technology…

Part 2: the technology behind CTF

Check out Part 2 of our CTF recap, which details the technical tools Site Reliability Engineer Bob Micheletto used to manage servers, logins, challenges, time limits, scoring, and much more. We even provide the ability to attempt our CTF challenges yourself.

How to Succeed in Field Marketing

2022-07-01T00:00:00Z

The experiential and field marketing world is competitive, and brands are asking more from their partners than ever before. MainEvent’s Andy Plax recently spoke with Montage Marketing’s Group Account Manager, Dianne Beltran, to talk about the changing industry landscape, and the role MainEvent plays in her day-to-day work life.

https://vimeo.com/723128456

In real time, we can see the efficacy of our work in MainEvent.

Dianne Beltran

Group Account Manager

Montage Marketing Group

Other interesting topics Dianne delved into include:

How she got started in the experiential space, and how she got ahead,
How Montage climbed the ranks in the marketing world, and
Where she thinks field marketing is headed in the future.

Check out the full conversation for more insights from someone who’s held a variety of marketing roles over the years - and excelled at all of them.

Collaborate Puts In-App Support at Users’ Fingertips

2022-06-23T00:00:00Z

Collaborate users can quickly access the help they need, when they need it, right within the application. The new Support Center is activated by clicking the orange help button, which brings up a widget with contextual help based on what section of the app they’re in.

The Support Center also allows users to:

Search for specific help articles covering Cases, Assignments, Activities, or Reports,
Access screenshots and how-to videos, and
Submit a Support Request to Collaborate experts.

In fact, all of Collaborate’s case management functionality is documented in the Support Center - so check out the full write-up here.

Getting Started with Legal Aid Software Has Never Been Easier

2022-05-13T00:00:00Z

Adopting a new legal case management system doesn’t have to be difficult. The Public Law Center (PLC), which serves low-income residents throughout Orange County, California, went live with LegalServer in no time, thanks to a streamlined onboarding and training process.

“Our shift in case management systems went about as smoothly as we could have hoped,” says PLC Director of Legal Services Leigh Ferrin, “because of the extensive training provided by LegalServer at the time of go-live, as well as the ongoing support that we receive.”

We are extremely happy, and are really excited to continue to learn and expand the ways in which we use LegalServer.

Leigh Ferrin

Director of Legal Services

Public Law Center

With help from LegalServer’s automated Onboarding Portal, and assistance from expert support staff, Public Law Center simplified their approach to data management.

Agencies & Brands Flock to MainEvent Amid Field Marketing Comeback

2022-05-06T00:00:00Z

It’s no surprise that in-person marketing took a big hit during the pandemic. Now that people are adjusting to the “new normal”, however, agencies and brands are heading back into the field in droves this spring.

Consequently, the need for comprehensive software to manage all those campaigns has risen dramatically - as has the roster of MainEvent clients. Here are just a few of the major brands and agencies that have adopted MainEvent as their field marketing solution in 2022:

Advantage Solutions
Disaronno
GMR Marketing
Momentum Worldwide
Wild Earth
…and many more

Be sure to check out the full list of new MainEvent clients, and get a preview of their ever-growing marketing initiatives.

Legal Aid Industry Adapts with Technology in the COVID-19 Era

2022-05-02T00:00:00Z

Like many of their contemporaries, Riverside, California-based Inland Empire Latino Lawyers Association (IELLA) found their operations disrupted amid the pandemic.

With thousands of indigent clients’ cases at risk, IELLA adopted LegalServer as their new case management system. Following an efficient onboarding process, the organization quickly began benefiting from streamlined data entry and simplified reporting.

We strongly recommend LegalServer to any non-profit legal aid organization.

Sylvia Quistorf

Executive Director

Inland Empire Latino Lawyers Association

IELLA’s staff - from interns to seasoned legal vets - find LegalServer easy-to-use, and the organization is now leveraging technology to optimize its family law services across Southern California.

How Nintendo & Jägermeister Direct Their Massive Sampling Programs

2022-02-04T00:00:00Z

Sampling is an age-old marketing technique that’s just as effective now as it was a century ago.

However, the complexity of these marketing campaigns has increased dramatically in recent years. Leading brands (and the agencies that promote them) are now tasked with managing hundreds of data points across thousands of locations.

MainEvent for Sampling Programs is the software solution that famous names like Nintendo, Jägermeister, Mosaic, TEAM Enterprises, and Omnicom use to capture and mine all that data - and ultimately leverage it to improve sampling decisions.

With dashboards, historical marketplace data, and automated reports, MainEvent is helping power some of the world’s most successful sampling campaigns. So the next time you enjoy a free sample of ice-cold German digestif, remember: software had a little something to do with it.

How We Help Clients Through Security Issues

2022-01-26T00:00:00Z

At Network Ninja, we help protect our clients’ data in many ways. Along with standard measures like security scans, event monitoring, encryption, logging, and regular updates, we also go above and beyond should any of our clients suffer a cyberattack - even if it’s not directly related to our software.

Mistakes Happen

Our customers are leaders in their spaces, including civil legal aid, social services, and field marketing. But they aren’t security experts - nor do we expect them to be.

We know that well-meaning people make security missteps all the time, and that’s why we have a plan in place to deploy our expertise to help.

A Typical Attack

Let’s imagine that a Collaborate customer uses the same username and password combination on multiple websites, including their Collaborate application. If one of those outside sites gets hacked, attackers can leverage the re-used credentials to access the user’s Collaborate account.

Credential Reuse Can be Disastrous

Always use a unique username and password combo for your accounts. If one account is compromised, hackers will attempt to use those credentials elsewhere. 👀

This is one reason we encourage all of our customers to use Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). MFA is a security best practice that requires a second form of authentication at login - in this case, a six-digit code sent to the user’s mobile device - which would prevent the hackers from accessing their Collaborate account.

Without MFA, however, attackers can get in - and do other nefarious things like threatening to extort the customer with Ransomware.

Specialized Security Alerts

Thankfully, our automated tools can tip us off when something like this happens. If attackers use a web scanner, for instance, it’ll generate a flood of support tickets as the scanner attempts to access areas of the application it shouldn’t.

Once alerted, our security staff can:

Identify the offending traffic,
Create an Incident Channel to handle the incident,
Disable all accounts on the customer’s site, and
Contact the customer to develop a plan of action.

Experts at the Ready

Network Ninja’s security team is experienced, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic about helping our customers. We’ll spring into action with mitigation measures like:

Video conferencing 👩🏻‍💻
Collaborating with the customer to make decisions about things like isolating affected instances and enabling MFA for all users.
Snapshots 📸
Taking real-time snapshots of affected sites for preservation.
Thorough investigation 🔎
Ensuring that no sensitive data is accessed.
Security upgrades 🔐
Beefing up tech security when possible, and training the customer on best practices to help prevent future issues.

Security Upgrades Available

Our enhanced security infrastructure - which will be offered to customers in the near future - includes an Application Load Balancer (ALB) and Web Application Firewall (WAF).

The new infrastructure helps prevent hackers from accessing the customer’s application, with multiple layers of additional protection - including blocking IP addresses with bad reputations (which attackers frequently use).

Getting Back to Business

Once the security threat is squashed, and the new environment is tested by our team and customer, applications are brought back online. Subsequent security scans are run to ensure that no further fraudulent activity occurs.

In summary, we’re able to thwart attacks thanks to:

Our “noisy” security monitoring tools, which quickly identify attackers’ attempts to access and scan customer applications,
The familiarity and trust that comes with great customer relationships, and
The quick action of Network Ninja support staff, subject matter experts, and leadership.

Security Tips from the Experts

Always use unique login credentials across all your accounts.
Enable MFA everywhere.
Work with a reputable software vendor that’s ready, willing, and able to help when you need it most.

Want to learn more about how we secure our software and help protect customers’ data? Drop us a line.

Improve Service Appointment Attendance with Collaborate’s SMS Reminders

2022-01-14T00:00:00Z

Collaborate’s non-profit customers help millions of in-need people across the country. With services ranging from case management to therapy and counseling, these organizations set up a lot of appointments - so they need a streamlined process that helps ensure clients show up.

A key part of this equation is using integrated SMS (text message) Reminders, which have shown to reduce Missed Service Appointments by 53%.

Our Counseling Staff uses Collaborate’s SMS feature constantly, they love it.

Tarah Sellers

Director of Client Services

Network of Victim Assistance (NOVA)

Along with reducing no-shows, staff don’t have to manually reach out to clients to remind them of upcoming appointments. That can shave several minutes off each service scheduled, while keeping clients in the loop.

To recap: with time savings, more informed clients, and better service attendance, Collaborate’s integrated SMS Reminders are a valuable tool for medical and social services providers.

Solving Speed Issues After Migrating PostgreSQL to RDS

2021-12-28T00:00:00Z

Network Ninja software engineers recently migrated a PostgreSQL (“Postgres”) database that was hosted on a web server to an Amazon RDS service. The unexpected result was slower “large” queries on RDS. Load testing showed significant performance issues when multiple users were doing query-heavy actions at the same time.

This problem was solved with two PostgreSQL optimizations:

Increasing work_mem, which decreased the disk swapping and reduced our minimum query times by ~20%, and
Increasing max_parallel_workers, which reduced our maximum query times by ~50%.

These two steps reduced the average execution time of two large query sets by ~50%. With these optimizations, we concluded that switching to RDS would achieve ~30% performance improvement over our local implementation, while also improving the execution time consistency on complex queries.

We’re Hiring!

Our 100% remote (work from home) company is looking for talented people to join our diverse team. Check out the current job openings.

Steps to Fix Slower Large Queries on RDS

Note: this is what worked for us. Your mileage may vary.

Step 1: Set Up a Basic Load Testing Environment

Tech Infrastructure

To run our optimization tests, we used an environment with:

Postgres 12.7
Localhost: EC2 Ubuntu m4.10xlarge 160GiB RAM 40 CPUs
RDS: db.r6g.8xlarge 256GiB RAM, 32 vCPUs

Create a .psqlrc file in your home directory and add “\timing on” to the file - this will cause all queries to display query times.

echo “\timing on” > ~/.psqlrc

Create a .pgpass file in your home directory and add an entry for each database in the format HOST:PORT:DB_NAME:USER:PASSWORD - this password file provides Postgres your database host & authentication details.

echo “your_host:your_port:your_db_name:your_user:your_password” > ~/.pgpass

Set the permissions on your .pgpass file to disallow any access to world or group - using less strict permissions will cause the .pgpass file to be ignored.

chmod 600 ~/.pgpass

Create a file for each of your test queries containing a single query (e.g. query1.sql, query2.sql, etc.).

echo “your 1st large sql query goes here” > ~/query1.sql

Create the test file, where each sql file you created above will be run. Use the \i command in the test file to execute each file (if you’re running more than one file, separate the files by a newline). Note: the same sql file can be specified multiple times if you want to run it multiple times.

echo “\i ~/query1.sql” > ~/mytestfile.txt

Execute the test file and indicate how many queries you want to execute in parallel - this example will run 20 parallel queries via the “-P 20” argument.

xargs -d “\n” -n 1 -P 20 psql -U {DB_USER} -h {DB_HOST} -d {DB_NAME} -a -c < ~/mytestfile.txt

The output of the command above will provide a baseline of execution times to improve upon with optimization.

Step 2: Optimize PostgreSQL to Reduce Disk Swapping

Less Swapping, More Speed

Memory speeds are faster than disk speeds. From the PostgreSQL wiki:

If you do a lot of complex sorts, and have a lot of memory, then increasing the work_mem parameter allows PostgreSQL to do larger in-memory sorts which, unsurprisingly, will be faster than disk-based equivalents.

First, Locate your PostgreSQL configuration file (postgresql.conf) and enable the log_temp_files parameter - setting this value to 0 (zero) will ensure that a log entry is made for each temporary file created (including sorts, which we are particularly interested in here).

postgresql.conf

log_temp_files = 0

Restart PostgreSQL. Now you can see which queries are swapping to disk. Log output should be similar to:

2021-11-01 14:09:02.640 CDT [24737] LOG: temporary file: path “base/pgsql_tmp/pgsql_tmp24737.0”, size 111263744

…where the size is in bytes and the number at the end of the temp file name is the index when multiple temp files are required for a single query.

Next, run the EXPLAIN ANALYZE command on your test queries to show you if a SORT function is using the disk. Review the output of this query, and if you see “Sort Method: external merge Disk: [Number]kB”, then your query is indeed using swap disk for sorting.

psql “EXPLAIN ANALYZE the rest of your query goes here” -------------------------------------------------------------------------- … Sort Method: external merge Disk: [Number]kB …

To prevent disk swapping for sorts (slower), and use memory instead (faster), increase the work_mem parameter in postgresql.conf - we increased ours from 20MB to 40MB and saw immediate speed improvements.

postgresql.conf

# work_mem = 20MB work_mem = 40MB

Once you’ve updated the parameter, restart PostgreSQL.

Next, run your EXPLAIN ANALYZE queries again to confirm they’re using system memory for sorts.

psql “EXPLAIN ANALYZE the rest of your query goes here” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- … Sort Method: quicksort Memory: [Number]kB …

This method reduced our minimum query times by ~20%.

Step 3: Optimize PostgreSQL to Increase Parallel Workers

The final step is to override max_parallel_workers in your postgresql.conf from “engine-default” to match the local database.

postgresql.conf

# max_parallel_workers = engine-default max_parallel_workers = (integer)

Substitute the value from your local database you’re migrating from for (integer) above.

This method reduced our maximum query times by ~50%.

Conclusion & Final Outcomes

We solved the slow large queries issue after migrating PostgreSQL from a web server to Amazon RDS by eliminating disk swap usage and increasing parallel workers. Check out the final results below.

Query Set 1 (5 simultaneous operations)

Local: Min 13s, Max 17s, Avg 15s
Original RDS: Min 12s, Max 25s, Avg 18s
Final RDS: Min 10s, Max 10s, Avg 10s

33% improvement vs. Local, 44% improvement vs. Original RDS

Query Set 2 (5 simultaneous operations):

Local: Min 12s, Max 13s, Avg 12s
Original RDS: Min 10s, Max 20s, Avg 15s
Final RDS: Min 7s, Max 8s, Avg 7s

42% improvement vs. Local, 53% improvement vs. Original RDS

Related Resources

Specialized Tools for Third-Party Legal Activities

2021-12-17T00:00:00Z

Upgrading to a new case management system can be intimidating for legal aid organizations - but it doesn’t have to be. With LegalServer’s streamlined onboarding process, Lubbock Private Defenders Office (LPDO) easily got up to speed, and off to the races.

When high-priority requirements related to the Texas-Mexico border crisis arrived, LPDO was quickly able to track third-party activities, time, and expenses, including for outside and private assigned counsel.

Onboarding with LegalServer allowed for our site to be highly customized to our specific needs relative to a managed assigned counsel office.

Shannon Evans

Executive Director

Lubbock Private Defenders Office

LPDO efficiently serves indigent clients across Lubbock County, Texas using a suite of legal tools tuned to their precise needs.

The Software That Keeps Mobile Tours Running Smoothly

2021-10-04T00:00:00Z

Few vehicles draw as much attention as the venerable Wienermobile. The giant hotdog-on-wheels logs thousands of miles a year criss-crossing the United States, generating a plethora of smiles and social media shares along the way.

Behind the scenes, the Kraft Heinz team does a lot of work to keep things moving. Their responsibilities include scheduling consumer and employee event requests, managing fleet logistics, and of course, mining data to find the most impactful locations.

Wrangling all these moving parts is a daunting task. That’s why Kraft Heinz uses MainEvent for Mobile Tours: to streamline their work out in the field.

The same software is used by Verizon, UScellular, US Air Force, Deep Eddy Vodka, and PNC to run their mobile tours, too.

Simplified VOCA Reporting for Non-Profits

2021-08-16T00:00:00Z

The Collaborate team is dedicated to providing non-profit software that saves time and makes social workers’ lives easier. This concept is especially important during reporting season, when organizations need to provide accurate, aggregate data to funders about the people they’ve served.

To that end, the team recently worked with local and federal VOCA Administrators - the folks who fund victim services agencies - to create a new Standard VOCA Report.

The report is simple to use, runs in seconds, and can be updated automatically as funder requirements change.

I am very pleased with Collaborate's VOCA Report and appreciate that I can rely more on the 'one click' function...I appreciate the efforts of Collaborate/Network Ninja in helping to make the reporting process more manageable!

Chrisie Sherrard

Assistant Director

Barren River Area Child Advocacy Center

Read more about the new report that’s helping non-profits.

Innovative Field Marketing Tools to Manage Event Requests

2021-08-09T00:00:00Z

Field marketing teams often have to deal with a lot of moving parts. From tour vehicles and giveaways to choosing the right locations to activate, it can be overwhelming to manage a successful campaign.

That’s why the MainEvent team created the Event/Asset Request Tool. It empowers sales teams, agencies, and even consumer brand fanatics to submit requests from any device - meaning marketers will always be able to put the right assets at the right places at the right times.

This tool is in daily use by Kraft Heinz to run its Wienermobile program (you may have heard of it), along with many other successful field activities.

Mining Data to Optimize Public Defender Caseloads

2021-07-30T00:00:00Z

Public defenders face a glut of demand for their services, coupled with a limited supply of attorneys. Hence why it’s so important for them to smartly allocate staff time.

The City of Aurora, Colorado, Public Defender’s Office is using LegalServer to do just that. With specialized time tracking and reporting tools, administrators gain a window into how attorneys are utilized, and can compare those numbers against Colorado state workload standards.

The reports that have been run over the last few months have allowed supervisors to identify caseloads per attorney and understand how the work is being distributed throughout the office as well as how much time is being spent on particular case types.

Douglas Wilson

Chief Public Defender

Aurora Public Defender's Office

With more time to serve clients, Aurora’s Public Defenders can better ensure equal justice under the law.

The Ideal Way for Non-Profits to Track Prevention, Outreach, and Trainings

2021-06-18T00:00:00Z

Social services organizations do a lot for their communities, but it’s not always easy to quantify those efforts. When Denver Children’s Advocacy Center approached the Collaborate team recently about a way to log and report on activities that don’t typically involve direct services to clients, a new piece of functionality was born: the Activity Module.

https://vimeo.com/524552861

The Activity Module has been very helpful in streamlining our data entry and it is very convenient having all of our data in one place. We love the flexibility that the module allows in adding new types of activities.

Zach Carlson

Director of Finance & Operations

Denver Children's Advocacy Center

Denver CAC is now tracking all kinds of data with the new module, including:

Prevention,
Group mental health consultation,
Support groups,
Trainings,
Community events, and
Outreach efforts for new partnerships.

Check out the full story from the advocates themselves.

Addressing the Data Needs of Modern Experiential Agencies

2021-06-17T00:00:00Z

As the experiential and field marketing world adjusts to the “new normal”, a growing crop of forward-thinking agencies are choosing MainEvent to manage their programs.

One such agency is Mash Live, which is using MainEvent to track metrics like Mass Impressions, Engagements, and Consumer Quotes for customers including T-Mobile and MetroPCS.

