Acronym

Like many conference attendees, I scribble notes into a notepad during sessions. As these notes are easily lost/forgotten, I've more recently developed the habit of transferring them into digital form. (Feel free to grab the pdf of my session notes from the 2007 ASAE annual conference.)

In part, this helps to further digest and learn the material. It also provides a better historical/searchable record for when your brain faintly remembers that there was a great book reference during a lecture session last year...

Also, this style of report helps with internal learning and sharing between those who did (and did not!) attend the conference. In fact, we make it contingent that anyone who goes needs to write up a report.

Finally, I send a copy to my board of directors. I don't expect them to actually read it, but hope that they at least open the file and scroll down to the bottom making a quick visual scan of titles, keywords, etc, and make the mental note that their executive director is out there trying to gain new knowledge and insight to run the association better.

From this month’s Fast Company article “Girl Power”:

“Late last year, Ian Moray stumbled across a cotton-candy-pink Web site called Whateverlife.com. As manager of media development at the online marketing company ValueClick Media, he was searching for under-the-radar destinations for notoriously fickle teenagers …

‘When our director of marketing told me why Fast Company was calling,’ says Moray … ‘I assumed she was a seasoned Internet professional. She knows so much about what her site does, more than people three times her age.’”

From Shel Israel’s blog, Global Neighbourhoods, a quote from Sirhey Danyenko, founder of the Ukrainian website/online newspaper Highway:

“We do not hesitate to experiment and work in style ‘Fire! Fire! Fire! Now Aim’. People who come to our office, think that Highway has a huge editorial staff and they are pretty astonished, when they get acquainted with me and my several friends.

When I send letters, depending on the addressee I sign them ‘Editor in chief,’ ‘Head of marketing department,’ ‘Co-founder,’ ‘Head of advertising,’ ‘Brand manager’ etc.”

Both Ashley Qualls and Sirhey Danyenko saw a potential need and worked to fill it. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to them to let their ages or their locations keep them from being successful.

Is there something keeping you from firing away at a great new idea in your association? Can Ashley and Sirhey’s example inspire you to look for ways those obstacles can be removed or sidestepped (or just ignored altogether)?

Just a quick post for those of you who were interested in previous discussions of blogs as learning tools: Michele Martin at the Bamboo Project blog has posted additional resources and thoughts on this topic. Enjoy!

How does your association define success? Success comes in many flavors. Perhaps the important thing is to identify and implement what works for you. Thereafter communicate, communicate, and communicate. Your association has a sizable new volunteer leader class every year--did I mention the need to communicate?

What does your association value most? Is it performance? How about relationships? Perhaps its competencies or credentialing. We’re all different when it comes to what matters most, not to mention why it matters to us. So, to define success, there has to be agreement on what matters most. The situation, which may change over time, has a lot to do with defining success. For example, an association in a protracted, downward financial spiral, for example, may define success very differently than an association whose growth has been 30% per year for the past five years.

Here are some important success categories, with suggestions how they might be used.

Strategy--Does our association have a sustained record of performance to plan over time (successful strategy is not measured in 12-month cycles and someone’s pet agenda for the year)?
Voice of the customer—Who are our (right) customers and how do you know if they are satisfied (yes, there may be “wrong” customers)?
Financial—Do we have sustained performance over time meeting budget or ending each year with positive variances (no margin, no mission)?
Business operations—What is the record of new program development and existing program retirement over the past 5 years (are you still doing what you did 5 years ago)?
Learning & growth—What investment do we make on a consistent annual basis for volunteer’s & staff’s learning and growth in their association roles (no investment, no dividends)?

When you have figured out what matters most to your association and how you will measure success, it’s time to think about annual communications planning. An annual communications plan is important to your success. The plan is based around key messages that your organization wants to communicate about your successes. These key messages are important for association leaders—volunteers and staff—to focus on, repeat and reinforce. The messages help everyone to understand and stay on the same page.

Associations are best served by continuous success over time. We want our organizations to continue valuable work year after year. Of course we must allow for emerging opportunities and threats. What we don’t want to do is to swing the organization violently from one “theme” to another “theme” every 12 months. This redirection and continual change can be wasteful and discouraging.

