New ISA Forum

As many of our readers know, ISA not only has a brand new website, but has a fantastic new Membership Forum as well.  This new Forum is much more robust and user friendly; we’d like to take you on a quick tour…

Once logged into the Forum, you will be able to read new topic postings, search previous posts, post topics and much more.

 
Subscribing to the Forum
To subscribe to a specific Forum (Education, Requests for Help, Appraisal Theory and Practice, Open Discussion) select the desired Forum and then select “watch this forum for new topics”.  If you would like to be updated when new posts are made to that Forum, select “watch this forum for new posts”.

Another great feature of the Forum is your ability to see which topics have been updated, since you last logged on.  These can be viewed by selecting “unread topics”; from there a list of new updates is populated.

How to Unsubscribe
If you would no longer like to receive updates on specific Forum topic and post updates, you can simply unsubscribe.  To do this, select “My profile”, then “My subscriptions”.  This is where you can unsubscribe to specific topics and posts.

Posting on Forum 
To post on the Forum, select the specific forum and then choose “new topic”. This brings you to the area where you can draft your post; you have the ability to add links, images, etc.  When you have completed your draft you can preview what it will look like, prior to posting.  Once, you are satisfied with the post, select “add message” to post the message for other Forum users to see.

 


Frequently Asked Questions
The FAQ tab, within the Forum provides solutions to common user questions, at the click of a button.

Forum Search

There are multiple ways to look for posts within the new Forum: Recent Topics, Recent Posts and Search. The Search feature allows the user to set parameters for the results, whereas, Recent Topics and Recent Posts, list recently updated topics and newly added posts.

 
We hope that this brief tour helps you become more familiar with the New ISA Forum.

ISA is Headed West

Go west ISA, go west for an exciting, entertaining, educational and enriching experience to the Annual Conference: Turning Up the Heat! Assets 2012.   Start preparing and packing your saddle bags to board the coach and escape to our Arizona Western hospitality for a “rootin’ tootin’ highfalutin’ good time”!

As one of your hosts, we have planned a Friday tour schedule that will make it difficult for you to choose which tour experience to take --- either the Antiques and Residential Contents package tour with lunch taking you to the world famous Heard Museum followed by the Musical Instruments Museum housed in a fifty thousand square foot musical mecca, or The Fine Arts package tour including lunch with a special behind the scenes look at museum storage at the Arizona State University Art Museum followed by the Phoenix Art Museum that is presently highlighting Frank Lloyd Wright. We guarantee that either one will leave you “wide-eyed and open-mouthed” and saying “WOW”!

A brief synopsis for each of the venues are …

a.    The Heard Museum:   Since 1929, the museum has educated visitors from around the world about art, artifacts, and decorative arts with its 40,000 items and changing exhibitions such as Navajo Textile: 100 years of weaving and Bola ties: the Ultimate Neckwear, and Around the World Collections.

b. The Musical Instruments Museum (MIM):  As an introduction to the newest world famous two-year-old museum, it is like “a jewel rising from the desert, MIM is an inspiring venue for sharing the world’s music. Pass through the majestic courtyard into the bright and soaring atrium. Follow “El Río,” the flowing river form that creates the path linking the museum’s galleries. With an interior designed to convey the graceful lines common to musical instruments, MIM is bright, open, and dramatic in scale. It’s a magnificent destination befitting the discoveries inside.”

c. The Arizona State University Art Museum (with the adjacent Ceramics Research Center): The 57,000 square foot building houses a 12,000 piece collection that includes works from the 14th century to the present featuring paintings sculpture, prints drawings, ceramics and photography. Contemporary, Latino, Southwestern artists are well-represented.

d. The Phoenix Art Museum:  With over eleven galleries, you could spend two days and still not finish as you explore American, Western, Contemporary artists, fashion design, miniature rooms, photography, and special collections.

Of course, you will have an expert docent with a customized tour for each museum to help personalize your experience.  Sign up NOW as spaces are limited especially the “pre-conference bonus” offered below to the first 28 early arrivals.

Sincerely,
Tom Helms ISA-CAPP
Annual Meeting Chair

A PRE-CONFERENCE BONUS offered by your hosts from A-Z Appraisal and Estate Consultants would like to invite you to sign up for a $20.00 bus charge for an all day Thursday, April 19th  no-host “Behind the Scenes Exploration of Greater Phoenix”.
Get to know the area with some possible stops such as a quick visit to the rarely visited “Mystery Castle” or a visit to famous “Paolo Soleri Cosanti Bell Studio” or a stop at “Frank Lloyd Wright Taliesin West” or a look at “Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art”, or just to stop at one of Phoenix’s premier antique malls or shop the galleries in Scottsdale or just listen to me chat about the good, bad and the scandalous “Valley of the Sun”.  We will pick you up at the hotel at 9:00 and bring you home by 6:00.  Of course this no-host experience will stop at “MacAlpine’s1929 Soda Fountain” for lunch as we unravel the mysteries of the area as we continue to celebrate Arizona’s Centennial.