MainEvent makes our process smoother and keeps the clients happy. It has put us a step above the rest and we just need to continue tweaking it as best we can to tailor it to our needs and their wants.

Nani Rogers

Regional Field Managerr

Mash Live

More agencies that have chosen MainEvent recently include:

Engage & Resonate, an experiential agency focused on driving purchase intent,
Inspira Marketing, a full-service marketing company with a special emphasis on community work,
Vitro, a creative advertising agency that prides itself on grabbing market share,
Wheelhouse Marketing, an impassioned firm connecting brands and consumers,
CLAMOR, a strategic marketing and experiential agency that crafts memorable experiences, and
Star One Events, a firm laser focused on nuanced, authentic spirits events.

Meet the lineup of fresh clients using MainEvent to make data-driven field marketing decisions.

Protecting the Legal Rights of Canada's Disadvantaged

2021-06-16T00:00:00Z

When people in British Columbia, Canada face workplace discrimination, or are otherwise disadvantaged and in need of legal assistance, Community Legal Assistance Society (CLAS) is there to help.

CLAS has been serving its community since 1971, but a newer program of theirs is called Sexual Harassment Advice, Response, and Prevention (SHARP) for Workplaces. It offers free legal help to anyone in B.C. facing sexual harassment in their workplace, and the program uses LegalServer to holistically manage its efforts.

LegalServer greatly improves the ability for the staff to work efficiently as a team, eliminates the need for paper files, and has been fantastic for reporting to the Board, donor and track information to help inform our outreach.

Jennifer Kohr

Supervising Lawyer

SHARP Workplaces at CLAS

With flexibility, time savings, and support from LegalServer staff and the user community, SHARP Workplaces is making a bigger difference in their community. Get the full scoop here.

We Ran & Biked Up Mount Everest (34 Times)

2021-05-07T00:00:00Z

You know the old saying, “A company that exercises together, stays together”? Ok, maybe no one says that. But here at Network Ninja, many of us definitely do exercise together - virtually.

Ever the data nerds at heart, a dozen or so of us diligently log our fitness activities on Strava, an exercise tracking platform. Check out our profiles below, and give us a follow if you’re so inclined.

Marcel Appelman 🚴‍♂️
Scott Swafford 🏃‍♂️
Marisa Vande Velde 🚴‍♀️
John Williams 🏃‍♂️
Stephen Dolloff 🏃‍♂️
Brooke Steinbock 🏃‍♀️
Jon Snell 🚴‍♂️
Matthew Bochneak 🚴‍♂️ 🏃‍♂️
Mike Matz 🚴‍♂️ 🏃‍♂️
Andy Plax 🚴‍♂️
Brian Schinazi 🚴‍♂️
Michael Hofrichter 🚴‍♂️
Tom Reese 🚴‍♂️

Staying Connected

Many of our cyclists and runners post GPS data from wearables and other mobile devices. Some of us also sync indoor activities from external apps like Peloton and Zwift.

We use the Network Ninja Strava Club to keep up with our colleagues, and sometimes share music recommendations.

Sorry that no one actually answered your question there, Scott. Moving on, let’s take a quick look at the Recent Activity feed, where we find a variety of workouts, such as:

Brisk 11-mile lunchtime runs (definitely will work up an appetite there),
Leisurely 2-mile weekend walks (no doubt enjoying some lovely spring weather), and
Pulse-pounding 3-hour competitive bike races (not my thing, but ok).

A few of us even ran a half marathon together in Santa Monica last year during our annual company meet-up. It was an impromptu decision - we met in the hotel lobby the morning of, and made our way down to Ocean Avenue to the start line. Good times!

Compiling & Analyzing the Numbers

When you see a colleague doing well, it inspires you to push harder. The results of this circle of motivation across a full year are pretty impressive, so allow us to bask in the glory that is our 2020 exercise data.

Wow, Much Movement

Last year, we logged 1,675 Total Activities. That’s over 9 activities per month, per person.

Like this chart? It was generated in MainEvent by a non-developer.

Around the World

Our 18,806 Total Miles traversed by bike and foot equates to traveling three-quarters of the way around the earth. That’s like going from Chicago, to Seoul, to Istanbul, to Cape Town, to Madagascar. What a ride.

Duration, Duration, Duration

Our Total Activity Time of 1,762 hours would be like exercising non-stop for 73 days. Imagine how much sweat we could’ve collected using this silly thing.

Such Great Heights

With a Total Elevation Gain of 989,383 feet, we essentially climbed Mt. Everest 34 times. And we didn’t need a single sherpa to guide us.

You guessed it, this chart was generated in MainEvent too (no developer needed).

Annual Exercise Awards (The “Ninjies”)

Exercising is hard. Everyone deserves credit for the work they’ve done, but these are our biggest standouts. Drumroll, please…

🏆 Running Machine Award

Collaborate Data Analyst Scott Swafford led all runners with 1,408 miles across 229 runs. Our legs are getting tired just thinking about it.

Scott, why did you run over 1,400 miles last year?

“That’s kind of personal. I need dinner first.”

Honorable mention: MainEvent Developer John Williams (1,217 miles, 209 runs).

🏆 Most Likely to Need Oxygen Award

Marcel Appelman, Front-End Developer for LegalServer (and MainEvent and Collaborate), posted club-best Total Elevation Gains of 350,709 feet in 2020. The ensuing downhills must’ve been pretty sweet.

Marcel, how did you climb so high?

“Did it all on Zwift. I desperately wanted the ‘Tron’ bike (which is a great bike for Zwift races). In order to unlock it, you have to climb a ridiculous amount. So I rode up Alpe du Zwift (virtual copy of famous Alpe d’Huez climb) a LOT of times. Sadly, I did not see the Yeti.”

Note: Marcel got a shoutout recently on this cycling podcast discussing how Strava was built (skip to timestamp 34:36 for his mention).

🏆 Most Dedicated Logger Award

Collaborate Business Analyst Brooke Steinbock posted an impressive 589 miles across 135 runs last year. Even more impressively, she recorded a 0.29-mile evening walk. Every. Step. Counts.

Brooke, you logged a 10-minute walk in Strava. Can you explain the philosophy behind this move?

"Haha! I log my cool down walks after runs. Actually, I log a lot of walks around town. It’s because during this pandemic I signed up for several run challenges, where the goal is not only to run, but to get out and move by foot in any way you choose. The challenges help keep me accountable because I know all other participants can see if I’ve been out being active, or just hanging out at home in front of the TV. 🙂

Another reason to log my walks post-run is to track my heart rate recovery speed (Apple Watch will do this for you, but I use a Garmin for the better running metrics)."

🏆 Minutes Master Award

MainEvent Developer Mike Matz exercised for a club-record 5,570 minutes (~93 hours!) last year. He biked, he ran, he swam, he surfed, he got seriously hurt - but he kept coming back for more.

Mike, how did you stay active while recovering from your latest injury?

“I woke up early to go on long walks until I got the plaster cast off, then slowly transitioned to riding my bike in my garage with Zwift.”

🏆 Least Active Award

Definitely me! Tom Reese, Collaborate Content Manager and your humble blogger, managed just 21 workout activities last year.

Tom, why didn’t you exercise more?

“Great question, Tom. I’ve been asking myself the same thing.”

Want to join our Strava Club? We need to hire you first, so send us your resume.

Inside Collaborate's New Concierge Service

2020-12-09T00:00:00Z

For over 20 years, the Collaborate team has provided comprehensive case management software to Children’s Advocacy Centers, Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault Programs, and many other social services organizations.

In working with hundreds of non-profits, Collaborate analysts recently identified a common need in the space: to outsource difficult, time-consuming, and often data-intensive tasks. Their solution is called Collaborate Concierge.

https://vimeo.com/477572556

The Concierge service allows organizations to:

Maximize their Collaborate data with Annual Reports, Dashboards, and Coverage Maps
Professionally plan Outcomes & KPIs
Quickly onboard new Staff with Collaborate
Avoid having to hire full-time Administrators to solve complex issues - saving time & money

Get the full scoop on how Concierge is helping social services agencies do their best work.

Better Software Helping Colorado's Disabled Population

2020-12-08T00:00:00Z

Established back in 1990 by a group of disability activists, the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition (CCDC) advocates for civil and human rights for disabled people across the state. In fact, the organization is run exclusively by folks with disabilities themselves, making CCDC a true expert in the field with a close personal connection to the issues.

Replacing an antiquated, sluggish case management system with LegalServer has yielded many benefits for CDCC. With one integrated system to enter, track, and report on critical data, their advocates are saving time while providing more comprehensive services to clients.

The ability to Prescreen and Refer in LegalServer has really helped us determine how many of the inquiries we receive we will take to a full Intake. We are also using the Grants Management, Documents, and Donations features, allowing us to consolidate other data into one place.

Shannon Secrest

Deputy Director

Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition

CDCC’s work benefits over 500,000 disabled Colorado residents. Here’s how they’re using LegalServer to streamline everything they do.

Collaborate Expands to More Child Service Programs

2020-11-05T00:00:00Z

Developing specialized software for Child Advocates is the Collaborate team’s speciality. When long-time client Children’s Advocacy Centers of Georgia (CACGA) asked for a tailored solution to support a new initiative - a statewide response to Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) - we jumped at the chance.

The result is a multi-network approach where CSEC Programs, CACs, and Law Enforcement SVUs can securely and efficiently store and track information in their siloed Collaborate environments - and share data, if desired.

Collaborate is a game changer for CACGA's Statewide CSEC Response initiative. Our team is able to make customizable changes as we increase service delivery and provide more accurate statistical reporting to our grant funders and stakeholders.

Heidi Reese-Anderson

Director Of Program Services

Children's Advocacy Centers of Georgia

Check out all the details over on the Collaborate website.

KraftHeinz Runs its Wienermobile & Nutmobile Programs with MainEvent

2020-11-03T00:00:00Z

KraftHeinz’s Wienermobile and Nutmobile (likely the most popular novelty vehicles on earth) log tens of thousands of miles a year. Led by six teams of Hotdoggers and three teams of Peanutters, they motor across the country, spreading cheer from Portland to Miami, and everywhere in between.

Managing teams, events, requests, communication, and data required a sophisticated software solution - which KraftHeinz found in MainEvent. Key features of the platform include:

Consumer-facing Microsites
Event Request Management
Automated Notifications
Dashboards & Calendars

Our scheduling, event management and analytics were taken to a new level. We look forward to an on-going relationship with MainEvent as our programs continue to evolve.

Ed Roland Sr

Experiential Marketing Manager

KraftHeinz

For the full scoop, read the KraftHeinz case study.

Using LegalServer's API Integrations to Help Vulnerable Kids

2020-11-02T00:00:00Z

Co-Founded by Microsoft Corporation and Angelina Jolie, Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) works to meet the needs of unaccompanied migrant children in the United States. With legal, social, and advocacy services, KIND takes a holistic approach to its mission, often using technology to augment their efforts.

KIND first teamed up with LegalServer back in 2015 on a case management software project, and several API integrations have followed. Using Microsoft tools like Teams and Power BI, KIND brings its LegalServer data to the forefront - benefitting the entire organization.

By using the LegalServer Reports API, we open up this rich data to all staff and enable it to be used in many different ways to further our mission.

Michelle Giezeman

Senior Director of Data Strategy

Kids in Need of Defense

It’s a wonderful thing when multiple software platforms play well together. See how they did it.

Collaborate's New SMS Reminders Keep Clients in the Know

2020-10-13T00:00:00Z

In a mobile-first world, the most effective way to stay in touch with Clients and Staff is through their mobile phones. SMS Reminders (which boast open rates approaching 98%) are ideal for sharing reminders about upcoming Events - and they’re now available in Collaborate.

Collaborate Users can turn on SMS Reminders for any Calendar entries, like upcoming Tasks or Services. When they receive these alerts, recipients are more likely to:

Be on time for Service Appointments,
Remember assigned Tasks, and
Attend important Events.

Get the full scoop on how this new feature works in Collaborate right here.

Managing Physical Marketing Assets with MainEvent

2020-09-24T00:00:00Z

The MainEvent team keeps its finger firmly on the pulse of the experiential & field marketing world, and simplifying complex workflows is their speciality.

Historically, one of the hardest things for marketers to manage has been physical assets (think product displays or trade show booth lighting rigs). The new asset management module solves these issues once and for all.

https://vimeo.com/446763775

With this system, marketers can:

View asset profile details, schedules, and history reports
Manage warehouse contents and costs
Simplify asset requests and fulfillment
Track shipments of assets across the country
Stay updated with notifications
Measure the value of assets used out in the field

Filterable asset management dashboards can also track statistics, schedules, inventories, and shipments, complete with filters - keeping key data at users’ fingertips.

Productivity Soars for Disability Rights Legal Center

2020-09-23T00:00:00Z

Sluggish software can be a serious serious drain on productivity. The Disability Rights Legal Center (DRLC) - which protects the rights of those with disabilities and cancer - is just one of many legal aid agencies that have struggled with this reality.

DRLC’s legacy case management system lacked both speed and flexibility. The organization needed a major upgrade to better serve more than 4,000 clients each year, and they found it in LegalServer.

Staff productivity has increased, as they can complete processes much faster than before, because they spend less time troubleshooting or working with a slow database. Running reports is so much easier and faster.

Anabel Prudencio

Manager of Administration

Disability Rights Legal Center

With LegalServer’s Administrator tools, DRLC also has the power to customize their application when requirements change. Along the way, the LegalServer team continues to provide expert training and support. The result: higher productivity through better usability.

Researchers Look to Improve Child Abuse Response with Collaborate

2020-09-23T00:00:00Z

The Collaborate team is always excited about opportunities to mine data to better serve victims of abuse. Now, Children’s Advocacy Centers of Georgia and the University of Kentucky are embarking on a study to do just that, using standardized assessments integrated into statewide case management software.

CANS Assessments are a set of evaluation tools developed by the John Praed Foundation, which allow social workers to screen children based on:

Individual Strengths,
Life Functioning,
Behavioral/Emotional Needs,
and Risk Behaviors Domains.

By linking these factors with individualized Service plans, advocates can dramatically improve Client care. CANS-specific Reports facilitate this process, making Collaborate an ideal platform for Child Advocates and researchers alike.

MainEvent's Field Staffing App is a Game Changer

2020-08-01T00:00:00Z

Staffing is typically one of the most difficult aspects of field marketing to manage. That’s because it incorporates so many different variables - from scheduling and recapping to payroll and expenses.

MainEvent’s Staff App integrates all these systems, empowering field staff and brand ambassadors to do their best work.

https://vimeo.com/429793138

A few of the key features of the MainEvent Staffing App include:

Viewing upcoming shifts
Maps/locations for each activity
Details for all executions
Complete all recaps, questionnaires, and surveys
Submit payroll hours and expenses

Another highlight of the Staff App is offline mode, which allows users to complete and submit recaps, hours, and expenses without an internet connection - which is a game changer for many agencies and brands.

City of Chicago Taps LegalServer for EEO Case Management

2020-07-25T00:00:00Z

Until recently, the EEO divisions of Chicago’s Department of Human Resources and the Commission on Human Relations were struggling to keep proper track of cases. This isn’t surprising, given the complex laws and regulations surrounding Equal Employment Opportunity.

When these departments adopted LegalServer, however, their ability to process discrimination and harassment complaints were significantly streamlined. Better reporting has improved case visibility as well.

LegalServer's report capabilities make it easy to track the progress of our cases and identify trends.

Mark Pando

EEO Officer

City of Chicago

Chicago is also using LegalServer for Conflict Resolution Services (CRS) case management, further enhancing their efficiency gains. By automating many manual processes and leveraging data to drive decision-making, the city is better able to service important cases - saving taxpayers money in the process.

Collaborate 2.0 Delivers Many Prominent Enhancements

2020-07-23T00:00:00Z

The Collaborate team is dedicated to delivering exceptional software and service to organizations that do social good. With that goal in mind, they recently rolled out the biggest and best software update to date: Collaborate 2.0.

https://vimeo.com/429774473

Over 400 Sites have been updated to version 2.0, empowering more than 10,000 Users with a slew of new features, including:

A speedy new interface
A revamped Reports module
Visualization options like pie charts, bar charts, and line charts
Mobile support for smartphones and tablets
Page loads that are twice as fast

After years in development, 2.0 is now a reality - so be sure to check out all the enhancements in this exciting new version of Collaborate.

Visual Dashboards Keep Important Data at Marketers' Fingertips

2020-07-22T00:00:00Z

Successful experiential and field marketing campaigns require well-coordinated efforts. Marketers have to deftly manage staffing, budgets, assets, recaps, and much more - all while mining data to drive the next big campaign.

Inspired by user feedback, MainEvent’s new Dashboard Builder helps marketers quickly analyze and digest their most important data in an intuitive, easy-to-use way.

https://vimeo.com/425402091

With these Dashboards, data can be visually expressed in a myriad of formats, including:

Bar charts, line graphs, and pie charts
Maps, agendas, and calendars
Photos, videos, and text message updates

Bottom line: MainEvent’s enhanced Dashboards allow marketers to produce what they need in the way they envision it - without the need for third-party reporting platforms.

Flexibile Case Management Tools are Key for This Legal Aid Firm

2020-07-21T00:00:00Z

Helping tens of thousands of low-income clients speaking 30+ languages gain access to legal services each year is no easy task.

Bet Tzedek - a Los Angeles-based non-profit law firm - is up to the challenge. Their mission is to provide access to justice and basic necessities for the area’s most vulnerable citizens.

Until recently, however, these attorneys and advocates had a major problem: they were too tied to their physical office due to antiquated, inflexible case management software. But that all changed once the firm adopted LegalServer’s suite of adaptable tools.

We can serve our clients, anywhere! Now attorneys that are out in the field can enter their data immediately, thus reducing the need for admin staff and time at the office.

Diego Cartagena

President & CEO

Bet Tzedek Legal Services

With customizable modules that cover everything from staff management to grant reporting, Bet Tezdek’s community advocacy is amplified by LegalServer.

Serving At-Risk Kids in the Age of COVID

2020-07-20T00:00:00Z

Empowered with specialized software tools, our diverse users often come up with innovative solutions to solve difficult real-world problems.

The latest such innovation comes by way of the Children’s Legacy Center (CLC), a California-based Children’s Advocacy Center. CLC, along with other local advocates, recently noticed a major downturn in the number of child welfare referrals amid the COVID-19 lockdown.

Children’s Legacy Center CEO Kimberly Johnson responded by creating a special COVID-19 Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) to track referrals from teachers and school administrators - and it’s all managed in Collaborate.

Keeping track of so many moving parts amid the pandemic was incredibly challenging. Collaborate not only made it possible for us, but they updated their system so efficiently and quickly that we had no time delay.

Kimberly Johnson

CEO

Children's Legacy Center

Get the full scoop on this important initiative over on the Collaborate website.

MainEvent Users Can Now Build Their Own Complex Recaps

2020-07-01T00:00:00Z

The MainEvent team is focused on providing field and experiential marketing teams with innovative ways to record and mine important data. This emphasis on continually bringing additional value to clients has led to a number of new tools recently, including the Complex Recap Builder.

