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Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.

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Re: Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.

#191

Post by tomgs »

hammock wrote: post #182
tomgs wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Frankly, I don't need to know how he is doing every few months and I find it a bit awkward to make small talk any way. There's a bit of secret sauce here that I tend to rely on to prevent myself from being considered "that guy". First and foremost, I do this as much as possible via e-mail. Phone or WhatsApp is indeed too "personal" for these type of things (save for one person, an old boss of mine, who I have a sch…

What strikes me as the secret sauce there is the 5-8 paragraphs of info that gets dumped at once. There is something value in there that the other can pick up on and continue the thread. Compare that to a text , where you might send a sentence or two and expect them to come back with something- when in fact, they weren't thinking about YOU and therefore aren't prepared to respond. Hence awkward.

Yep, yep. Makes all the difference.

Liking to write helps a lot with keeping in touch.

Re: Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.

#193

Post by _alex_ »

tomgs wrote: post #176
terpimost wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what are another 2 tools in your stack?

Ah, personal stacks. What a wonderful topic to spend a late night writing session on. I am not really into self-hosting and homelabs, in the sense that I never got too deep into the proper architecture of it all and the "right" way of doing things. I find that when I'm creating tooling (or setting up tooling, for that matter) for myself, the only thing that matters is speed of setup and ease of use. Hosted is fine fo…

I hadn’t seen The Hackers Diet. reading it now. about 1/3 of the way through and it’s really great. thanks for the link!

Re: Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.

#194

Post by zwayhowder »

alejojo wrote: post #12
zwayhowder wrote: post #7

I ran Monica for a year when I worked in a Big4. Technically not the use case, but quite handy. However, I was never able to successfully upgrade it (circa 2018) and therefore moved on to another option because I needed features unavailable and the effort of migrating my data to a new instance was more than the effort of going elsewhere. Might be time for me to revisit as it looks to have come a long way.

moved to?

I currently pay for Cloze.com it's not perfect but is cheap enough for one person and syncs my email, contacts and calendar.

Re: Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.

#195

Post by zwayhowder »

scrollaway wrote: post #11
zwayhowder wrote: post #7

I ran Monica for a year when I worked in a Big4. Technically not the use case, but quite handy. However, I was never able to successfully upgrade it (circa 2018) and therefore moved on to another option because I needed features unavailable and the effort of migrating my data to a new instance was more than the effort of going elsewhere. Might be time for me to revisit as it looks to have come a long way.

Monica not being able to sync (two-way) with something as basic as Google Contacts is a dealbreaker imo. I was ready to pay for it to actually be my source of truth for my contacts database, and store a lot more metadata that I'm currently trying to hack into custom Google Contacts fields (profiles on other sites/services primarily). True wishlist: A PRM like Monica, which can sync two-ways with Google Contacts / car…

All this times 100.

Re: Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.

#196

Post by wegs2 »

kristianp wrote: post #28
wegs2 wrote: post #22

I'd totally pay for something like this, but not $90/year. I'd pay $90 per year for an all-in-one-service to replace Google, but with open source and privacy. It seems like a tough business model, to try to sell a one-off utility like this. Over a 50 year lifetime, that's $4,500. It feels like in the eighties, I'd pay $20 (which is $40 in today's dollars) for a shareware tool, and it'd do this for the rest of my life…

There's always people who aren't prepared to pay the asking price. Maybe they should charge more, especially if it means there's a sustainable business that isn't going to get sold and shut down.

Profit = number of users x number of sales

(Minus costs, which are low for a web service)

There's a point that maximizes profit, and my point was that $4,500 might be a bit beyond that for a personal CRM.

Re: Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.

#197

Post by vonseel »

Volundr wrote: post #72
vonseel wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You won't forget the names when it matters. If you can't remember these basic details, it's a sign that person is not close enough to you for it to actually matter. Or, maybe you're like me and you just met the person five minutes ago. Either case is forgivable.

I'm afraid your experience is not universal. There are plenty of people I care very deeply about, yet Facebook reminding me of their birthdays is a godsend. Children I do somewhat better with, but names are always a struggle for me. A friend had triplets a couple months into the pandemic, and I'm still struggling there. Meanwhile a the drop of a hat I can bring to mind some technical detail that I heard once a decade…

Maybe, I just feel like it shouldn't matter for anyone if you remember their kids names, unless it's your brothers or sisters kids or your own kids. Not remembering a cousins kids names in my family would be a minor faux pas, but I have like... dozens of cousins in two continents, so it's not a big deal. Not remembering a friends kids name should never be an issue IMO. Even much less so with birthdays.

But we're all entitled to our own opinions. I suppose I am just way more easy-going than some of the people here.

Re: Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.

#198

Post by vonseel »

fjfaase wrote: post #92
vonseel wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You won't forget the names when it matters. If you can't remember these basic details, it's a sign that person is not close enough to you for it to actually matter. Or, maybe you're like me and you just met the person five minutes ago. Either case is forgivable.

You won't forget directions when it matters. If you can't remember how to get to a certain place without a navigation app, it's a sign that that place is not close enough to you for it to actaully matter. I really do not understand people who cannot do without navigation to get home when they visited a friend for the first time.

What? I'm not sure how that has anything to do with remembering a friend's kids names or remembering people's birthdays.

I drive with nav on if I'm going somewhere unfamiliar, but only bc I live in a kind of large city and I'd like to know if there are any traffic problems or construction on one of the streets I'm taking.

Re: Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.

#199

Post by vonseel »

theshrike79 wrote: post #188
vonseel wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You won't forget the names when it matters. If you can't remember these basic details, it's a sign that person is not close enough to you for it to actually matter. Or, maybe you're like me and you just met the person five minutes ago. Either case is forgivable.

I can still remember the name of the woman in the porn mag I found from my dads cupboard 30 years ago. Haven't seen that magazine in 29 years. I keep forgetting the names of my friends wives and children. I talk to them weekly. The only birthdays I remember are mine, my wife's and my kids. I kinda remember the season my other family members birthdays, maybe the month if I really strain. Couldn't tell the actual date…

I'm the exact same way. And that should be fine. I don't have kids but I have three brothers who all have kids. I know their first names, and most of their middle names. I don't know all their birthdays. That's fine. I recently asked so I could put their birthdays in my calendar.

But even my best friends, people I've known and lived with before, wouldn't expect me to remember details about their kids. That's just weird, man.

Re: Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.

#200

Post by vonseel »

sam_goody wrote: post #116
vonseel wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You won't forget the names when it matters. If you can't remember these basic details, it's a sign that person is not close enough to you for it to actually matter. Or, maybe you're like me and you just met the person five minutes ago. Either case is forgivable.

If you can't see someone, you obviously don't care about them. (Glasses are a conspiracy?) And if you can't hear your friends, you must hate them. I can never remember my age, and have missed my birthday on occasion. When under pressure, I forget which of my children is the older, and confuse their names. In other news, I speak with a heavy accent, and am embarrassed by it all the time. I have tried learning to speak…

I'm not sure what point the first paragraph in your response is trying to make, but all I was trying to say is it's OK to not remember details like this. Especially when it's someone else's kids, someone else's birthday - exterior to your own family.

Don't fret forgetting things. My dad has mixed up my name and my brothers names constantly since probably before I was born 31 years ago :). He's an older man now, almost 70, but I don't think his name mix-ups began because of any age-related mental decline.

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