 Hopefully, you will be the first one of the 28 to email Tom Helms at the 123@cox.net to say, “count me in as I am coming in on Wednesday and will be raring and ready to hop aboard and explore.”  It will be a fun day leaving you exhausted for your next day’s event leading to a memorable 2012 Conference.

Your Formal Invitation to be Social

Greetings ISANow Blog Readers! In the last few months you may have seen the name “Thomas K. Radde” in tutorial pictures and the sample profile that was in the Sneak Peek album of the ISA’s Facebook page and thought, “Who is that?” or “that guy isn’t any appraiser of ISA that I know” so it is high time that I introduce myself. I am Thomas K. Radde, though I go by Tom, and I am your friendly ISA Social Media staff guru. Pretty much any time a Facebook post goes up from ISA headquarters or you receive a tweet on Twitter it’s me behind the scenes.


I’m sure that reading that last sentence made some of you shudder, but the fact is that Social Media is here to stay. It was played off as a favorite pastime for the college-aged crowd at its inception (rightfully so, Facebook was founded in 2004 to link college kids together) and has since received the vast majority of its press from celebrity snafus, legal action, and uprisings, but the bigger picture here is that it has become the norm, grown to epic proportions, and a lot of people are using it. 


Perhaps the term “a lot” doesn’t do it justice, the image to the right is a By-the-Numbers breakdown.


So please consider this to be your formal invitation to join the conversation. You can ask questions, catch up with other appraisers, find out about events, or just read the articles that are posted but whatever your purposes are for joining, I encourage each and every one of you to at least give it a try. There is no commitment to be made unless you want there to be, so all you have to lose is the amount of time it takes you to decide if social media is for you. What you have to gain is a new form of communication, access to a world of real-time up-to-date information as it’s happening, virtually unlimited networking opportunities, and a place to promote yourself, your businesses, and your services.


Facebook.com 
Twitter.com 
LinkedIn.com 

Explore!

As this week's previous post indicated, ISA has a brand new website! We would like to help you get to know our new website a little better with our version of a scavenger hunt. We have listed ten questions below, to get you started on your exploration.

By entering the bold word in any of the questions below into the “Search” field found on the ISA homepage, you will be presented with “Search Results”, which will assist you in answering the question. Click on any of the populated results; this action will take you to that source of content.

1. What is the Mission of ISA?
2. Who currently sits on the ISA Board of Directors?
3. Where and when is the Annual Conference being held?
4. How can you be certain you have a good appraisal?
5. What is the ISA Code of Ethics?
6. What is ISA’s Credentialing Policy?
7. What courses are being offered in 2012?
8. What are the benefits of ISA Membership?
9. What are the four ways to search using: Find an Appraiser?
10. Where are current committees listed?

Whether you are an ISA Member familiarizing yourself with your Society’s website or a member of the public just trying to learn more about us and what we do; this is a great way to explore all that the new site and ISA has to offer.

ISA Launches NEW Website!

As many of our blog readers know, ISA has officially launched its brand new website!  This exciting project has been in the works for some time and we are proud of all of the hard work and effort that has gone into this incredible new site; it not only provides up to date information on ISA as a Society, but also promotes the individual appraiser as well.  

We would like to take you on a brief tour and introduce you to a few of the many exciting, newly refined aspects of our new website. 

The ISA homepage, the central hub of information at a glance.  Be sure to complete your member profile, upload an image and complete the spotlight section – our full members (ISA, AM, and CAPP) will be featured in the “Member Spotlight”, which rotates through completed member profiles. Utilize the new search function from the homepage to locate information within the website. 

The new and improved ISA Forum, available to ISA Members only, is accessible with the same user name and password that is used to sign into the member side of the website.  No more trying to remember two sets of user names and passwords for ISA.  The new platform is user friendly allowing members to post questions, photos and comments on a specific thread.
 

Access details on the upcoming ISA Annual Conference by clicking on “Annual Conference”; this brings you to a dedicated page, where you can not only register, but find information on the program, hotel, specialty tours and more. 

Are you curious about ISA Education? The Education page of the website allows you to learn more about the current education initiatives as well as register for upcoming courses. 

 Are you curious about the latest news from ISA?  Navigate to the News tab of the website and view recent ISA Now blog posts, view ISA’s calendar by month, week or day, catch up on Member News Feeds and see the latest member updates.

These are just a few of the exciting new pages on the brand new ISA website.  Visit our blog later this week for more tips and hints about discovering all the new and exciting features of the ISA website.  

New ISA CAPP Members

ISA would like to recognize those members of ISA who completed the ISA CAPP Program in 2011 and have now earned their ISA CAPP designation. Please join ISA in congratulating the following ISA members on this extraordinary achievement:

Genae Fields, ISA CAPP – Houston, TX
Susan Fisher, ISA CAPP – Jacksonville, FL
Ron Freeman, ISA CAPP – Phoenix, AZ
Valerie Hale, ISA CAPP – Atlanta, GA
Thomas Helms, ISA CAPP – Phoenix, AZ
Charles McCracken, ISA CAPP – Hilton Head, SC
Michelle Angerman-Soffer, ISA CAPP – Los Angeles, CA
Andrea Thorin, ISA CAPP – Foster City, CA

Congratulations to ISA’s newest CAPP members!