This hands-on tool lets Users build exactly what Recaps they need, in the way they need it for the field, to support just about any data-driven request. Key benefits include:

Using logic trees to build complex Recap responses,
Access to dozens of fields types, like currency, dates, numbers, and images, and
Online and offline support.

To see the Complex Recaps Tool in action, check out the full post over on the MainEvent website.

Attorneys Turn to Big Data to Fight Poverty

2020-06-29T00:00:00Z

In a legal system skewed toward the wealthy, legal advocates fighting poverty need to be smart about how they allocate resources.

LegalServer’s specialized data mining tools are helping East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC) make data-driven decisions - while pleasing their grantors along the way. “LegalServer has improved our ability to integrate data into our storytelling and communicate our real impact to funders,” says EBCLC Data Scientist Lawrence Karongo.

EBCLC also trains over 150 law students each year in their clinics, preparing the next generation of advocates to continue the fight. LegalServer helps streamline and manage those operations, too.

Bottom line: with LegalServer’s advanced reporting features and tailored modules, EBCLC is able to quantify their work in the community.

Hundreds of Child Advocates Learn at Collaborate's National Online Training

2020-06-29T00:00:00Z

The Collaborate team had planned to be out in force at the 37th International Symposium on Child Abuse in March 2020. Along with two booths to interact with attendees, a special day-long Collaborate National Training was on tap as well.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The Symposium, along with so many other events this year, was smartly cancelled (fingers crossed for 2021!).

Undeterred, Collaborate developers, analysts, trainers, and support staff decided to take their training online. A bonus was that many more Users from across the country could attend the online event - and they showed up in great numbers. Over 400 child advocates from more than 100 CACs took part in the event, which covered topics like:

Working remotely with Collaborate,
Staying secure and customizing the software, and
Tips to maintain HIPAA compliance.

Check out the full recap of the National Training over on the Collaborate website.

MainEvent is Up to the Challenges Facing the Experiential Marketing World

2020-04-30T00:00:00Z

At Network Ninja, we pride ourselves on being responsive to customers’ ever-changing needs. This is particularly important during uncertain times within an industry - and today’s climate in the experiential and field marketing space certainly qualifies.

MainEvent Product Lead Andy Plax recently penned a very personal blog post outlining our response to these challenges, which includes a rundown of how he’s faring in his own quarantined household, along with specific ways the MainEvent team is stepping up to help marketers do their jobs better.

Some key takeaways from Andy’s letter include:

Things are a little crazy in the Plax household right now
32 new MainEvent features launched in the past few months
The team continues to try and exceed customers’ expectations
Everyone is pushing ahead, despite ongoing uncertainties

Check out the full post over on the MainEvent website.

Is Your Legal Software Highly Usable?

2020-04-05T00:00:00Z

Software usability isn’t a topic you’ll typically find many lawyers discussing, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important.

In fact, usability - defined as “the extent to which software can be used to effectively and efficiently achieve users’ objectives” - is directly related to attorneys’ ability to meet clients’ legal needs. That’s because most legal aid and public defense advocates are overloaded with demand for their services.

Through hundreds of engagements, and working with thousands of attorneys, we've found a way to configure case management software that makes it highly usable for every user.

Aaron Krause

Director of Legal Solutions

LegalServer

A recent study found that it can take up to 23 minutes to get back on task after a single distraction, which is something these attorneys can’t afford. That’s why the LegalServer team is laser focused on providing software to keep advocates on task, while automating as much of their workflows as possible.

Social Workers are Quantifying More Than Ever in Collaborate

2020-04-02T00:00:00Z

The Collaborate community often comes up with innovative ways to use the software to support their social services goals. In the Palmetto State, for example, CAC/MDT Development Coordinator Nicole Williams is tracking Speaking Engagements - such as when she does educational outreach in schools - and is training others in her network to do the same.

Nicole works for the South Carolina Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers, which supports 17 member centers in their goal to “empower SC Communities & CACs to deliver a best practice response to child abuse.” She’s taken the initiative to keep users up-to-date with the latest Collaborate features in what she calls her Tip of the Week.

Nicole’s tip for tracking Speaking Engagements involves a quick 6-step process, which you can read about over on the Collaborate website.

MainEvent & Grassroots Bring Big Data to the Cannabis Industry

2020-02-06T00:00:00Z

Traditional business sectors like food & beverage have long embraced experiential and field marketing as key drivers for new and existing product lines.

Now, the fledgling legal cannabis space is entering this world as well - with a particular interest in data mining.

Grassroots Cannabis recently signed on with MainEvent to handle all of its executions across initiatives like dispensary openings, trade shows, and product demos. An integrated software platform is in development that will include:

Tailored data-gathering tools,
Configurable Recaps,
Dashboard charts and stats, and
Organized, clear Reports from multiple channels.

As the largest private cannabis company in America, Grassroots is vertically integrated and growing fast. Read more about how MainEvent is helping to support this expansion over on their website.

A Look Inside LegalServer's National Training Event

2020-02-03T00:00:00Z

When it comes to mastering case management software, there’s no substitute for in-person training.

One of the best opportunities for facetime with LegalServer’s case management experts is at their annual National Training event, where users gather to try out new features, hone their skills, and share ideas in an interactive forum.

It’s safe to say that 2019’s verion - graciously hosted by Legal Aid Chicago - was the biggest and best training yet. The sold-out summit drew 55 attendees from across the country to engage in topics like Forecasting & Dashboards, advanced problem solving, and Pro Bono Tools. Special attention was also paid this year to community collaboration.

It was great to see so many people coming together to share ideas about new ways to use LegalServer. We all want to serve more clients and do our work more efficiently, and the conference was a great opportunity for people to learn ways to do both.

Vivian Hessel

Chief Information Officer

Legal Aid Chicago

Dig deeper into LegalServer’s recent training topics over at their website.

An Advanced Collaborate Implementation Strategy for Arkansas CACs

2020-01-22T00:00:00Z

Over the past 20+ years working with Children’s Advocacy Centers (CACs), the Collaborate team has learned quite a few best practices.

From streamlining Intakes to building standardized Reports for grant funders, certain common factors in CAC case management crop up over and over again. Collaborate developers and analysts, constantly looking to refine their processes, came upon an idea: how about a standardized software experience for CACs?

Enter the forward-thinking folks at Children’s Advocacy Centers of Arkansas, a group of 17 centers serving over 6,000 children and their families each year. In choosing a “Best Practices” implementation based on the collective wisdom of over 400 CACs before them, the 11th statewide CAC network to adopt Collaborate will:

Go-Live faster with less effort needed from their team,
Gain quick access to streamlined workflows, and
Tap 1-click Reports for grant funding and other purposes.

Read the full story to see how CACs of Arkansas is helping shape the future of Collaborate.

MainEvent's Andy Plax Talks Experiential Marketing's Past, Present, and Future

2019-10-02T00:00:00Z

Very few people have been in the experiential and field marketing space as long as Andy Plax of MainEvent. In fact, his two-decade tenure predates the “experiential marketing” term itself.

Andy’s seen a lot of changes in the industry over the years, and he recently sat down with marketing connoisseur Chris Clegg on the Demystifying Data podcast to discuss clients’ shifting requirements - and MainEvent’s evolving role in the arena.

People are looking at experiential marketing as something much more tangible than they were years ago. They're focusing on goals, and want to use software to figure out 'did we get what we paid for?'

Andy Plax

MainEvent Product Lead

Network Ninja

Head over to the MainEvent website to listen to the two-part series, and if you like what you hear, consider subscribing to Demystifying Data for more great marketing content.

LegalServer is Saving Time for Public Defenders

2019-10-01T00:00:00Z

LegalServer includes many time-saving features, from streamlined client Intake through intuitive Reports - and everything in between. The case management software of choice for Civil Legal Aid firms is now making significant inroads in the Public Defender space as well - and attorneys are taking note.

“We transitioned to LegalServer from another platform used by many public defenders across the U.S.,” says attorney Patrick Feldman, who works for a high-volume criminal defense firm in the Pacific Northwest. “There are multiple features built into LegalServer that now allow us to be more efficient in case handling.”

“With LegalServer’s web-based system, we can now obtain and update case information while in court, saving a lot of time in not having to re-type,” Feldman notes. Internal communication has also improved, and multiple staff members can now generate important Reports - all within a system configured precisely for the firm’s needs.

Check out the full story to see how LegalServer streamlines and automates Public Defenders’ work so they can spend more time serving clients.

Illinois & New York Statewide CAC Networks Join the Collaborate Family

2019-09-30T00:00:00Z

Collaborate now counts ten statewide Children’s Advocacy Center networks among its growing client base, as Children’s Advocacy Centers of Illinois (CACI) and New York State Children’s Alliance (NYSCA) have signed on to implement smarter case management software across dozens of individual centers.

CACI supports 39 CACs that serve tens of thousands of clients in Illinois annually. The organization will Go-Live with Collaborate in the winter of 2019/2020 with integrations for their Outcome Management System (OMS) - a custom framework the organization developed to measure outcomes and improve case investigation efficiency.

NYSCA provides training, support, and resources to 40 Children’s Advocacy Centers throughout the Empire State. These centers, which impacted over 23,000 clients last year, will begin rolling out the software in early 2020.

To see why so many non-profits are choosing “better data, better outcomes” with Collaborate, read the full story.

How to Create a Rewarding Remote Team Gathering

2019-09-13T00:00:00Z

Everyone here at Network Ninja works remotely. Once a year, each of our three product teams get together in person for a few days - plus we have one big company-wide bash every January. After several years of running these meetups, we’ve learned a few things about what makes them successful.

Below, you’ll find some of our best practices for conducting a team gathering, along with specific examples from the Collaborate team’s latest fruitful meetup.

Choose the Right Location and Accommodations

The host city for your meetup should be easy to fly or drive to, and offer a good blend of dining and entertainment options. If you’re booking hotel rooms, aim for lodging that’s centrally located and relatively close to the airport - this will cut down on travel time dramatically, and increase walkability to local attractions.

Where We Met

Following last year’s happy annual gathering in Portland, Oregon, the Collaborate crew returned to the City of Roses in August 2019. A well-appointed conference room at the Dossier Hotel (where we also lodged) proved an ideal meeting space, while the city itself served up endless opportunities for friends, food, and fun.

Trip Tip: Double (and Triple) Up

If you find a great city and venue that works well for your team, why not go back again and again? It’s much easier to re-book everything each year rather than starting from scratch - plus your group will enjoy the tradition of returning to a familiar place.

Make it Meaningful

Why are you having a conference in the first place? Take the opportunity to remind yourselves why you work for this company, and with each other. Recap recent milestones and recognize team members for their contributions. Callouts over Slack or email are nice, but in-person kudos are far more substantial and memorable.

Why We Work Together

Collaborate clients include hundreds of Children’s Advocacy Centers and other non-profits dedicated to helping deserving people. We support these selfless folks via tailored case management software that makes their lives easier, improves data accuracy, and helps influence outcomes. That’s why we do what we do - in our own way, to have a positive impact on society.

After over 20 years of being “in the trenches” with Children's Advocacy Centers, I started to think maybe it was time for a change of scenery. At the same time, I didn't want to completely leave the CAC world - that's why I came to work for Network Ninja.

Ted Buckenham

Collaborate Trainer & Former CAC Executive Director

Network Ninja

For our Portland meetup, lead developer Tyler Lannom thoughtfully assembled a very detailed recap of the team’s accomplishments - including individual callouts for each member - from the first seven months of the year. We knew we’d been busy, but the data was eye-popping.

From January 2019 through July 2019…

3 New members added to the Collaborate team
13 New Collaborate client implementations launched
1,396 Hours spent supporting existing implementations
523,000 Case records imported into Collaborate

Trip Tip: Pack Some Data with Your Luggage

Numbers matter. Use your meetup to highlight the tangible results your team has achieved recently. After all, no one will know just how much you’ve accomplished until you compile the data and present it in a meaningful way.

Purposefully Plan Your Workdays

With your group in one place, it’s a perfect time to focus on high-level items that are difficult to tackle amid everyone’s day-to-day responsibilities. These engaging in-person discussions aren’t “meetings” - they’re a practical and efficient opportunity to work through complex topics and make important decisions.

In between conversations, take plenty of breaks for snacks, beverages, and off-topic exercises. If you get this part right, it won’t feel like work at all.

Our meetings in Portland were extremely productive. We really enjoyed each other's company, and it was inspiring to see an already close team pull even tighter to solve big problems.

Tom Reese

Content & Marketing Manager

Network Ninja

What We Talked About

Some of the topics Collaborate developers and analysts tackled in Portland included:

A standardized app for CACs,
The future of data migration, and
A deep dive into our security policy.

Emphasis on Data Security

At Network Ninja, we take our clients’ security very seriously - not just because our business depends on it, but because we believe data privacy is a human right.

Since we deal with sensitive data on a daily basis, we regularly review our security policy with all employees. It’s not glamorous, but it works. Avoiding phishing and social engineering, keeping our laptops and home networks secure, and using password managers are a few of the many ways we help ensure our clients’ data security.

The Collaborate team even created a HIPAA primer to help non-profits maintain their data compliance.

If you’re concerned about your organization’s data safety, or you’d like to learn more about our security practices, reach out to us.

Trip Tip: Hammer Home a Topic That Bears Repeating

Identify one important concept that you want your team members to internalize, and review it in detail during your gathering. Encourage people to ask questions during the discussion, providing real-world examples of how issues might arise - and the proper ways to deal with them.

Schedule Some Fun Stuff (but Leave Room for Spontaneity)

Your work gathering shouldn’t be entirely about work. It’s also a chance to have fun together, share delicious meals, and create lasting memories. Your good times don’t need to be 100% planned, but booking a dinner reservation and a specific team outing will definitely be appreciated.

Make sure you leave some free time for your colleagues to navigate their own paths, too. Part of the fun of meetups is exploring a city together and going on impromptu adventures (bonus points if you bring a Nintendo Switch or board games for late-night fun).

What Fun We Had

The highlight of our Portland culinary travels was a visit to Nimblefish. Best…sushi…ever. In fact, we were so blown away by the cuisine (and saké) that we forgot to take any pictures of it, so here’s one courtesy of Nimblefish.

We’re on a boat! Matt Bochneak, our product lead, was nice enough to send out a survey beforehand to make sure everyone was comfortable going out on the water.

Trip Tip: Ensure Outings are Inclusive

Carefully consider the tastes, needs, and limitations of all of your team members prior to planning an outing. If you’re unsure if everyone is comfortable with a certain activity, a poll in your Slack channel can provide some insight.

Fore! We spontaneously decided on a round of miniature golf at The 19th Hole, which includes a food truck and outdoor beer garden.

Yahtzee! Board games that involve lots of strategy and teamwork are a big part of our company culture. In Portland, we competed in many rousing rounds of Chinatown, Blokus Trigon, Wingspan, and Codenames.

Wrapping It Up

Remote team meetups are awesome - as long as you choose the right location, make your conference meaningful, focus on tackling high-level problems, and pack in some fun activities. If you follow this simple framework, your team will be talking about the trip for months afterward, and won’t be able to wait for the next one.

Why We Meet

Having the freedom to work from our home offices across the country is great, but gathering together is a welcome change of pace.

Meeting up is very important to us, because it’s so fun and productive to spend facetime with our colleagues. The Collaborate team departed our 2019 conference more excited than ever to work together to deliver exceptional software and service. See you next year!

Trip Tip: Share Your Experience with Everyone

Make note of what elements of your team outing worked well, and those that didn’t. Share these insights with other teams in your organization so they can use them for their own gatherings.

Encourage everyone to take plenty of pictures throughout the trip, and have one member be your designated photographer. Compile the photos and publish them somewhere - either internally, or better yet, within an interesting blog post that expresses your team’s culture.

Automated Reporting Comes to MainEvent

2019-03-29T00:00:00Z

The MainEvent team recently polled a group of users to uncover their most-wanted new functionality. The feedback from these marketers was clear: they required a simpler way to deliver results to clients.

To address this need, the Automated Reporting tool was born.

This new feature allows users to:

Save time with automatically scheduled Reports,
Access multiple delivery options with integrations and email delivery, and
Meet unique requests from customers with flexible Reporting criteria.

Learn more about Automated Reporting on the MainEvent website.

LegalServer's Houston.AI Recognized on NLJ's Emerging Technologies List

2019-03-28T00:00:00Z

LegalServer is the top software choice for civil legal aid, public defenders, and city & county law departments, but the team’s dedication to serving the legal community extends beyond just case management.

A few years ago, to address the growing needs of overworked attorneys, LegalServer created Houston.AI. Leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning, this series of web-based microservices helps automate many tasks to free up attorneys’ time so they can serve their clients better.

We’re proud to report that this innovative platform was recently named to the National Law Journal’s 2019 Emerging Technologies list, which features “leading technology companies that are changing the ways that law firms and legal departments operate.”

Learn more about this distinction over on the LegalServer website, and visit Law.com for the full write-up.

Collaborate Beefs Up Security with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

2019-03-27T00:00:00Z

Collaborate boasts a number of built-in safeguards to protect sensitive data. Firewalls, vulnerability testing, exhaustive encryption, and comprehensive logging of every change to every case are a few examples of the software’s commitment to security.

Still, the greatest threat to a system are often the users themselves. The Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) found that passwords are to blame for the vast majority of data breaches.

That’s why Collaborate offers Multi-Factor Authentication, or MFA. MFA greatly increases the security of users’ accounts by requiring a second “factor” to authenticate a login - specifically, a one-time use code generated by the user’s mobile device.

To learn more about how MFA works in Collaborate, check out the full story.

MainEvent Clients Earn “It List” Honors

2019-02-11T00:00:00Z

MainEvent is the premier cloud-based solution for experiential and field marketing agencies to manage every aspect of their campaigns. The app’s client roster is a who’s-who of the top names in the business - and we’ve got the evidence to prove it.

More than a dozen MainEvent clients have been named to Event Marketer’s annual “It List,” which the venerable publication describes as a collection of firms that deliver “exceptional experiences backed by impactful creative and well-defined strategy.”

Some of the agencies honored include Mosaic, Fusion, and Next Marketing, along with newly-minted MainEvent clients Newbridge and United Entertainment.

Head over to the MainEvent website for the full story.

LegalServer Expands to Disability Rights Management

2019-02-07T00:00:00Z

LegalServer is the go-to case management solution for civil legal aid firms and public defenders. Recently, its roster of clients expanded to include Statewide Protection and Advocacy (P&A) agencies as well - with specialized tools to better serve those in need.

Disability Rights Florida (DRF) helps the state’s disabled through a combination of “collaboration, education, advocacy, as well as legal and legislative strategies.” DRF administrators worked with LegalServer developers to tailor the software for P&A agencies, including:

A streamlined Intake with the ability to configure funder-specific forms and fields,
Funder-focused and agency-specific administrative Reports, and
Enhancements to LegalServer’s Outreaches module to facilitate special Projects.

Get the full scoop on how LegalServer is helping Statewide Protection and Advocacy (P&A) agencies over at LegalServer.org.

National Children's Advocacy Center Goes Live With Collaborate

2019-02-01T00:00:00Z

The Collaborate team provides case management software to over 300 Children’s Advocacy Centers (CACs) in their growing network, and now counts the first-ever CAC as a client as well.

