Have they implemented CardDAV support yet? I’d definitely add it to my self-hosted stack, but I don’t want to be stuck updating contact info in two places.
Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.
31–40 of 201 posts
Re: Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.
#32I tend to think that CRM is the wrong model for friends and family.
Brain + contact info on your computer/phone + calendar with reminders for birthdays etc. + pencil and paper for notes catches the most important things but allows us to forget the less important things.
Re: Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.
#33I tend to think that CRM is the wrong model for friends and family. Brain + contact info on your computer/phone + calendar with reminders for birthdays etc. + pencil and paper for notes catches the most important things but allows us to forget the less important things.
What's the major difference between what you're suggesting and a CRM?
I tend to think back of "How to Win Friends and Influence People" and there's an entire chapter devoted to what is basically an analog CRM and devoting time to staying up to date with it (including scheduling calls).
If anything I think a CRM applies even more because I care more about friends and family than I do about a sales pipeline. More effort = more importance, in my book.
Also there's the added bonus of not having to remember these things so I can focus on remembering more useful things.
Re: Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.
#34I was excited by the vision of Dex (a YC company), but its sign up process is so full of friction, I had to look for other Personal CRM solutions.
You aren’t kidding. A 13 question survey AND a 15 minute call to review the app before I can sign up? Plus, there are no available times to call in December. Yeesh.
Re: Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.
#35To anyone who’s been self hosting this for sometime — has it been stable, usable and relatively pain free through updates? The hosted plan for $90 a year is way too expensive for me. The reason I ask this question is to figure out if it’s worth trying or not. On another forum, I’d asked about self hosting Ghost (the publishing platform) and someone said that it’s a pain to keep up with it and that the makers of the s…
been hosting it for years and it has been stable
Re: Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.
#36I've been using this for some time now. It seems like development has slowed down a lot this past year.
I think it has a lot of potential.
Re: Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.
#37Not sure if this was already argued elsewhere as I understand that monica gets posted here frequently, but on the readme:
> This project is for people who have hard time remembering details about other people's lives - especially the ones they care about.
My argument is, if you actually cared for someone, wouldn't you take the effort to remember everything about them, rather than saving it in a social relationship database?
I've tried something similar to this during my college days. I painstakingly inputted all my phone contacts to google contacts. I searched their facebook for their birthdates, what university they were attending and what degree they were studying.
Looking back at it now, that was a tremendous waste of time. I've met maybe 1000 people in my lifetime, I could count in my ten fingers the people I care about. Can people actually care about other people, AT SCALE, to the point where you would need an app for that? I've read in other comments, one case in particular, where an uncle kept a spreadsheet of facts about the people he cared about, and that many people went to his funeral. So fine maybe people do need something like this to scale personal relationships.
My other argument is that this FEELS ungenuine, and I'm not sure how else to explain it. Saving your friend's child's birthday in a database just so you can say that you remembered vs actually remembering their birthday; I feel like there is a huge gap between the two. I would rather have 1 genuine relationship, rather than 100 superficial, inauthentic relationships.
What do you think?
Re: Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.
#38I tend to think that CRM is the wrong model for friends and family. Brain + contact info on your computer/phone + calendar with reminders for birthdays etc. + pencil and paper for notes catches the most important things but allows us to forget the less important things.
What's the major difference between what you're suggesting and a CRM? I tend to think back of "How to Win Friends and Influence People" and there's an entire chapter devoted to what is basically an analog CRM and devoting time to staying up to date with it (including scheduling calls). If anything I think a CRM applies even more because I care more about friends and family than I do about a sales pipeline. More effor…
The major differences for me are intent, whether it's retaining more information than you'd normally remember (which seems creepy and intrusive) and whether it's a paid service or subscription.
1. Intent design: CRM seems designed principally as a sales tool and I don't want to sell or be sold to.
2. Information retention: I think regular calendar/contacts/reminders built into your phone balances the "don't forget important stuff" with "don't make an effort to keep track of things that aren't important."
3. Paid service/subscription: I'm OK with contacts apps but I kind of have contacts, notes, and a calendar built into my phone already and have no desire to pay a subscription fee.
Elaborating on (1) a bit: I don't really set out to "influence" my friends and I'd be kind of unhappy if they were trying to "influence" me.
Influencing family might make more sense though, like influencing kids to study or family members to exercise and eat a healthy diet.
The danger in family and friend relationships is turning things into a contract which can be unforgiving and intrusive. "Well, household database shows that you've been late taking the garbage out 52% of the time for the past 3 years!"
As a child I dreamed of having a smartwatch that would record everything my family members said so I could play it back to them and prove infallibly that I was right. I was glad they didn't have such a thing to apply to me though.
I imagine in the future we'll be wearing smart glasses or contact lenses that will identify the name of any person within view who we've met before, as well as their relevant statistics and information including data from online services like social media or dating sites (much the way that CRM provide sales clerks with information on every customer who walks into the store.) I'm not sure that's entirely a good idea.
Re: Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.
#39Offering this as a hosted instance is tantamount to conspiracy to enable identity theft, and worse. These things just shouldn't be chucked into someone's S3 bucket or SQL database.
You've been downvoted, but it does seem like a high risk for information security.
Re: Monica: Personal CRM. Remember everything about your friends, family and etc.
#40Not sure if this was already argued elsewhere as I understand that monica gets posted here frequently, but on the readme: > This project is for people who have hard time remembering details about other people's lives - especially the ones they care about. My argument is, if you actually cared for someone, wouldn't you take the effort to remember everything about them, rather than saving it in a social relationship da…
For quite a few people, memory and remembering things isn't a simple issue that can be solved by "effort" or "actually caring".