The National Children’s Advocacy Center (NCAC), established back in 1985, invented the modern response to child abuse. Pioneers of the multidisciplinary team (MDT), the center serves as a model for more than 1,000 CACs across the United States and overseas.

NCAC went live with Collaborate in December 2018 with customized Intake, Reports, and Services, along with tens of thousands of migrated case records from their legacy NCA Trak database.

Collaborate has allowed NCAC to have one secure location to store MDT, Therapy, Medical, and Family Advocate files and services. MDT partners are also now able to log in and view specific information that will improve our communication and information sharing approach.

Kelli Mukaddam

Data Specialist

National Children's Advocacy Center

Learn more about NCAC’s new case management solution over on the Collaborate website.

Meeting of the Minds 2018

2019-02-01T00:00:00Z

Our remote company - now 40+ people strong - gathers once a year for a conference we call the Meeting of the Minds. The goals of the forum are simple: celebrate what we’ve accomplished during the year, share ideas across product teams (which can too easily get siloed), and spend quality time together in-person - it matters.

California, Here We Come

Like last year, the setting for MOTM 2018 was Santa Monica.

Folks traveled from across the U.S. and Canada via planes, trains, and automobiles for three days of productivity. And food. Lots of food.

Plenty of Fresh Faces

Several new members joined the Network Ninja team over the past 12 months, bolstering our development, marketing, sales, support, and client onboarding efforts.

In fact, our company grew so much that we didn’t have enough seats at the table this time (no worries, overflow seating was provided).

Andy Plax and Matt Bochneak presented a “State of the Union” for the company as a whole, and we received yearly updates - including some truly impressive milestones - for each of our three products: Collaborate, MainEvent, and LegalServer.

Network Ninja Milestones

1.4 million Cases migrated away from legacy systems and into Collaborate in 2018
120 New brands tracked in MainEvent in 2018, including Coca-Cola & Verizon
230 Organizations now live with LegalServer, from London to Hawaii

Not everything is about hitting numbers, of course. We place the biggest emphasis on teamwork, and making Network Ninja a great place for everyone to thrive.

I think that's what it means to get to the heart of our daily efforts over the past year. We don't spend 8 hours every day looking at ticking numbers. We spend every day and every week talking with people and collaborating with coworkers and working through challenges and supporting each other.

Nick LaFoy

Project Manager

MainEvent

10-Minute Miniature Mindblowers

Presenters of what we dubbed “10-Minute Miniature Mindblower” demonstrations were challenged with explaining a particular problem, describing its solution as implemented in the product, and providing logistical details that other groups might find helpful in achieving the same. Our three teams work on three very different products, so they seldom interact or share resources - this was the perfect chance to do so.

Some of our mind-blowing presentations included:

A snazzy screenshot + markup + issue reporting tool for clients (courtesy of John Williams),
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for client implementations (courtesy of Tyler Lannom),
A fun and informative UX primer called Smart UI Tricks (courtesy of Marcel Appelman),
An intuitive Guided Navigation tool (courtesy of Brian Schinazi), and
A special Staff Prospector (courtesy of Robin de Bled).

We’ll formally revisit next year, and determine what impact these efforts had - were other products able to adopt and implement with less work? Did they provoke action across the company?

Company-Wide Dinner

Our entire clan gathered inside a special banquet room, replete with massive amounts of delicious savory dishes, decadent desserts, and of course, a full bar.

We even had entertainment for the evening!

Games & More Fun

Board games are a signature Network Ninja activity. One of us was shamefully bad at Taboo (which happens to be Andy Plax’s favorite game), and had to be angrily scolded multiple times about not using hand gestures. Andy was very amused by this.

Pictionary was a crowd favorite as well.

Others took the downtime to go climbing in a local rock gym. In the code repo or up on the wall, teamwork makes the dream work.

The hotel gym even had Peloton bikes, which our cycling aficionados took full advantage of during their stay.

Team Breakouts

We broke out into our respective product teams for a full day. Early arrivals to the meeting rooms were rewarded with plenty of space and quiet.

Some things are just too difficult to hash out in Slack channels. Meeting in person helps us solve complex issues like data migration and offline functionality.

Team Dinners

Our three product groups met up separately for dinner too. These family-style meals help us get to know each other better on a personal level in a more intimate setting.

Predictably, more board games were played well into the evening.

Back to the Beach

After some uncharacteristic rain, we were blessed with the type of incredible SoCal weather the region is known for - just in time for our beach party. In the warm sun and sand, many kites were flown by little kids and big kids alike.

A Fantastic Trip with Fabulous Colleagues

After a few days of facetime and fun, we learned a lot about what makes this company so great to work for: the people. Hardworking, talented, dedicated, and skilled, we continue to inspire and support each other on a daily basis.

Saying goodbye is always bittersweet for our remote-working crew, and we can’t wait for the next Meeting of the Minds. Thankfully, each of our three product teams meet up in person once or twice a year as well, so we’ll be seeing each other again soon. Cheers!

Overheard on Slack

Spending time in person with our colleagues is very special to us. We left feeling proud about what we’ve accomplished, excited to implement new ideas across our teams, and inspired to do more great work together throughout the year.

P.S. if you want to be a part of a future Meeting of the Minds, we’re hiring.

MainEvent Powers Experiential Marketing for the Cannabis Industry

2018-10-31T00:00:00Z

A wave of legalization is quickly turning the fledgling cannabis industry from a niche market into big business. As marijuana goes mainstream, technology-focused companies in the space are smartly using specialized software to measure consumer interactions.

Two such firms recently tapped MainEvent to manage their experiential and field marketing operations. MedMen operates growing facilities and retail stores that sell cannabis and related products, while PAX Labs is on the cutting edge of loose leaf and extract vaporizers.

In today's competitive cannabis industry, experiential and field marketing can make the difference in the minds of a new and growing consumer base. We're excited to be working with premier firms in this space, tailoring MainEvent to meet their unique needs.

Nick LaFoy

MainEvent Project Manager

Network Ninja

Learn more about the competitive advantages of better software for the cannabis industry over on the newly redesigned MainEvent website.

LegalServer's Pro Bono Tools Help Match Clients with the Right Attorneys

2018-10-30T00:00:00Z

Legal aid agencies often manage hundreds of attorneys, which in turn offer pro bono legal services to thousands of people in need. Connecting these advocates with the right clients - those that require specialized help in a specific geographic area - can be cumbersome.

LegalServer’s Pro Bono Tools module simplifies the process, making it easy to find the correct attorney and assign them to a case that’s right in their wheelhouse. The feature is used each day by legal aid firms across the country, including MetroWest Legal Services in Massachusetts, Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, and Step Up to Justice in Tucson, Arizona.

The Collaborate Team Works & Plays Together In Portland

2018-08-30T00:00:00Z

Like everyone at Network Ninja, the Collaborate team is fully remote. We’re spread out around the country, working from home offices and coworking spaces across all four U.S. time zones.

When the opportunity arises a couple of times per year to get together in person, we relish it. For several days in early August, we worked together, played together, and generally just enjoyed each other’s company in beautiful Portland, Oregon.

The Dossier Hotel served as our home base for the trip. Located in the middle of downtown Portland, there were plenty of coffee shops, breweries, and restaurants just a short walk away.

Last Collaborate get-together, we got an Airbnb and separate coworking space with multiple conference rooms - there were some issues, primarily commuting, that prompted us to change tactics. This year, we got the penthouse of a local hotel (hat tip to the MainEvent crew for the idea), and a bunch of attached/nearby rooms. Here, we see several members hashing out the finer points of advanced Roles & Permissions. We do regular standups and deep-dive meetings via a combination of videoconferencing and Slack, Google Docs, and so on, but for more detailed (and contentious) discussions, in-person is great.

Inside the conversation: Roles & Permissions

We had several key takeaways from our in-person chat about Collaborate’s Roles & Permissions system. These changes were inspired by requests from our clients, and required quite a bit of discussion to figure out what ideas would be included in the effort - and how to accomplish them.

We’ll soon do a complete refactor/rewrite of existing permission code to support higher level customization - and to handle new requirements.
Case Type Access will be introduced.
Primary Role & Multiple Sub Roles will be added.
We’ll introduce Assignment Type and Service Type Mapping, with accompanying Permissions.
Case Status Rules will be created, which can be applied to Roles individually.
Administrators will be able to control the contacts displayed on a Permissions error page.
We’ll create the ability to schedule services without explicit “create” Permission.

Working at the circular table in the penthouse was a fun and productive way to get things done. The ideas and jokes were flowing all day long.

Famished from a full day of work, our team - plus some friends and family - convened in the evening for a delicious dinner at Davenport.

After a modest three-and-a-half-hour meal, the team concluded that we drank just the right amount of wine.

We even found time for some fitness activities. On the first Thursday of every month, there’s an Urban Adventure Run in Portland - a sort of running scavenger hunt where you visit several local businesses. A few members of our team participated. One of us struggled. All of us finished.

Time to eat again. The food in Portland is always good, as evidenced by this obligatory avocado toast picture, taken by an actual millennial. Adding dungeness crab was definitely the right call here.

Summers in the Pacific Northwest are warm and dry - perfect for visiting Oregon’s beautiful wineries. Some members of the Collaborate team made it out to the Belle Pente Winery over the weekend, which features more than just wine (and cows).

As you can see, we were definitely not having a good time.

#RosèAllDay - Cheers from the Collaborate team. Card games are a staple of our company get-togethers, and members enjoyed an outdoor game of “Codenames” at the winery.

The time we spent together in Oregon, whether it was working or having fun, was very productive. It’s always a treat to meet colleagues that you communicate with online so often, but rarely get to see in person.

It was a fantastic trip, and we can’t wait to do it all over again. Thank you, Portland!

A Major Software Upgrade for the Exchange Club Family Center

2018-08-08T00:00:00Z

Located in Memphis, Tennessee, the Exchange Club Family Center has provided counseling, group therapy, and educational programs to its community for the past 35 years. In 2017, the organization provided help to more than 3,000 children and adults via over 13,000 services.

This non-profit has done great work to help break the cycle of anger and violence, but after outgrowing its homegrown database, The Family Center needed a more robust software solution to manage its Clients, Cases, Services, Programs, and Classes. Collaborate proved to be the ideal fit, providing much-needed improvements in data integrity, security, automation, reporting, and usability.

A customized Collaborate implementation is in development now, with a Go-Live scheduled for the fall. Read the full before-and-after story on Collaborate’s website.

New York is Fertile Ground for the Growth of Legal Aid Technology

2018-08-03T00:00:00Z

New York State is a true leader in the civil legal aid space, with many of its top organizations leveraging better technology to better serve vulnerable populations. The Jewish Association Serving the Aging (JASA) is one of these agencies, doubling down on its commitment to help New York seniors remain in their communities by embracing a customized LegalServer implementation.

Also in the Empire State, the Worker Justice Center of New York (WJCNY) pursues justice for agricultural workers that are often denied their basic human rights. WJCNY is using LegalServer to streamline its workflow, freeing up more time to empower the community and work toward institutional change with the goal of preventing future worker abuses.

New York State continues to be a national leader in using technology to deliver legal services to its most vulnerable populations. With dozens of legal aid agencies and public defenders using LegalServer throughout New York, we are grateful to play such an important role in improving access to justice for so many people throughout the state.

IV Ashton

Founder and President

LegalServer

Learn more about these organizations on the LegalServer blog.

South Carolina Non-Profits Team Up to Embrace Collaborate for Networks

2018-07-27T00:00:00Z

Two major non-profit networks in South Carolina have chosen Collaborate to transform the way they serve their clients.

The South Carolina Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers (SCNCAC) helps over 8,500 children and their families each year through its local member centers. The organization joins a growing list of statewide CAC networks to take a more sophisticated and data-centric approach to case management via Collaborate’s unique framework.

Concurrently, the South Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (SCCADVASA) will work with the Collaborate team on a custom software implementation of its own. The organization battles domestic and sexual violence in its home state through a combination of advocacy, collaboration, and education.

Some organizations within these two South Carolina networks span both the CAC and SCCADVASA sides, which will provide significant efficiency gains - along with opportunities to compare & contrast between data sets - with the aim of improving client outcomes.

Read the full story on the Collaborate website.

LegalServer Thanks Those Helping Immigrant Children Amid Border Crisis

2018-06-22T00:00:00Z

As the humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border continues to grab headlines, it’s important to recognize the folks that are working hard to protect immigrants’ rights - particularly those of children.

With that in mind, the LegalServer team expresses its appreciation for the efforts of its legal aid clients making a big impact in the immigration world. These attorneys, volunteers, and advocates are providing pro bono legal representation for the most vulnerable among us in the time it is needed the most.

A special thanks goes out to the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project (ProBAR) and other immigration-focused legal aid organizations fighting to protect children, reunite families, and ensure kids are rightfully shielded under U.S. law.

Medical-Legal Partnerships Get the LegalServer Treatment

2018-06-05T00:00:00Z

Medical-Legal Partnerships (MLPs) can benefit from using LegalServer in a variety of ways, but many of these organizations are unaware of all the helpful features that apply to them.

With that in mind, the LegalServer team held a community video call recently to dig deeper into the topic. Several MLP users were in attendance and provided valuable feedback, tips, and techniques, while presenter Mallory Curran demonstrated several case management components in real time.

https://youtu.be/15YsrcrUPoM

Check out more details, including an official how-to guide from the National Center for Medical Legal Partnership, over on the LegalServer website.

Kentucky, Baltimore, and D.C. CACs to Transform Case Management with Collaborate

2018-05-25T00:00:00Z

More Child Advocacy Centers (CACs) than ever are choosing Collaborate to handle their case management needs.

The Kentucky Association of Children’s Advocacy Centers just became the latest statewide CAC network to embrace Collaborate. The software will be offered to all 15 member centers throughout the state, which serve over 6,500 children and their families annually.

The Baltimore Child Abuse Center is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and always wants to stay on the cutting edge of using technology to help improve client care. That’s why they’ll be going live with Collaborate in 2018.

Safe Shores, the Washington, D.C.-based Child Advocacy Center, is a forward-thinking organization dedicated to helping children through physical and sexual abuse. They’ve also chosen Collaborate to streamline their workflow and accommodate their growing needs.

Learn more over on the Collaborate website.

LegalServer Lends a Hand in Puerto Rico

2018-05-24T00:00:00Z

Puerto Rico, still ailing from Hurricane Maria, was an ideal place for LegalServer to hold its National Training this year. The two-day event brought new and experienced users together in the capital city of San Juan on May 3rd and 4th.

Along with offering several basic and advanced training sessions, LegalServer donated its software to Servicios Legales de Puerto Rico (SLPR) - a local non-profit legal aid organization. Almost half of the citizens of Puerto Rico can’t afford the services of a private attorney, so the need for help there is great. Veteran LegalServer users also offered their time to help get SLPR up and running quickly.

Read the full story on LegalServer’s website.

RedPeg Leverages MainEvent To Improve Client Outcomes

2018-05-18T00:00:00Z

RedPeg is a creative-minded experiential marketing agency with a penchant for making their clients extremely happy. That means constantly improving outcomes - and that’s where MainEvent lends a helping hand.

Since 2011, RedPeg has leveraged MainEvent software to serve the rapidly evolving needs of their customers. Household names like GEICO, Jägermeister, DISH Network, MetroPCS, and TD Bank trust the agency to run successful campaigns, and to pull it off, RedPeg requires accurate reporting, rapid onboarding, effective staff training, and endless customization.

The partnership RedPeg has fostered with Network Ninja has grown throughout the years and enhanced our ability to analyze program performance and, ultimately, optimize results for our clients.

Matt Sincaglia

Sr. Director of Strategy

RedPeg Marketing

You’re just a click away from the full case study on the MainEvent website.

The Collaborate Team Whips Up a HIPAA Primer

2018-04-25T00:00:00Z

Our Collaborate case management product is a perfect fit for Children’s Advocacy Centers, also known as CACs. That’s why hundreds of CACs across the country have chosen Collaborate to manage their Clients, Cases, Services, Reporting, and everything in between.

Another important but often misunderstood requirement for many CACs is HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliance. Unfortunately, this piece of legislation - which helps protect patients’ health information - might as well be written in a foreign language.

To help address this area of need, the Collaborate team created a special HIPAA video primer just for CACs, which we cheekily titled “It’s Not Spelled Like HIPPO.”

Head over to the Collaborate website to watch the video now.

How Mississippi Inspired a New Collaborate Feature

2018-04-05T00:00:00Z

When the Children’s Advocacy Centers of Mississippi signed on to become our latest Collaborate for Networks client, they had some interesting requirements.

Chiefly, CACM needed to easily add several Client Services to a batch process all at once. To satisfy this demand, a brand new feature called Quick Batch Simple Services was born.

Of course, Children’s Advocacy Centers of Mississippi won’t be keeping this tool all to themselves. All Collaborate clients will soon benefit, as we roll it out to hundreds of other implementations. Thanks, CACM!

Read more about how we tailored Collaborate to work for the Children’s Advocacy Centers of Mississippi.

U.S. Cellular and Next Level Marketing Are Heavy Hitters In MainEvent's Lineup

2018-04-04T00:00:00Z

MainEvent Powers U.S. Cellular’s Sizable Local Marketing Programs

U.S. Cellular is the nation’s fifth largest wireless carrier, serving over 5 million customers in 23 states. Their 4G LTE network delivers serves ultra high speed data to users’ cutting edge smartphones, tablets, and more.

A major network like theirs means big marketing initiatives, so the company naturally turned to MainEvent — the biggest and baddest experiential marketing platform on earth — to manage their field marketing and experiential activities.

Since day one, U.S. Cellular and the MainEvent team have had a collective approach towards the development of our solution.

Rachel Bowman

Local Marketing & Brand Activation Manager

U.S. Cellular

Head to the MainEvent website to view the U.S. Cellular case study.

Bravely Building Better Beverage Brands

As a true leader in the beverage brand activation space, Next Level Marketing (NLM) handles over 40,000 executions in the U.S. each year, serving 200 markets with a wide variety of brand brand ambassador, consumer sampling, and field marketing campaigns.

NLM needed a software vendor that could keep up with their fast-moving campaigns, and provide the right technology to scale to their clients’ needs. That’s why they turned to Network Ninja’s MainEvent experiential marketing software to provide the intensive logistics, reporting, and management of their activities.

Peep the MainEvent site for the full NLM case study.

Legalserver Continues to Lead and Innovate with Solutions for Smarter Legal Aid Case Management Software

2018-04-04T00:00:00Z

After a tremendous 2017 with 41 new clients, the forward momentum continues with LegalServer as we add new civil legal aid clients in 2018, work with public defenders, and build solutions around artificial intelligence (AI) for the civil and criminal legal communities - Houston.AI.

The end of 2017 culminated in a re-launch of LegalServer.org to promote the work we are doing with case management solutions for public defenders. With all of the knowledge and expertise gained over the years working with non-profit legal aid organizations, it is a natural evolution for LegalServer to be working with the public defender community.

One of the many LegalServer benefits is optimizing workload for the staff. With LegalServer ‘Levels of Service’ by case type, an associated baseline of time to complete a case is continually updated as the various case types are worked to completion. Supervising attorneys can better allocate case loads to the staff based on the ‘Level of Service’ entered at intake, providing insights for assigning cases and improved case distribution.

Houston.AI is an API-driven platform (web portal) that offers a growing suite of technologies (including artificial intelligence) to support the justice community in delivering legal services to low income people/families. Houston.AI is continuously developing, refining and re-training a set of machine learning algorithms to better “understand” (and then classify/translate into important legal concepts) the words and sentences lay people use to describe themselves and their legal problems.

https://youtu.be/wl1yOdgKuoQ

By introducing AI into the case management environment, legal aid and public defender organizations will be able to automate the triage and priority level of cases, better utilizing resources to making a difference.

For more information or to request to be contacted please go to the LegalServer site.

MainEvent Adds a Quartet of New and Exciting Clients

2018-01-25T00:00:00Z

It is so awesome to see how much MainEvent has grown and the new features and clients that they keep adding. Here are a couple of them.

Based in Toronto, Canada, Simon Pure Marketing is an independently owned marketing agency that specializes in experiential and promotional marketing. Our software will manage mobile tours and guerrilla activations for organizations that include Subway, Walt Disney Studios, and Mobilicity.

Visual Merchandising Services, out of The Big Apple, NYC, is a brand ambassador organization that provides merchandising and sales assistance services for retail organizations. Our platform will manage and track all schedules, executions, and reporting for 200 VMS field staff that conduct activity at Lucky Brand locations.

We are extremely fortunate to work with great partners to assist with the management and analytics of their executions. MoZeus Worldwide is a prime example of this partnership. MoZeus delivers world-class engagement solutions paired with data-driven analysis and insights. They support over 500 brands on 5 continents!

And last but certainly not least, we are very proud that Rémy Cointreau will use MainEvent as their platform for customers to access their executions. The solution lets consumers view upcoming nearby events and share events on various social media platforms, all from their smartphone.

Meeting of the Minds 2017

2018-01-23T00:00:00Z

Once a year the entire company gets together in something that we like to call the Meeting of the Minds. We fly all the remote people out for a couple of days to discuss the state of the company, meet new people that got added to the team, share ideas, and have some fun.

Last year was held in rather chilly Chicago so this day we flew everyone (+partners +kids) to the Fairmont Miramar Hotel & Bungalows in warm and sunny Santa Monica, CA.

The Fairmont Hotel. 📸 Marcel

So many palm trees here! 📸 Brooke

The first day consisted of a State of the Union presentation (with some great anecdotes) from our three main honchos: Matt Bochneak, Andy Plax, and IV Ashton. Followed by some high profile updates about each one of our products.

Nick from the MainEvent team dropping valuable wisdom. 📸 Marcel

And yes, we also had another Hackathon! This year we organized a Rube Goldberg challenge. We divided everyone into four teams. Each team had to come up with a Rube contraption on their table, and also connect the tables together in one continuous machine. A great exercise to not only work as individual teams, but also work together as a whole.

Yes, we attached things to the ceiling. 📸 Marcel

Domino Mario (Domario?) 📸 Sharen

https://youtu.be/ZK4mfi1wqOA

And here is the result of our Rube Challenge! 📹 James

We ended the day with an awesome BBQ near the pool and some fun games in our very own “game room”. Jackbox games are so much fun. Highly recommend for parties!

All you can eat BBQ buffet was muy bueno. 📸 Marcel

Tyler setting us up for a fun game of Fibbage. 📸 Matt

Since we were in a mild weather environment, many of us grabbed the opportunity to go on a run or on a bike ride the next morning. Going for a sweat is a great way to start the day, specially when you have some more meetings that day.

Paparazzi style photo of the Collaborate team. 📸 Marcel

The LegalServer squad really digs unicorns. 📸 Jeff

Best part about these meet ups are of course the fact that you get to eat at some amazing restaurants. The Collaborate team went to Water Grill for some exquisite sea food (and many bottles of wine). The MainEvent team ended up at North Italia, and the LegalServer people dined at Red O, which is Rick Bayless’ Mexican experience.

Cheers! 📸 Marcel

Oh, and thanks to Tyler for hosting a game of Werewolf. This is a hilarious game where a bunch of “villagers” try to figure out which one of them are “werewolves”. You have to be convincing and conniving the to survive!

Who are the werewolves? 📸 Caitlin

On the final day we met up on the beach to wind down and fly some kites.

We failed to fly a hot dog kite. 📸 Brooke

But the squid kites worked out great! 📸 Marcel

Just like last year, it was an absolute thrill to hang out with everyone and see the growth this company has experienced. Some feedback from the team:

I enjoyed the State of the Union presentations from each products the best.

The hackathon was great. It was a fun, interesting concept that got our creative juices flowing without being overly technical or stressful.

The weather! Also it was just really great to meet with everyone in a relaxed environment for business and pleasure. Especially nice to meet everyone’s family too.

Want to join the fun and find out where we will be going next time? Come work with us!

Come See Our Joint Workshop with National CAC at the 34th International Symposium on Child Abuse

2017-11-09T00:00:00Z

Join us March 19-22, 2018, in Huntsville, AL as the Collaborate team demonstrate and discuss best practices for data and workflow management, detailing how National Children’s Advocacy Center has implemented their own “Outcomes Measurements for CACs/MDTs” framework in Network Ninja’s Collaborate case management software.

The 34th International Symposium on Child Abuse offers more than 160 workshops with tracks that are designed specifically for Administration, Child Protective Services, Forensic Interviewing, Human Trafficking/Sexual Exploitation, Law Enforcement, Medical, Mental Health/Treatment, Prevention, Prosecution/Legal, Secondary Traumatic Stress, Victim Advocacy and Youth-Serving Organization.

Check the Collaborate site for more workshop details.

Network Ninja & Denver CAC

2017-09-21T00:00:00Z

Some of the Collaborate team had the pleasure of attending Denver Children’s Advocacy Center’s annual fundraiser, Art from the Heart - we even won some items during their live auction!

Scott Harrington and Caitlin Muldoon are Colorado inhabitants, and Matt Bochneak used the event as an excuse for a visit.

Our mascot, giving the service offering demos a thorough testing.

The event served as a nice reminder of why we do what we do: we love our clients and support their mission wherever we can.

Scott with part of our auction haul.

The Numbers

150 people attended the event

Approximately $75,000 was raised

Denver Children’s Advocacy Center (DCAC) works to improve the lives of children traumatized by physical and sexual abuse, neglect, and violence—as well as those at high risk—with prevention, education and direct services. Want to help? Give them some love.

When the Mainevent Team Gets Together Great Things Happen

2017-09-08T00:00:00Z

Besides our annual companywide “Meeting of the Minds”, throughout the year we also host several smaller meetings at various locations. It’s a great opportunity to reflect on some of the work that we put in.

Last August the MainEvent team got together in Chicago. What follows is a short report by Marcel Appelman, our designer slash frontend developer.

Arrival at O’Hare International Airport is always pleasant. A modern airport with a great subway system that takes you straight into the city.

Most of us out of towners stayed in the Virgin Hotels, right in downtown Chicago.

If you’re lucky you might have a dog guarding your room (or “chambers” as Virgin Hotels like to call them). And if you’re unlucky you might have to face a crazy looking tower when you gaze out your window.

Time for a quick aperitif on the roof of the hotel.

Followed by a short walk through lovely Chicago where the entire team met up at Beacon Tavern for an amazing dinner.

The next morning breakfast was waiting for us to load up for a day filled with some great presentations.

Not even 9am and these guys were already deep into hunting down some outstanding bugs, which were squashed immediately.

Mr. Andy Plax, graduate of a prestigious middle school and founding partner of Network Ninja, gave a presentation of all the accomplishments and the tremendous growth of MainEvent.

After everyone was pumped from Andy’s presentation we dove into some lunch. I may have liked the tres leches cupcakes a bit too much perhaps…

Post lunch each member on the team give a pitch on a new feature or concept for MainEvent. Proof of concepts, props, bad jokes, were all welcomed. The best idea would win a prize money!

It was not only very interesting to see how and what each member presented but also to see how much in-tune people are with the product itself and our clients. Everyone brought ideas to the table that would so good add to our product.

Some of the guys even drew up logos for their presentations, this Ninjenius logo was very clever!

In the end we put names in a hat and with over 50% of the votes, Josh won a nice stack of cash for his winning ideas. The real winner will be clients that will see Josh’s (and many of the other features) implemented in MainEvent.

In the afternoon we got together for a dinner at a rad restaurant next to the Chicago river. Did you know the city of Chicago had to be raised 6 feet in the 1800s?

I’m a sucker for a pastrami sandwich and this one that I ordered did not disappoint!

The next day everyone had the day off to explore the city. Some went to Tilt, but I glady stayed with both feet on the ground and took a Divvy bike out for a spin.

The hills in Chicago are pretty “epic”. Unfortunately I did not get the Strava KOM (I blame the heavy Divvy bike)!

And of course I had to finish my day with a visit to the Nutella Cafe.

It was a wonderful couple of days in Chicago, good to meet face to face with the people you always chat with on Slack.

So rad to see the enourmous amount of talent on this team and the work they put out. The ever expanding list of MainEvent clients reflects that perfectly.

Can’t wait to see everyone at the next annual meeting, in Santa Monica, CA!

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami Gets Online in No Time with Collaborate

2017-08-29T00:00:00Z

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami (CCADM), one of the largest and longest-serving nonprofit organizations in South Florida, signed on with Collaborate in April of 2017.

To accommodate the transition to a software solution, CCADM established a universal intake, permitting all incoming clients to be added from a single entity. Based on the situation of each case, custom logic was established to tailor each intake so every person can be matched to the best service(s) that CCADM offers.

Collectively, CCADM and Network Ninja made it happen: Collaborate was delivered for production on August 3,2017 - 4 months ahead of schedule.

Read more how we rolled out Collaborate for this great organization.

The MainEvent Client List Keeps on Growing and Growing

2017-08-22T00:00:00Z

We’re super stoked to add another set of extraordinary organizations to the MainEvent client list. Our powerful web-based experiential marketing software will take their field marketing campaigns to the next level.

CORE Hydration is the premium bottled water company, from Los Angeles, that is perfectly balanced to work in harmony with your body’s natural pH.

All Terrain, a top agency on the Event Marketer’s IT list, is a full service experiential marketing agency from Chicago.

Also based in Chicago is Engage & Resonate. Led by an award winning experiential marketing and branded content team who specialize in the creation of meaningful consumer engagements.

Florida and Michigan Embrace Collaborate for Networks

2017-07-24T00:00:00Z

The Florida Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers and Michigan Chapter of the National Children’s Alliance are the latest networks to adopt Collaborate for Networks as their statewide case management software.

FNCAC is our first state to go-live using rapid development - basically a phased approach, where we roll out core functionality within a few weeks of start, and then slowly introduce customizations for individual centers, after they’re already in production.

Read more how we rolled out Collaborate for these great organizations.

Can You Recharge your Mind by Going on a Ridiculous Long Run?

2017-06-08T00:00:00Z

Since Network Ninja is a remote company, this means you get to set your own work and exercise schedule. Many of us love to step away from the keyboard and go on a run or a bike ride to sweat things out. Strava is a great way to enhance your exercise so we set up a Network Ninja Strava Club to keep each other motivated.

Matt’s 12.6 mi run.

Marcel’s 98.5 km ride.

Caitlin’s 28.2 mi run.

Mike’s 44.1 km ride.

Last Memorial weekend we planned a friendly Strava competition, and asked our ninjas to go on a hike, run, bike, swim, and take a photo during their activity, then upload that to our Strava Club. The following week we gathered all the entries, put them in a poll, and voted on a “winner”. The winner got $100 donated to their favorite charity.

With 95% of the votes, the winner was one of the latest additions to our team: Caitlin Muldoon. She went on a 28 mile run with almost 4000 feet of elevation 😲. She picked Free to Run as the charity, to which we made a donation.

We caught Caitlin at the finish line for a flash interview.

How does it feel to win Network Ninja’s Memorial Weekend Strava Competition?

It feels so much better to win this challenge than it felt completing that run! Having to post a picture (to qualify for the challenge) for that particular Strava activity over Memorial Day weekend turned out to be highly redeeming; it forced me to stop and take in the views at a few different places along my run.

The weather that day was especially trying. I ran through sun, rain, sleet, hail, cold, and heat. It was fun to look back at some of the pictures to see that change in the sky and lighting.

How did you get into running?

I’ve been a roadrunner since high school. I had always run in school to stay in shape for other sports. After I graduated college, running was a simple activity that I could do to keep fit. It wasn’t until I started trail running, about five years ago, when I discovered that running was also a great opportunity to experience the outdoors, and to cover a lot of ground doing so.

A couple of years ago, I ran a popular backpacking route here in Colorado. What once took me four days to backpack took seven hours to run. It was an amazing feeling to know how much ground I had covered in one day and to have taken in so many fabulous and different views. After that, I was hooked on longer distances.

What once took me 4 days to backpack took 7 hours to run.

Caitlin Muldon

Runner

Evergreen, CO

To date, my longest run has been 30 miles. Actually… my watch died on the last mile of that run, so the records show that i’ve only ever run 29 miles.

Some of my favorite Strava runs:

Maroon Bells 4-pass loop trail run (27 miles, 8000’ vert, and incredible views from some of the most spectacular mountain passes in Colorado).
Evergreen Mean Machine, a hometown social run put together by my running group, FRXC.

You do any races and are you part of a team?

I’m currently training for the Bighorn Ultra in Wyoming, where I’ll be competing in the 32 mile event. That race is coming up in a couple of weeks- June 17. After that, I’ll be running the Crested Butte 55K in September.

I am a part of the Front Range Cross-Country (FRXC) running group. We call it our run family and have an awesome time together, running and not running.

How does running fit into your work schedule?

Running gets me up (really) early a lot of mornings, or it might force me to turn my computer off and get out in the afternoon before my daughter comes home from daycare.

Although my brain wanders constantly while I run and I inevitably think at least a little bit about work, running is still a great way for me to recharge. Especially on longer runs, or high-intensity workouts, I ponder many non-work-related topics, both mundane and profound.

Sometimes I come home from a run with a sudden memory of a to-do item on my house list, a new dinner idea, or a theory of how a particular theme in Game of Thrones is an analogy for a global issue in current events.

Why did you pick Free to Run?

Ah, the best part of this competition! It’s not easy to choose a favorite charity, but one of my favorites fits perfectly into the category of this challenge. Free to Run is a relatively small non-profit whose mission is to use running, physical fitness and outdoor adventure to empower and educate women and girls who have been affected by conflict.

Sport and fitness are easy to take for granted. I’ve been fortunate my entire life by being able to enrich it with healthy, physical activities that have built my confidence, lifelong relationships, and physical and mental health. I’m excited to support my daughter in whichever sport and fitness activities she chooses to engage throughout her life. I love that Free to Run brings this simple concept to women and girls in areas of conflict and has a highly positive impact both individually and at a community level.

Thanks for the interview Caitlin, you crushed it. And thanks to all the ninjas that participated in our little competition. You got the exercise, we got to enjoy your photos, and a charity got a donation, everybody wins!

Children's Advocacy Centers of Texas Uses Collaborate's Statewide Solution for CACs

2017-05-08T00:00:00Z

Network Ninja and Children’s Advocacy Centers of Texas work toward a 2017 rollout that will change the way child abuse victims are served throughout the state.

Texas CACs serve over 43,000 children a year, and managing these efforts and their associated data is difficult. 67 Of the state’s member centers will use the “Collaborate for Networks” framework, tailored to meet exacting state requirements, while offering flexibility to the individual centers that require customizations or specialized workflows.

Collaborate will allow us to look at statewide outcomes in order reach our vision: reach every child, provide every service, and make every effort.

Catherine Bass

Children's Advocacy Centers of Texas

Read the full case study

More and More Agencies Team up with MainEvent

2017-03-27T00:00:00Z

We’re super excited to add a whopping 5 new clients to the MainEvent roster. All these amazing agencies not only use our software to track experiential activations, but also utilize it to manage field staffing for many of their client’s marketing campaigns.

GNF Marketing. They’re more like your neighborhood coffee shop than a corporate conglomerate. They got character, prefer quality over quantity and don’t conform to what’s mainstream, and that’s ok with us.

Publicis Hawkeye. They are a 300-person, full-service, fully integrated marketing agency, headquartered in Dallas, Texas. And they are here to deliver.

Brand Sense Partners. A team of brand engineers: experts in marketing, branding, licensing, partnerships and on-the-ground experiential strategy. They design multi-faceted programs to address brand needs from all angles, creating consumer experiences with a 360° impact.

Fuse Marketing. A brand strategy, experiential, creative, social, and digital communications agency that specializes in marketing to Gen Z and Millennials – teens and young adults. For more than twenty years, They’ve worked with some of the most admired consumer, sports and lifestyle brands in the world. Fuse has offices in Burlington, VT and Portland, OR.

Do it outdoors. The largest national mobile billboard and field marketing company. With streamlined and scalable operations, they can run mobile billboards and field marketing efforts in any market across the U.S.

A Focus on the Wellbeing of Kids

2017-01-18T00:00:00Z

This month (most months, really) we’re focusing on children, and some new Collaborate clients that have a positive impact on children and families that really need it.

Nova Bucks

NOVA provides services to victims of sexual assault and other serious crimes in Bucks County PA, and is a great example of how Collaborate, our custom case management software, can be used by multi-program multi-departmental agencies. It’s made up of 3 primary groups:

SANE - Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners
CAC - Children’s Advocacy Center
NOVA - Network of Victim Assistance

https://youtu.be/GUnflPZdF6o

“Provide support and accompaniment to all criminal justice proceedings”
“Counseling to help victims, their families and significant others”
“Education and outreach throughout the community”

They’re upgrading from NCA Trak to Collaborate.

CAC of Collin County

Collin County Children’s Advocacy center has helped over 50,000 children and families over the years, and in 2016, provided services to over 3,300 children and non-offending family members.

They’re a true multi-disciplinary CAC, meaning they have Law Enforcement, Child Protective Services, Therapists, Caseworkers, Nurses, Interns, and Volunteers all under one roof.

They’re also CAC of Denton County’s neighbor to the East, both bordering Dallas, TX.

Want to learn more about CAC of Collin County? Check out their newsletter.

ForKids (VA)

Their slogan “Help us Help Homeless Families” - which you can do by donating - is pretty self explanatory.

ForKids has established key partnerships with over 400 qualified housing-related resource providers in Hampton Roads with whom we collaborate to ensure our families are connected to care. Approximately 100 of those resources are located in Norfolk.

They provide a variety of valuable services to clients in the area, including:

Housing Placement
Job Coaching
Mental Health Consultations
Coordination of Care & Critical Time Intervention Case Management

They’re coming from a 100% paper environment, which is great - we were able to put them in touch with another Collaborate client to discuss what worked, what didn’t, and how to best approach such a massive conversion.

Want to talk to someone about upgrading to Collaborate? Contact us!

2016 Hackathon Post-Event Wrap-Up

2017-01-14T00:00:00Z

Network Ninja is a mostly remote company at this point. Even 5 years ago, our Wicker Park office had a random smattering of maybe half a dozen folks, any given day. Organically, staff has moved all over the country, and we hire from “anywhere”. Even with tools like Slack, Hangouts & Google “G Suite” (?), and PM tools, “face time” has been really beneficial - not just for client interactions, but within our own company.

We have 3 discrete products, and that means sometimes teams can get compartmentalized. We wanted to do a holiday event, during our 3 day annual get-together, that would not feel like “work”, but still help foster relationships between everyone at Network Ninja, not just folks we as individuals work with on a day-to-day basis.

Realized Results

Before I even get into the details of the Hackathon, immediately AFTER the Hackathon, this:

Resulted in this:

Which resulted in this:

Which immediately resulted in a massive time savings in the way one of our teams does data migrations. It’s not just time, it’s quality of work the devs get to do, it’s efficiency, it’s time for other tasks for other valued clients, and shorter implementations which means money comes in sooner, because we hit production sooner. All these are tangible.

We had hoped the results of 3 days together would be “the intangibles” of face time, and rewarding everyone for a year of hard-fought victories. During the Hackathon we broke into random teams, so folks got to work with others they’d dined with the night before, but rarely talked to otherwise. The actual results were immediately tangible, and will make the victories come a little easier a little sooner.

Anyway…

ON TO THE HACKATHON.

This isn’t intended to be a recipe, but just give an idea of how we put together a relaxed exercise for an extremely talented group of folks - for FUN.

The recipe, anyway.

Far in advance we announced to the group there would be “a Hackathon” during one of our gathering days, but no additional details. Teams were drawn the night before, and basic direction sent out with very few rules. We did cheat a little, and made sure developer distribution was even.

5 hours of dev with some breakfast, lunch, and beer breaks during, resulted in 2 working prototypes and 1 incomplete would-be award winning idea that didn’t quite finish. Someone had a GoPro in their bag, so we got some footage.

Team A: Plaxitudes

Our one unfinished project at “nearly done” status but totally undemoable. It was going to poll the team’s channel in Slack, grab everyone’s phone numbers from their user profile, and use our Twilio gateway to text inspirational quotes from our COO, Andy Plax, that were pulled from a database we spent most of the time compiling. The project manager, Kat Corbi, wrote up a brief summary. Still fun!

Team B: Don’t Call Me Shirley

An Alexa 2-player movie trivia game that pulls from movie database of quotes at random, berates users on bad guesses (or Alexa’s misunderstanding), and keeps score on correct answers.

https://youtu.be/WlwPXSsPwMo

Uses:

The intro presentation and the Q&A on this one just as “good” as the demo itself.

Team C: Slackbot Meme Generator

Alexa interface that posts a user-defined meme with top and bottom text to Slack using Meme Generator

https://youtu.be/M07ebyspFrc

We’d do it again in a heartbeat.

With the folks involved, there was no need to provide a whole lot of structure/instruction - everyone “got it”, and got into it quickly.

Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even its imperfection.

Haruki Murakami

Author

Sputnik Sweetheart

Meeting of the Minds 2016

2017-01-03T00:00:00Z

At the end of 2016, Network Ninja organized the annual Meeting of the Minds. Since we’re a remote company, we flew in all our ninjas to meet up in Chicago.

It was rather cold in Chicago, but the Virgin Hotels provided us with warm and comfy rooms and excellent amenities.

The Meeting of the Minds is not only a great oportunity to reflect on some of the projects that we’ve worked on all year, but also enjoy sublime dinners (at Tru and Boka) and other rad activities such as a Hackathon and whirlyball.

All in all, it was a great couple days in Chicago, everyone went home with a smile on their face and an echo dot in their bag.

Here’s a note from Matt Bochneak, our CEO, about the event:

It was wonderful to see everyone at “Meeting of the Minds” in December, it’s inspiring (and truly fun) to work and hang out with folks from all over - and those that couldn’t make it were missed. Next time.

Andy, IV, and I kept going “man, look at how far everyone’s come” - that, and how everyone got along with genuine enthusiasm, thoughtfully and respectfully sharing ideas, those are my fondest memories. That, and the dinners.

The value in knowledge sharing and collaboration between teams is huge - we’ll definitely keep this going as we grow, and while this year’s revenue growth was at ~30%, 2017 should be closer to 40%.

It’s most important that everyone knows they, as individuals, have a real and objective positive impact here, both on our company and the organizations that depend on our ideas and expertise 24/7. This is a dream team, for sure.

After 19 years, I have never felt more proud of, or privileged to be working at, this company. Being able to enjoy the process of completing challenging work while surrounded by talented and cool individuals is extremely satisfying.

Cheers to 2017, and let’s see if we can get together this summer for a repeat,
-Matt

Network Ninja donates $1000 to One Lucky Non-Profit!

2016-08-15T00:00:00Z

What a fantastic week in Dallas at the 28th Annual Crimes Against Children Conference! Thank you to everyone who stopped at our booth to learn more about our customizable case management software Collaborate.

Instead of giving out useless schwag we decided to donate $1000 to a lucky non-profit. And the winner of our “NO SCHWAG” drawing is: The Southwest Family Advocacy Center in Avondale AZ. Thanks to Ann Baker, a Forensic Interviewer from Avondale Police Department, for the entry!

Collaborate is customizable case management software for non-profits and social services agencies. Track case information, all the way through intake, providing services, setting goals, and recording outcomes. Interested in seeing what Collaborate could do for your organization?

Request a Demo

Two More Agencies Partner With MainEvent

2016-03-10T00:00:00Z

We’re thrilled to add another set of clients to MainEvent, our web-based experiential marketing software.

Pro Motion is an experiential marketing agency, based in St. Louis, brings brands to life by building deep emotional connections with consumers to create lifelong relationships.

With over 20 years of experience working with some of the best brands in the industry, we look forward to the opportunity to support this amazing organization.

Since 1985, Hollywood’s Productions, has been providing mobile marketing experiences, experiential marketing, event staffing and logistics, specialized vehicles, product showcases, hospitality planning, and more to help companies promote brand awareness through interactive promotions and live experiences.

Some of their customers include MillerCoors, UnderArmour, and the Dallas Cowboys to name a few.

Introducing Collaborate for Networks

2016-03-03T00:00:00Z

Collaborate for Networks is offered for groups that need to communicate and securely share sensitive data between other organizations that use Collaborate. Statewide and municipal implementations benefit from being able to track a transient client base across two or more organizations, securely, and member centers benefit by having immediate access to historical information from partner agencies.

Children’s Advocacy Centers of Georgia, of which there are currently 46, has been working with us to implement the perfect statewide solution for CACs.

In 2016, CACGA will offer a major upgrade to its member centers, made possible in part by a VOCA grant. Some of the major highlights of the upgrade include beefed up ad-hoc reporting tools and dashboards, and tools that will allow users to record client service in batches, which will save hundreds of hours a year

In Georgia alone, we have over 8 years of data showing us what users struggle with, and how we can alleviate those struggles with software. One of the things we did in 2015 that really helped was collect feedback surveys, basically wishlists, from several dozen CACs - ‘reports, reports, reports, and save us time', that was the major takeaway.

Matt Bochneak

Collaborate Product Lead

Network Ninja

Licensing for multiple organizations at the same time is the most cost-effective way to implement Collaborate, with up to a 50% reduction in cost.

Georgia’s statewide software implementation helps extract meaningful metrics from sensitive data - for the victims of child abuse.

The logistics of child abuse prevention and its treatment are complex.

Combining a social worker’s soft touch, and the complicated workflows necessary to deal with immense amounts of sensitive information, is particularly tricky.

Where computer scientists are compelled by the need to extract meaningful correlations from complex data, a children’s advocacy center’s (CAC) immediate concern is with providing crisis management for the victims, and improving the subsequent criminal investigation.

13,017 Total Clients Served in 2015

CACs do this by utilizing a diverse group of professionals with different skillsets, called a multi-disciplinary team, to provide services to the victims of abuse.

This can include everyone from medical examiners to prosecutors, and access to information is given strictly on a need-to-know basis. Law enforcement may have access to information that a mental health worker does not, and the inverse. Workflows vary, and time is of the essence.

All of this means software usability is key, and limiting access on a need-to-know basis is imperative. The more time spent on the process, the more expensive, and the fewer clients can be served. Increasing efficiency while reducing workflow frustrations is a requirement, and directly benefits the recipient of service: child abuse victims and their families.

Joshua Mullin Ninja Spotlight

2016-02-19T00:00:00Z

Where in the world are you located?

I split my time evenly between Michigan and the rest of the world. I travel incessantly (some might say obsessively). However, I did recently buy a house out in the middle of nowhere, so nowadays at any given time I’m probably at Home Depot.

What’s your role at Network Ninja?

An easier question might be “What isn’t your role at Network Ninja?” Officially I’m a “technical lead,” which probably means something specific to people in the outside world. On a daily basis, I could be a programmer, software architect, tester, IT guy, Database Administrator, copywriter, or account manager.

Current computer?

I live in front of my 15-inch Retina Macbook Pro, but I do have a gaming PC that I occasionally use (Overclocked Core i7 8770k, 32GB DDR5, Dual Nvidia GTX770’s, Samsung EVO 840, BenQ 120Hz Monitor).

Current mobile device?

Whatever Google’s offering as a “Flagship Phone” at any given time is probably in my pocket. Right now, it’s the Nexus 6P, and I couldn’t be happier with it… Until I see what they offer next year, then I’ll probably hate it until I get the next one.

Besides your phone and computer, what gadget can’t you live without and why?

Technology-wise, that’s about it. I’m constantly connected to those. If we expand the realm of gadgets, it’s probably my Kitchenaid Stand Mixer. Have you seen the attachments for those things? They do EVERYTHING.

What apps, software, or tools can’t you live without and why?

I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to development tools, which is why I don’t use any. I do most of my work in a Linux shell in a text editor and don’t get caught up with software that requires me to do silly things like ever touching my mouse.

What’s your workspace setup like?

If I’m at 30,000 Feet, there’s generally a tray table folded out in front of me with a laptop on top of it. At ground level, I’m probably on a couch, sometimes as close to laying down as is possible without killing productivity. I do have a desk with a chair and all that, but I have a needy dog who refuses to let me work that way.

What do you listen to while you work?

Food Network is constantly on and just barely audible at any given time throughout the day.

What are you currently reading?

I don’t know a lot of programmers who are avid readers (myself included). Between reading the huge number of e-mails I receive on a daily basis and reading/writing code (Which is sort of like foreign language translation), I would probably be legally blind if I didn’t focus my eyes somewhere far away in my down time.

How do you recharge?

Sometimes I walk outside, stare off into the distance, and try to focus my eyes on the farthest object in view. Other times, I’ll window shop airfares and book some flights on a whim. On particularly stressful days, I’m probably playing some mindless video game until I can’t see straight anymore. Oh, and just in case this was a technical question, the answer is USB-C, but only because they removed Qi from the Nexus 6P.

LegalServer 2016 Training Calendar

2016-01-25T00:00:00Z

LegalServer, our Case Management Software for Legal Aid & Pro-Bono Agencies, has announced their 2016 Training Schedule. Each Tuesday the staff will hold a 1 hour training on a variety of topics.

7 Questions With Andreas Larsen

2016-01-07T00:00:00Z

When we set about to give this site a refresh we looked into several different fonts. Exploring the GitHub Font showcase we stumbled upon Gidole. We really liked the crisp and clean look, that it was open source, and free to use.

In return the font creator is asking users to make a donation to the Ethiopian Red Cross Society. That nailed it for us, as two of our products (Collaborate and LegalServer) each focus on helping non-profits do business efficiently.

Gidole is designed by Andreas Larsen. We shot him a couple questions to find out more about the font, his charity and other projects.

What’s your thoughts behind designing Gidole?

I’ve always had a thing for typography and liked DIN for it’s geometric simplicity but often felt it was a bit too “mechanical” and that other modern fonts drawing inspiration from it – such as e.g. Roboto and San Francisco still were too unfriendly.

I’m a big fan of the ultra legible Clear Sans with it’s slightly narrow letters and generous apertures (the opening at the end of an open counter in letters such as e.g. “a” and “e”).

What was your process for designing Gidole?

I started drawing curves around circle using Illustrator but quickly started using the open source font editor FontForge.

Gidole was my first font and I having no design education I quickly turned online for feedback. Some friendly people at typophile helped a lot, then later on /r/typography and now mainly on issues on GitHub.

My initial sketch looked like this:

The hardest parts of the design process was getting the curves and curve-to-straight-transitions just right. Switching to Euler spirals instead of bezier curves in FontForge made it a lot of that easier. Image is screenshot of the backbone of the letter h drawn using spiral mode where you don’t have to mess with handles but simply select different point types (curve point, tangent point, corner point etc).

Why did you decide to open source the font?

For multiple reasons. I had previously made themes for jailbroken iOS that I made as donationware and it raised quite a bit of money to charitable organisations so I wanted to try that again and set up a donation page for Gidole. I also wanted to learn as much as possible and experts are more inclined to help an amateur. I’m using open source software, fonts, graphics etc. daily so it’s also a sense of giving back to the great online community.

What’s the story behind the name?

It’s the name of the small city where we lived in Ethiopia for 4 years when I was growing up. I have many happy memories from Gidole and it was simpler times - which is somewhat the same emotions I’m trying to invoke with the font: simplicity and friendliness.

Have you released other fonts and are there any new ones in the pipeline?

I made Monoid last year. It shares many design features with Gidole and was an experiment in combining the best of qualities of bitmap and vector fonts for coding. It has ligatures, contextual letter-spacing and other weird stuff. It’s also open source and very well received. Fastcompany wrote about it and it’s one of the default fonts on CodePen.

I’m currently improving Gidole (perfecting some characters and spacing) and adding more characters to it (greek, russian, vietnamese and more). I also hope to be able to add more weights and styles.

I also want to make a Gidole inspired interpretation of the ~282 fidels that are used to write amharic. So far I’ve only drawn the first letter in my name እንድርያስ but I hope to complete the entire script this year. Something similar hasn’t really been done before so we’ll see where it ends up.

I use my Twitter @larsenwork for project updates.

In your opinion what qualifies as a good looking font and who are some of your opening fonts and font designers?

A font should look effortless so that it doesn’t distract from it’s main purpose: to enable reading.

These are some of my favourite:

Open source fonts: Fira, Clear Sans and Source Sans Pro.
Commercial fonts: FF Real, FF Mark and obviously DIN.
Designers: I don’t follow the type design scene that much but love the designs of the late Adrian Frutiger and follow Erik Spiekermann on Twitter.

Besides fonts what are some other things you have released and are working on?

This Christmas I optimised most social icons for online use using techniques from font design to reduce the file sizes by up to 85% and put it up on GitHub as social.svg.min.

This spring I hope to finish the desktop app for animalnoteheads (also open source) so it’s easy to create new sheets and kids/toddlers everywhere can learn musical notation in a fun and easy way.

I have many ideas but time is somewhat limited as I’m also working as a full time web/iOS designer/developer and spending quite some time learning coding languages, frameworks and platforms.

Download Gidole Font Donate to The Ethiopian Red Cross

Ryan Shay Ninja Spotlight

2015-12-28T00:00:00Z

Where in the world are you located?

I’m located in Raymore, MO which is on the outer edge of the Kansas City metro area.

What’s your role at Network Ninja?

Traditionally we don’t focus too much on roles or titles and everyone helps each other out as necessary. I try to be the person that any of the other guys can come to with questions. Sometimes I’m a developer, sometimes I’m a tester. Other times I’m on the phone with a client answering questions, or helping with imports.

For the last couple of years I’ve mainly been focused on building out and improving our staff management system, and adding new functionality to MainEvent.

Current computer?

I currently use a 15" Macbook Pro Retina for travel and portability, but my main computer is a custom built desktop with 32GB of RAM, 6TB of storage and a Nvidia GTX 970 to play a few games now and then. It definitely needs some updating, but hasn’t let me down yet. I’m a bit of a keyboard snob I suppose, it has to be mechanical.

I currently am using three monitors, two 27″ and a 40″ that give me plenty of room to work.

Current mobile device?

I’ve used both Android and iOS phones in the last few years, but am currently using an iPhone 6 with T-Mobile.

Besides your phone and computer, what gadget can’t you live without and why?

This is such a hard question to answer. I love gadgets. I believe the most recent things I’ve acquired would be an Occulus Rift and a Nest thermostat, but I use an AppleTV and an iPad on a near daily basis also.

What apps, software, or tools can’t you live without and why?

Definitely my IDE, PHPStorm from JetBrains. After using several others, I’ve concluded that it fits my workflow better than any others and allows me to work across multiple projects at the same time.

Other software I use on a daily basis would be Navicat for database work, Skitch for screen shots, MobaXterm for terminal work and MarkdownPad2 for notes and documentation, which is what I’m currently using to write this.

What’s your workspace setup like?

My workspace is a cliche. It’s in the basement. I have a pretty large desk that gives me plenty of room to move around. Probably one of the best things I could have done for myself in terms of ergonomics was to break down and spend the money on a nice chair, an Allsteel Acuity. I spend a lot of time at my desk, so it was well worth it.

What do you listen to while you work?

It really depends on the situation. Sometimes I’m listening to something repetitive on Spotify to help keep me focused, and at other times I’m listening to a TED talk or some other video in the background as I work. There are times when silence is nice too.

What are you currently reading?

I’m actually not currently reading anything, though the latest book I read was Modernizing Legacy Applications in PHP by Paul M. Jones. I mostly read technical books, and enjoy reading books from people who have been around as programmers for a while. Anything by Martin Fowler, or Robert Martin (Uncle Bob), is worth the time. I think I’ve read a lot of the popular books for developers, including the Mythical Man Month.

How do you recharge?

I don’t really have a lot of downtime these days, but when I’m not focused on work, I definitely enjoy spending time with my 4 year old son and lovely wife. We try to take a vacation at least once a year just to get away and see something new. This year we spent some time enjoying the Rocky Mountains, next year, who knows!

What's on Your Menu Bar?

2015-12-23T00:00:00Z

The menu bar (or the system tray for Windows/Linux users) is often filled with handy tools and gadgets that can make our daily desktop use very efficient. We asked a couple of our ninjas what kind of tools they had in their menu bar.

Alex Escalona

Hangouts Chrome Extension: I’ve been using a Google Voice number for years now. Hangouts replaced Google Voice. This extension let’s me SMS and IM (and call) with all my contacts
Google Photos Backup: Auto-backs up images to the Google cloud
Google Drive: We use Google drive at work to share the weekly testing doc and our password database, among other docs
CrashPlan: Auto-backs up (potentially) unlimited amount of data to my home server, which backs up to the CrashPlan cloud starting at $5/month
Dropbox: The Google Drive alternative. I’ve used it for a long time now
Mac OS VPN Status Icon: So I can easily connect to the NNI VPN when on an untrusted or public network (say, while working from coffee shops or someone else’s home network)
Bluetooth Status: Self-explanatory
Mac OS Lock Screen Icon (Keychain Access): This is handy esp. when I’m in public and need to step away from the computer. And yeah, I take my laptop with me to the bathroom when in a public setting. I’m paranoid like that
Wi-Fi
Volume
Battery
US Keyboard
Time
Username
Spotlight
Tunnelblick: The open-source VPN software as a backup to Mac OS VPN. I use it mainly to connect to my home VPN, which is a backup to the NNI VPN
Notification

Mike Matz

Paste: clipboard history manager
1Password: password manager
BackBlaze: backups
Dropbox
Little Snitch: network monitor & firewall
Airplay control
Sharing control
Time Machine backups
Volume / audio devices
Wi-Fi
Battery
Date & time
User
Spotlight
Notifications

Robin de Bled

SIP: color picker
smcFanControl: controls your MacBook fan
BarTender: organize menu bar items.
CPU LED: keep an eye on your CPU load
Time Machine: backup software
Wi-Fi
Battery
VPN Connection
LightShot fastest way to take a customizable screenshot
Mom: Mac on Linux
f.lux: adapt your display to the time of day
BetterTouchTool: add more gestures to your trackpad and/or mouse
Volume
Bluetooth
User change
BarTender Settings

Ryan Shay

System Devices & Printers Icon
Rescue Time: time tracking app
OneDrive: store files online
Chrome Background Task
Realtek HD: Audio Manager
Nvidia Experience Manager
Logitech Game Controller Manager
TeamViewer: remote control any computer (handy for support)
Java Update Scheduler
Samsung SSD Magician
Skitch: screen shot app
Asus Quick Charge
Oculus Rift: virtual reality mask!
iCloud: store files online
Razer Synapse: controls or assign macros to any of your Razer peripherals
Logitech Gaming Software
Google Drive, store files online
Outlook 2016

Matt Bochneak

Chrome Notifications
join.me: for online product demonstrations
Dropbox: online file storage
Google Drive: online file storage
Plex: Media server
Spectacle: move and resize windows
Time Machine: backup all the things
Bluetooth
VPN
Wi-Fi
Battery: fully charged!
Date & Time
Spotlight
Notifications

DirecToHispanic MainEvent Case Study

2015-12-21T00:00:00Z

This time we’re highlighting DirecToHispanic, one of our favorite clients, and show you how MainEvent helped them track their in-store executions in real time!

DirecToHispanic is a full-service experiential marketing promotions company that executes over 15,000+ in-store events annually. DirecToHispanic brand ambassadors provide a breadth of services at these promotions, including increasing awareness through displays, POS, and coupons, as well as thousands of one-on-one customer engagements.

We worked closely with DirecToHispanic to create customized recaps in MainEvent which track each client’s inventory and sales on a per event basis. Using that data, DirecToHispanic is able to analyze where certain products perform most successfully, and determine how they might improve those stores that are underperforming.

As an organization that executes thousands of events per month, with hundreds of brand ambassadors in the field, we need a resource to manage our scheduling, recapping and reporting needs. MainEvent fills that void.

Sonia Friedman

Field Marketing Director

DirecToHispanic

Read the full DirecToHispanic Case Study

Site Refresh and a New Blog Section

2015-12-09T00:00:00Z

In case you haven’t noticed yet, we gave our site a new lick of paint and added a blog. This blog section will be used to showcase how we work at Network Ninja, including some of our extracurricular activities and other assorted nerd stats.

Some more site details

Jekyll (awesome static site generator) and Gulp (javascript task manager) are used to generate the site.
The Foundation framework by Zurb is implemented for responsive tastyness.
Gidole, an open source modern DIN by Andreas Larsen is used as the main font.
The mountain image on the homepage was shot by Aleksandra Bogusławska, and found on Unsplash (we added some moving clouds for extra bonus).

We have a lot of great things happening at Network Ninja and we can’t wait to share it with you. So keep following us via RSS, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn to stay informed.

MainEvent Case Studies

2015-12-07T00:00:00Z

MainEvent published two case studies showcasing how the software helped some of our clients manage and analyze their experiential campaigns.

Momentum and the Share a Coke Tour

Momentum wanted to provide a more streamlined solution to scheduling and reporting for the Share a Coke Campaign, allowing access for all shareholders involved in the program. That’s where MainEvent came in.

We developed a custom client request interface that worked in tandem with their agency event approval workflow, resulting in a very automated and user-friendly system for all.

The technology was flexible — allowing us to customize and connect several different pieces of technology creating one system to help us manage the tour from beginning to end.

Melissa Hamilton

Director of Integrated Production

Momentum Worldwide

Read the Momentum Case Study

Moosylvania and ASSA ABLOY

Moosylvania enlisted MainEvent as their partner, with the aim of creating a custom software solution that could be a central portal for ASSA ABLOY’s ever growing Mobile Innovation Fleet.

With the ASSA ABLOY Mobile Innovation Fleet being a yearly experiential program, Moosylvania and their client benefit greatly from the historical routing and performance data now available at their fingertips. Providing all parties with immediate access to past successes greatly helps inform future decisions.

The system has enabled us to create a well defined, streamlined process for the creation, confirmation, and recapping of over 1,000 events per year.

Daniel Foppe

Event Producer

Moosylvania

Jon Labaj Ninja Spotlight

2015-11-25T00:00:00Z

Update: Jon is no longer with Network Ninja, but here is what he had to say when he worked with us.

Where in the world are you located?

I am primarily in Chicago, but I often work from various locations across the country while I visit friends and family.

What’s your role at Network Ninja?

We don’t believe too much in titles here at Network Ninja, but I’m some sort of combination between lead developer and product manager. We all work closely as a team to “collaborate on Collaborate” to do everything from designing new features, to optimizing the database so our clients get their report results more quickly. Basically I work closely with clients and our internal team members to improve Collaborate every day.

Current computer?

I have a 15-inch MacBook Pro and love the Retina display!

Current mobile device?

My Galaxy S6 edge keeps me connected when away from my desk. Though the edge is somewhat gimmicky, it does give me a glimpse of my email when I need to see it quickly.

Besides your phone and computer, what gadget can’t you live without and why?

That would have to be a tie. I have an Amazon Echo that I love to ask questions all day long (though she doesn’t always know the answer). Using voice recognition has started to change the way we use technology and I really enjoy being on the edge of that.

I also absolutely love my Phillips Hue lights. They have that “cool” factor and can help me concentrate or turn my apartment into a dance party. Even better–they now work together too! I can ask with my voice to turn the lights on in my kitchen.

What apps, software, or tools can’t you live without and why?

I love Eclipse of course. The IDE made development so much more enjoyable, faster, and simpler. I’m also a big fan of Slack. It really is the new de facto enterprise IM solution (and so much more).

What’s your workspace setup like?

I have a 24-inch HP touchscreen on one side that I use for email, basic functions. Then my MacBook is connected to another 24-inch monitor on the other side to keep me focused on work.

What do you listen to while you work?

I switch back and forth between Pandora and Spotify. But often I just enjoy complete silence. I hit pause often whenever I hit a problem that is “blowing my mind” so I can try and get my brain focused entirely on the issue at hand.

What are you currently reading?

I actually do not read too many books these days. Working on a computer all day, kind of drains my brain. I have lots of reference books that I go back to for design pattern ideas, or UIX advice, but other than that the only reading materials I follow are websites. I’m a news junkie, and follow stories all day long.

How do you recharge?

I’m one of the “hippie” new age types. I love hot yoga and practice a few times a week. Something about sweating puddles while reaching the edge of what my body can handle is appealing to me.

I also try to meditate but don’t always find the time. I recently went on a meditation retreat where all participants were “silent” (no talking, no emails, no text messages) for 4 days straight. It was maddening how loud your mind’s voice can get when it doesn’t have an outlet. But the silence brought new insights to my thoughts and it was a really great experience.

I also just love to spend time with friends and family. I travel often throughout the US to visit everyone and see new sights. It really helps to escape to new locations, though the work always tends to find you wherever you are.

What Was Your First Programming Language?

2015-11-24T00:00:00Z

In a totally unscientific poll, we asked our ninjas what their first programming language was and some of the experience they had with it.

Not surprisingly, BASIC (the Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, designed back in 1964) was the #1 pick of most the ninjas.

Kudos to Joel Finkel, who’s first programing experience was with PL/1:

In 1982, a college friend and I created Proball, one of the first (if not the first) “fantasy” baseball games. I wrote the program that maintained the statistics using PL/1. I still have the listing. We were profound idiots for not patenting the whole idea.

Jim Watson found his passion for programming on a VIC-20:

Helped my father with a homemade sales and inventory application he wrote for his CB-radio store. That was around 1981, on an old Commodore VIC-20. Tinkering with code — writing something that actually “did something” in a real-world tangible setting, and seeing the end product in action… I was hooked. Had a love for development ever since.

Long before Slack (which we use here at Network Ninja) there was IRC. This was Alex Escalona’s gateway into programming:

I actually first got into "programming by scripting a mIRC bot that provided Star Wars trivia questions and answers when prompted. Oh the early days of the internet. C++ was the natural next step in my amateur forays into software engineering. I was pretty fortunate to have the opportunity later on to take a year-long class in C++ in High School.

And although HTML is technically not a programming language, one ninja (who shall remain anonymous) had a good reason for his pick:

Can’t do anything without HTML! First website was dedicated to fans of the X-Files.

Legalserver Rebranding

2015-10-23T00:00:00Z

Just like our other products, LegalServer got a fresh new look. We modernized the logo and rebuild the site with a responsive framework so the site will work on Desktop, iPad, iPhone and etc.

Legalserver Adds Text Message Features

2015-10-22T00:00:00Z

LegalServer successfully integrates Twilio, a cloud communication platform, to its suite of features, allowing agencies to send text messages (SMS) and multimedia messages (MMS) directly from the case management system.

Advocates have traditionally relied exclusively on mail, email, or phone message to communicate important information to their clients. With this new integration, advocates can send and receive text and multimedia messages directly to and from clients without leaving LegalServer. These messages are saved directly to the client’s electronic case file, providing a record of electronic correspondence for the advocate.

Collaborate Launch Insights for the Denton County CAC

2015-09-16T00:00:00Z

The Children’s Advocacy Center for Denton County (CACDC) is a child-friendly place where kids come to find help after incidents of sexual abuse. Their workflow is pretty sophisticated, so they needed a customized solution in place to easily maintain their clients and services - exactly the way they want to do it.

And that’s where Network Ninja came in with Collaborate, our case management software for non-profits and social services agencies. For about a year, we’ve been working hard with the CACDC to customize Collaborate to their needs. Here’s some of the things we did for them.

Data Migration

One of the biggest hurdles with CACDC, aside from it being 106F during our training there, was moving a couple decades of case history. We told them: “Keep what data you have, we’ll clean it, and move it over for you.”

https://youtu.be/xhMMry20CFY

In total, we migrated around 40,000 cases, 400,000 services, and over 250,000 case notes from their old database system into Collaborate.

I've been watching it count for 20 minutes.... The number is over 300,000 now. How many clients and services do you think we put in the database in 19 years? This begins a whole new chapter; Collaborate will help us find new and amazing ways to tell our story. Even more so, because of improved efficiency, it will allow us more time to focus on the main characters of our story.

Lori Nelson

Program Director

Children's Advocacy Center for Denton County

Clinical Focus

We also worked together to enhance Collaborate’s Clinical functionality, some of the many highlights include:

Clinical Testing (CBCL, TSCC, TSCYC, UCLA PTSD)

Treatment Plans including DSM V diagnoses, therapy Goals and Outcomes, even Progress Notes and Followups, all easily reportable.

Success Takes Work and Experience

It’s never “easy”, but a successful rollout happens via lots of learning from and proper planning with actual experts - our clients.

Have questions? Interested in a Demo? We’re here for you.

Groundswell Drops in with MainEvent

2015-09-15T00:00:00Z

We’re stoked to announce that Groundswell, a brand new Experiential Agency based in Texas, will use MainEvent to manage its programs and executions. MainEvent is our one-stop-shop to centralize your field and experiential campaigns.

With leadership second to none, we are fortunate to collaborate with Groundswell!

Denver and Denton the Newest CACs Logging in to Collaborate

2015-06-11T00:00:00Z

We’re weeks away from Denton County Children’s Advocacy Center’s summer implementation of Collaborate. They will be migrated from an older Lotus Notes system to our state-of-the-art web-based case management software for CACs.

It’s been a pleasure working with DCCAC so far, we’re excited to see what great ideas they come up with in the future! Their emphasis on Clinical Services, from Treatment Plans, to Testing, has already had a hugely positive impact on the product.

Last week we also kicked off the Interview and Discovery phase at Denver’s beautiful facilities in Colorado. They’re moving from NCA Trak to Collaborate, and slated for November, 2015 launch.

MainEvent Adds Three Award Winning Clients

2015-05-18T00:00:00Z

We’re super excited that 3 top notch agencies have decided to pick up MainEvent to analyze their experiential activations.

Allied Integrated Marketing: named the No.1 agency for entertainment marketing in the PROMO 100 rankings

Cárdenas Marketing: one of the top U.S. Hispanic agencies entrenched in the Sports Event and Entertainment Marketing world.

Momentum Worldwide: with 30 offices in 6 continents, this IPG agency is a leader in the marketplace.

Exciting News from Mainevent

2015-01-23T00:00:00Z

MainEvent is our centralized web-based software solution to manage every aspect of an experiential marketing campaign. For the start of 2015 we have some exciting things to announce.

New Logo and Site

We created a fresh new logo and developed a new MainEvent site. Fully responsive of course, so it will work on just about any device. Give it a visit and discover all the features that MainEvent has to offer. Contact us for a demo.

New Clients

We’re proud to add three new agencies to the MainEvent client roster:

AMCI, based in sunny California, the leading automotive product and brand launch agency based in sunny California.

Motive is a collective of deep thinkers, artistic mavens, executional top guns and cultural connoisseurs.

Next Marketing Independently owned and operated out of Atlanta, GA, Next Marketing agency packs a punch.

Follow MainEvent on Twitter to stay informed about MainEvent functionality, and experiential marketing news.

Greenhouse Agency Selects MainEvent

2014-10-14T00:00:00Z

Greenhouse Agency out of Irvine, CA has partnered with MainEvent to manage their Experiential and Engagement Marketing programs. Greenhouse Agency offers integrated solutions to brands maximizing customer engagement and analysis.

Big things happen from the ground up. We’re excited to grow brands together!

CACDC Picks Collaborate

2014-09-02T00:00:00Z

Children’s Advocacy Center of Denton County Texas will use Collaborate to electronically manage all their programs, from intake to outcome reporting. We’re proud and excited to work with such a great organization.

See the difference of two girls’ stories as one finds justice and healing through interagency collaboration and community education at Children’s Advocacy Center for Denton County in this video.

https://youtu.be/noyBGwHbA6Y

Newbridge Picks MainEvent

2014-08-18T00:00:00Z

We’re thrilled to announce that Newbridge Marketing Group will be using MainEvent to manage their Newbridge Live experiential programs.

Newbridge Live is a division of Newbridge Marketing Group that specializes in experiential marketing, with a focus on college, mobile marketing, and events.

IMG Will Use MainEvent

2014-08-13T00:00:00Z

Operating in over 30 countries around the world, IMG is a leader in the sports and entrainment industries. IMG Consulting has contracted with Network Ninja and will use MainEvent to assist with its campaigns. We’re excited to have them as a client.

Terry Hines Chooses MainEvent

2014-08-07T00:00:00Z

Terry Hines & Associates, a trusted agency for over 40 years specializing in promoting brands and properties have decided to use MainEvent to manage some of their experiential campaigns.

Match Action Goes on Tour With MainEvent

2014-08-04T00:00:00Z

Match Action is an awesome experiential agency that creates moments of brand play. We’re super excited that MainEvent will be used to track every aspect of Match Action’s executions.

Check out the video below of a national tour that Match Action produced to promote the Progressive RV brand at the most popular events attended by RV enthusiasts.

Loaded with features, MainEvent is the leading Web-based solution to manage every aspect of an experiential marketing campaign in real-time. Contact us for a demo.

https://vimeo.com/72938031

Welcome Aboard PMK•BNC

2014-07-31T00:00:00Z

With more than 250 employees spanning offices in Los Angeles, New York and London, PMK•BNC engages in public relations, event marketing, experiential marketing strategies, celebrity/influencer marketing and outreach, product integration, sponsorship, content creation and brand consultation. We’re honored they picked MainEvent to use for their event activations.

PMK•BNC has already been using our Experiential Marketing Software for the Genworth #LetsTalk Tour. The tour was recently in town and of course had to swing by to check out the world’s largest coffee cup!

Event Marketer 2014 It List

2014-07-02T00:00:00Z

Event Marketer Magazine, the world’s most respected provider of content for the event and trade show category, recently published the 2014 It List, the Top 100 Event Agencies. We’re extremely proud to see a handful of our MainEvent clients on this list.

Congrats to all!

Burst Teams Up with MainEvent

2014-06-09T00:00:00Z

Toronto based Burst Marketing has teamed up with MainEvent to manage their experiential marketing efforts.

Burst takes things to the road and into the hands of the consumer in every possible way through mobile tours, sampling events, and PR stunts measuring everything along the way.

We welcome Burst into the fold!

MainEvent and Escalate Now to Partner

2014-05-30T00:00:00Z

NYC based Escalate Now, gurus of real-time marketing, have chosen MainEvent to manage their experiential marketing initiatives.

Together with MainEvent, Escalate Now will further customer relationships to the level of brand advocacy with their signature results- driven brand activation.

MainEvent and Walton Isaacson Partner

2014-05-14T00:00:00Z

Walton Isaacson, industry leading creative and strategic leaders, have partnered with MainEvent to take their client’s experiential marketing campaigns to the next level.

Having worked with numerous Fortune 500 brands in various capacities, Walton Isaacson has been lauded for their innovative branding and ground breaking execution. Here’s to great things happening in brand activation!

MainEvent and SoHo Experiential to Increase 'Experiential Currency'

2014-04-24T00:00:00Z

Outside of the box thinking comes easily to SoHo Experiential. They’ve earned a place in the Who’s Who of brand strategists by bringing nontraditional events to the public, and thus connecting in an unparalleled way.

We’re honored to have MainEvent play a part in their organization.

MainEvent and Fluid Holdings to Carve Path in Marketplace

2014-03-06T00:00:00Z

Fluid Holdings and MainEvent are making waves together in the experiential marketing world. Managing creative and marketing campaigns across the country, the Florida based company maximizes brand value and growth in a free-flowing, creative way.

We can’t wait to venture forward with these great partners!

MainEvent and Genuine Health to Make the World a Healthier Place

2014-02-06T00:00:00Z

Genuine Health, maker of non-GMO health products has chosen MainEvent as a partner to manage their experiential marketing campaigns.

A leading brand in health and wellness supplements, Genuine Health continues on its innovative path launching new products across the category. Welcome aboard, Genuine Health!

Moosylvania Chooses MainEvent

2014-01-24T00:00:00Z

Digital and interactive powerhouse, Moosylvania has chosen MainEvent as a partner in managing their experiential marketing campaigns.

Named one of Event Marketer’s “It List” Top 100 members, they’ve combined their digital prowess and experiential reach on award winning projects for clients such as Enterprise Car Share, Capitol One and Naked Bacon. Welcome aboard!

Collaborate Launches Hope for the Warriors!

2014-01-24T00:00:00Z

The Collaborate team saw a resoundingly successful launch of the Hope for Warriors case management software system.

Based in Washington DC, Hope for the Warriors is a non-profit that dedicates themselves to enhancing the lives of post 9/11 service members and their families.

As we launched our new database yesterday the Network Ninja Team has shown impeccable dedication to ensure we had a seamless day. There was not a curveball we could throw that the Ninja Team didn't hit out of the park. The new database has exceeded our expectations. We are very excited to see where we can take this database and help our organization grow. Knowing the Ninja Team has patience and dependability ensures the ongoing success of our programs and assisting our Nations Heroes.

Rob Cork

Operations Director

Hope for the Warriors

MainEvent Making Waves with Amplitude Marketing

2013-12-20T00:00:00Z

Amplitude Marketing manages the branding of clients via a multi-pronged approach implementing social media, live events and consumer promotions.

MainEvent will be managing their experiential marketing campaigns by offering scheduling, reporting, executions and applying our dashboards and analytics to provide insights to their customers.

Make waves, not noise!

TrojanOne Chooses MainEvent

2013-08-16T00:00:00Z

TrojanOne, based out of Toronto, has helped brands to interact with consumers directly for nearly 20 years, by creating award-winning brand experiences that are on message, on target, and compel consumers to act.

To help further their success, TrojanOne has selected MainEvent to manage their event marketing campaigns.

Desperado Selects MainEvent

2013-08-12T00:00:00Z

Desperado, a client side sponsorship and experiential marketing agency based out of Toronto and Chicago, has selected MainEvent to manage their experiential marketing initiatives.

Desperado delivers outstanding experiential marketing programs that deliver measurable business results, flawlessly and with a painstaking, maniacal attention to detail.

TEAM Enterprises Chooses MainEvent

2013-08-09T00:00:00Z

TEAM Enterprises, founded in 1989, specialize in physical and digital, branded engagements to bring products to life where consumers live, work, & play.

TEAM, the agency behind such memorable events as Coors Light Cold Snap where their customizable “Snap Coozies” boldly took the spotlight, works hard to provide the best services for their all of their clients like Bacardi USA, Volkswagen, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, and Sparkling Ice.

MainEvent now joins in on the fun with TEAM to help them manage their event marketing and experiential campaigns.

BFG Selects MainEvent

2013-08-05T00:00:00Z

BFG, a passionate and growing creative agency located near Hilton Head with offices in both NYC and Atlanta, has selected MainEvent to help manage their experiential marketing campaigns and to turn their events into epic memories.

With their recent success at Charlotte Motor Speedway for a 100th birthday celebration for Lance Sandwich Crackers, BFG has a bright future with the exceptional services they offer to the brands that they serve.

Douglas County Department of Corrections nears launch

2013-08-01T00:00:00Z

The Douglas County Department of Corrections, thanks to Second Chance, will use Collaborate case and client management software to manage their re-entry, work release, and education programs for inmates in Douglas County.

MDC Partners Utilizes MainEvent

2013-07-01T00:00:00Z

MDC Partners, a global Marketing Services holding company, has contracted with Network Ninja to utilize MainEvent to manage its Experiential programs and campaigns.

With offices throughout the world and over 1500 clients worldwide, MDC is a global leader in the experiential and general advertising marketplace.

United Distributors Chooses MainEvent

2013-06-17T00:00:00Z

United Distributors, one of the largest beverage distributors in the United States, has chosen MainEvent to manage its experiential programs.

With a 70+ year history in the Beverage industry, United will apply its wealth of knowledge and success to utilize MainEvent to gauge the impact of its executions have on sales to the accounts that they cater to.

Inspira Picks MainEvent

2013-06-10T00:00:00Z

Inspira Marketing has selected MainEvent to assist with the management of its Experiential Campaigns.

Winner of numerous achievements, from The Inc 500 (#44) to EX Awards, Inspira has a wide spectrum of clients in the Spirit and Consumer Goods industries.

SPI Chooses MainEvent

2013-06-03T00:00:00Z

SPI Marketing, a leading gay and lesbian focused Experiential Agency will use MainEvent to manage its programs.

Since 1996, SPI has supported such customers as ABSOLUT Vodka, American Airlines and IBM.

206 Inc. Chooses MainEvent

2013-05-17T00:00:00Z

206 Inc, an Experiential Agency based in Seattle, will use MainEvent to manage its programs. Counting clients from Microsoft, Disney and Toyota, we’re fortunate to have 206 on board.

Gaycenter Enters Development Phase With Collaborate

2013-03-25T00:00:00Z

Gaycenter, the second largest LGBT community center in the world, will use Collaborate to facilitate the services they provide to the LGBT community.

Every week 6,000 people visit the Center, and more than 300 groups meet there. We’re proud to be working with them.

YMCA of Greater New York Chooses Collaborate

2013-03-20T00:00:00Z

YMCA of Greater New York is using Collaborate to manage their education and referral services, and measure the goals set and outcomes achieved during that process.

The YMCA of Greater New York is a community service organization which promotes positive values through programs that build spirit, mind and body, welcoming all people, with a focus on youth.

Hope for the Warriors is Using Collaborate

2013-02-28T00:00:00Z

The mission of Hope For The Warriors is to enhance the quality of life for post-9/11 service members, their families, and families of the fallen who have sustained physical and psychological wounds in the line of duty.

Collaborate is a secure and highly customizable web-based solution to enable teams to manage their case and client information.

Hope For The Warriors will be customizing their instance of Collaborate to match their workflow, and act as a tool to help with everything from Intake to Reports.

Traver Picks MainEvent

2013-02-01T00:00:00Z

Based out of sunny Newport Beach, California (which we, Chicagoans, are slightly jealous during winter months), Traver will implement MainEvent to manage their Experiential campaigns.

Over the past two plus decades, when not out enjoying the Cali sun, Traver has focused on providing well executed experiential activations for their clients.

Group CSE chooses MainEvent

2013-02-01T00:00:00Z

CSE, an Atlanta based marketing agency with roots that stretch back 25 years, will use MainEvent to help manage their experiential marketing campaigns.

A multi-faceted and dynamic agency, CSE is led by a team of passionate experts in Marketing, Advertising, Digital, Media Services, and Client Representation.

LegalServer Makes Major Advances in Generating Immigration Forms

2013-01-01T00:00:00Z

As you may know, USCIS has started making improvements to their immigration forms, including the incorporation of bar codes into specific forms. While initially this only affects certain forms, it is very likely that this will come standard on all forms relatively soon.

Beginning with Form I-90, Application to Replace Permanent Resident Card, we will publish our high-volume forms with 2D barcode technology. When you complete these forms using a computer, the barcode at the bottom of the page will store the data entered on the form. We will be able to scan the information from the barcode and upload it directly to USCIS systems, allowing us to improve data quality and operational efficiency.

These bar codes contain data from the form itself in a very specific format, which USCIS (presumably) is using to reduce entry time and error.

As a result of the USCIS new requirements, we spent hundreds of hours over the last several weeks reworking the way that LegalServer completes/generates immigration forms from the CMS. While these improvements benefit LegalServer’s immigration form capacity (including laying the foundation for future enhanced data entry capability), the USCIS forms have a number of restrictions that are outside of our control.

Here is a summary of the new restrictions:

Acrobat Reader must be used for opening the filled PDF files in order for the filled values to be seen.
FoxIt Pro, Apple’s Preview, OpenOffice, and other alternative PDF readers will either fail to read the file entirely or the forms will appear blank.
New forms do not allow us to auto scale font size to make text fit.
We also must conform to the maximum field lengths specified by the USCIS form now. Some fields, such “Name of Recognized Organization” on the G-28 form have inexplicably short maximum sizes in their PDF versions. This is not a bug with LegalServer and must be taken up with USCIS.
USCIS is only allowing standard english characters in some name fields. This means that letters with tildes and umlauts must be transliterated.

GoBee chooses MainEvent

2012-10-08T00:00:00Z

GoBee Group is using MainEvent to manage the experiences that carve the path between consumers and brands.

With offices in both Canada and the States, GoBee engineers and activates creative, full service, integrated marketing concepts and strategies for clients and their consumers.

MainEvent and Sense Go for the Gold

2012-08-17T00:00:00Z

Like Gabby Douglas, the Network Ninja team strived to get the gold at the women’s all around in gymnastics in London. While we did not personally gain a medal, we did gain an exceptional new UK customer.

Sense, whose dedicated team creates flawless brand experiences for their clients, chose MainEvent™ for all of their experiential marketing management needs.

BARetc chooses MainEvent

2012-08-07T00:00:00Z

BARetc, a national spirits promotion agency hailing from Plano, Texas, has selected MainEvent to help manage its events and analyze information captured.

BARetc provides promotional specialists, custom events, and guerilla marketing teams in most major markets throughout the United States.

LegalServer Participates in Technology Summit

2012-06-27T00:00:00Z

Legal Services Corporation (LSC) convened the 2012 Summit on the Use of Technology to Expand Access to Justice on June 21-22 in Silver Spring, Md. Nearly 50 participants — including the founder of LegalServer, IV Ashton — met to explore the potential of technology to move the United States toward providing service of some form to all with a legal need.

The summit is the first of two planned gatherings for 2012. A follow-up summit is targeted for the fall, and will focus on implementation. Fourteen white papers were produced in advance of the summit and were used to focus the discussion. They will be published, some in print and the rest online, by the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology.

The summit kicked off with LSC President James J. Sandman challenging the group to “think big” in considering how technology might be used to make the legal process more accessible to clients, how to “get the biggest bang for our buck,” and how to maximize communication and cooperation among everyone in the equal justice community.

Although the number of Americans living in poverty is at an all-time high and funding (in inflation-adjusted dollars) for legal aid is at an all-time low, Sandman was optimistic about the potential impact of the summit.

Richard Zorza wrote a great summary of the event on his Access to Justice Blog

LegalServer Featured in The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin

2012-05-16T00:00:00Z

Illinois Legal Aid Online (ILAO) was created in March 2001 following a statewide study that looked at the technology needs of legal aid groups. Since then, they have become a national model for how legal aid groups can use technology to bridge the gap between their services and the people who need them.

What isn’t as widely known is the role that the founder of LegalServer, IV Ashton, had in making the organization a reality. One night over drinks, Ashton and Robert Glaves, the Executive Director of the Chicago Bar Foundation, used a crayon and a paper tablecloth to sketch out a plan that became the blueprint for the group.

The story was told in a Chicago Daily Law Bulletin article. The article, about the three original financial backers of the ILAO receiving “Early Adopter Awards” at the groups recent annual gala, appears in full text below.

Group honors its first funders

May 4, 2012
By Bethany Krajelis
Law Bulletin staff writer

Illinois Legal Aid Online came out of a statewide study, but it turned into a reality with the financial help of three groups and a blueprint drawn on a paper tablecloth. Nearly 12 years later, the group serves as a one-stop, legal-resource shop and a national model for how legal aid groups can use technology to bridge the gap between their services and the people who need them.

On Thursday, the group honored its first three funders — IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, the Lawyers Trust Fund of Illinois and the Chicago Bar Foundation (CBF) — with an “Early Adopter Award” at its second annual fundraising gala, “Innovation from our Foundation to the Future.”

“They were visionaries for their time and their leadership is why we are here,” said Lisa A. Colpoys, the group’s executive director. These three groups were “way ahead of their time” when they started to explore the idea of using the Internet to reach the poor, said Todd H. Flaming, a founding partner at KrausFlaming LLC and a member of the online legal group’s board of directors.

Before he introduced the award recipients at the event, Flaming reminded the nearly 300 attendants that when the group first formed in 2001, the Internet was a baby and the concepts behind the iPhone and Facebook were years away from inception.

After watching Illinois Legal Aid Online grow over the past decade, Robert A. Glaves, executive director of the CBF; Ruth Ann Schmitt, executive director of the Lawyers Trust Fund of Illinois; and IIT Chicago-Kent law professor Ronald W. Staudt said they couldn’t be happier with what the group’s accomplished and where it’s headed.

The group runs several websites and a mobile application that provide free legal resources 24/7. It recently launched a Spanish-language version of its website and plans to follow suit soon with a mobile app. It serves as a hub for lawyers looking for multimedia training and pro bono opportunities. It also handles the 80-plus self-help legal centers in courthouses throughout the state.

“This is the best state online legal aid website in the nation, by far,” Staudt said. “The content is deep, it’s rich in tools and has a great staff.”

While the online legal aid group made a name for itself, Leonard Jay Schrager, professor emeritus at The John Marshall Law School, said he needed be convinced the start-up costs were worth it. Schrager served as CBF president in 2000, when he said Glaves suggested the foundation fork over $50,000 a year for three years to get the group up and running. “That was a lot of money. I thought he was crazy,” Schrager said. “He said ‘I’m not crazy’ and we had a big, long discussion about it. One of the best things I’ve ever done was realize I was wrong.”

He said he credits Glaves for convincing him to get the foundation on board. Glaves, however, said Schrager deserves recognition for going forward with it.

“The idea seems obvious now— use the Internet to increase access — but at the time we did this, it was a huge risk,” Glaves said. “The Internet was still new and people didn’t really believe poor people would be able to access the Internet.”

Although a statewide study on the technology needs of legal aid groups spurred the idea for the group, Glaves said he didn’t know how it would work so he asked Harry E. Ashton IV for some help. Ashton, who goes by IV, just returned from working on technology issues overseas for IIT Chicago-Kent. He now runs PS Technologies Inc., which provides case management software for legal aid groups.

The two men went out for drinks to discuss logistics and left with a plan. Ashton drew it all out that night with a crayon on a paper tablecloth, which he folded up and put in his pocket before leaving. Seeing how the online legal aid group evolved from his crayon drawing to an organization that continues to be innovative in its offerings, Ashton said, can only be described as “awesome.”

Supporter of the 6th Annual Investing in Justice Campaign

2012-04-25T00:00:00Z

The Chicago Bar Foundation’s (CBF) Sixth Annual Investing in Justice Campaign is just winding to a close, and LegalServer is proud to have played a role in once again answered the call to help ensure that people in need in our community have access to justice.

CBF ad in the Wall Street Journal.

For the sixth year in a row, LegalServer has joined others in the Chicago legal community to support this important project. The Campaign ran a thank-you Ad in the April 13th Wall Street Journal listing their key supporters, of which we are proud to have been included.

All of the funds raised in the Campaign will once again go directly towards CBF grants to more than 35 pro bono and legal aid organizations. This will enable tens of thousands of low-income and disadvantaged Chicagoans, including disabled children and adults, veterans, homeowners facing foreclosure and homeless youth, to get critical legal advice and assistance.

Grants funded by the Investing in Justice Campaign are an important part of the CBF’s comprehensive efforts to ensure that all Chicagoans have access to justice. The CBF expect to have final results and news about the more than $1 million in grants the Campaign will make possible by the end of May.

https://youtu.be/6iXBcYxWTR8

LegalServer and Northwest Justice Project launch CLEAR*Online

2011-03-17T00:00:00Z

We’re pleased to announce the launch of the Northwest Justice Project online application process and triage tool, CLEAR*Online. The portal was developed by LegalServer, and supported by a Technology Initiative Grant from the Legal Services Corporation. People will use the online portal to:

Submit an application 24/7 for legal assistance. Users may submit an application for help with most problems relating to public benefits or loss of housing. CLEAR will follow up by calling the applicant unless he/she indicates a preference to call CLEAR. These applicants will be offered 3 time windows between 8:15AM and 4:00 PM in which to receive a callback.
Conduct a preliminary screening for other types of legal problems. If it looks like the applicant will qualify for assistance (financially and problem type), he/she may electronically transfer the data to NJP so that when he/she calls CLEAR, the intake interview will take less time.
Find other resources related to the problem: Whether or not the applicant qualifies for assistance from CLEAR, at the end of the application we will provide publications, other organizations and web resources that may help resolve the problem.

CGLA Wins 2011 Lumity Technology Award

2011-03-17T00:00:00Z

We at Network Ninja congratulate Cabrini Green Legal Aid for their great work in the community and for winning the 2011 Lumity Technology Leadership Award for their implementation of LegalServer. Each year, the Award recognizes a non-profit organization that demonstrates an innovative use of technology that positively impacts their organization.

https://youtu.be/zVlN9h0eKwM

CVLS Latest Pro Bono Organization to Adopt LegalServer

2010-02-15T00:00:00Z

Chicago Volunteer Legal Services, one of the largest legal aid volunteer agencies in the country, has chosen to use LegalServer to manage their volunteer and client bases.

LegalServer’s flexible web-based platform will enhance CVLS’s vast multidisciplinary practice areas as well as integrate easily with their fundraising needs.

LegalServer Integrates GIS

2010-02-12T00:00:00Z

LegalServer releases customized GIS mapping and reporting tools for the web-based case management software used by thousands in the legal aid community.

The GIS Reporting and Tracking Module allows organizations to visualize case data like never before with these new advanced mapping features. The module allows organizations to add GIS reports with custom filters, multiple data types and timeline trend analysis.

National HotDocs Project to Launch

2010-02-08T00:00:00Z

Working closely with Illinois Legal Aid Online, Pro Bono Net, Capstone and LSC, LegalServer is set to launch its newly integrated tool for legal aid agencies to send client case data directly to a national server hosting HotDocs automated document templates.

In addition to LegalServer’s own auto-generated document template platform, this advancement will save numerous hours of work in preparing necessary documentation for each case.

LegalServer Featured at the Goldmark Luncheon

2010-02-01T00:00:00Z

At the request of the Legal Foundation of Washington, Ron Wihoite and IV Ashton will speak at a breakout session of the 24th Annual Goldmark Award Luncheon in Seattle on February 26, 2010.

Washington state is one of three states to recently implement LegalServer throughout its legal services delivery network.

MainEvent Goes Mobile

2010-01-10T00:00:00Z

Users of Network Ninja’s MainEvent software solution for managing experiential marketing campaigns can now use their mobile devices to access key program information in real time.

Now you can track your event metrics and more on your iPhone, Palm Pre, Blackberry and other web enabled mobile devices from the field.

AMA Chooses Collaborate

2009-08-05T00:00:00Z

The AMA Physician Family Support Program, which serves Alberta physicians, residents, medical students and their immediate families, has chosen to use Collaborate for their case tracking. The system will facilitate their mental health, addiction, and occupational service tracking.

Next Level Chooses MainEvent

2008-11-08T00:00:00Z

Next Level Marketing has decided to use MainEvent to manage their experiential campaigns.

Located in Westport, CT, Next Level strives to provide consumers with unforgettable experiences and help their clients successfully achieve their brand building objectives.

Makai Picks MainEvent

2008-11-08T00:00:00Z

With a name like Makai (translated from Hawaiian as “By the Sea”), it is no surprise that their experiential campaigns feel almost as good as sitting seaside on a tropical beach.

Working together, with mutual respect and understanding, Makai will be using MainEvent to manage their campaigns that build a passionate relationship between brands and consumers.