There are many useful ways to define organizational success. And to communicate effectively about it. The most important point is to do so—consistently, over time, year after year. Your volunteers, staff and external relationships will thank you, knowing what to expect and how to help. How do you measure organizational success?

Just what I need: Another excuse to buy large amounts of books. (Actually, as any of my good friends could tell you, I need no excuse at all to buy books. But I digress.)

Can an MBA be replaced by a self-study program? The personal MBA site aims to find out. For those of you who haven’t come across the personal MBA before, it’s an interesting combination of self-study through reading and online community discussion, with a blog thrown in for good measure. (Josh Kaufman, the host of the site, also offers coaching to those interested.) BusinessWeek published an article on the history of the personal MBA if you’d like to learn more about how it got started.

I’m personally interested in reading some of the books—and interested to see which books were selected and which weren’t. But I’d encourage you to check out the personal MBA site with your association exec hat on, too. Could your association offer online self-study opportunities like this that members could pursue on their own time, without additional cost? Of course, I wonder if members used to working specifically for CMEs or recertification credits would skip over opportunities without credits attached. Would learning for learning’s sake attract the same interest?

In a post on her blog today, Ann Oliveri says, “Our members invent their own ULI, picking up the bright shiny pieces that are relevant at the moment, creating their own learning opportunities.”

What a great turn of phrase—and I think it’s true at every association, to a greater or lesser extent. Our members are constantly creating their own membership experiences. Two members can go to the same conference or read the same magazine, and by choosing different sessions or articles (or, heck, by skipping breakfast and having low blood sugar) experience the same thing in completely different ways.

Maybe the lesson to learn here is to avoid making assumptions and listen carefully when you speak or correspond with members. Watch out for warning signs that an individual member has concerns and respond to him or her as an individual. And if nothing else, remember that your interaction with that member can have a powerful effect on how they will see their personal membership experience—so try to make the interaction as positive as you can.

Thanks to some links on Ben Martin’s blog, I came across several Annual Meeting posts by relatively new association bloggers, and I wanted to make sure to point Acronym readers their way. I hope all of them are enjoying their blogging experiences so far!

The AE on the Verge blog lists 30 association management tips learned at Annual (in no particular order)

The CAE: Am I Crazy? blog provides a detailed rundown of some sessions that the blogger (a CAE candidate) found to be interesting

Maddie Grant was inspired to launch a blog herself after Annual

Jeff Cobb’s Mission to Learn blog has a post on e-learning at Annual and another on Web 2.0 at Annual

(Ben and Jeff aren't new bloggers, but I didn’t want to leave these posts out:)

Jeff De Cagna’s lessons learned at Annual 2007

Ben Martin's final Annual Meeting podcast: Part I and Part II

Jeff De Cagna recently posted two tag clouds comparing an article he wrote for the August Associations Now on “ungovernance” with a more standard article on association governance. The two tag clouds, side by side, show distinct differences in the terminology that each article uses and emphasizes.

Setting aside the subject matter of the tag clouds Jeff created, I think he’s on to something that could be an interesting or even enlightening way to evaluate your association’s communications or publications. What if you created tag clouds based on your last few months’ worth of press releases, or your last newsletter? What would it show you about the words you use frequently and the words you downplay?

We’re going to try creating tag clouds with stories from the last few issues of Associations Now. I’m curious to see what we can learn from the exercise.

(Wondering what a tag cloud is? Wikipedia has a basic explanation. Wondering how to create them? Jeff created his through Many Eyes, a free website sponsored by IBM.)

The August McKinsey Quarterlly newsletter has a very interesting article focused on when to exit a failing venture. While based on the perspective of the for-profit world, there is much that is applicable to our non-profits, where we seldom sunset, retire or exit from anything, whether it is failing or not, and regardless of life-cycle viability. Even programs and products that aren't failing deserve considertation for retirement, if there are other higher priority opportunities or threats that must receive attention and resources.

Did I mention that we often wonder why our associations don't have consistent new product development, aren't agile organizations and don't model innovative and entreprenurial business processes?

Readers can access the full premium article, free of charge through Aug 28. It may help in future conversations with volunteers and staff. Carter's Mantra No. 1: You can't add something new to the wagon, if you don't take something old off first.

URL is: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/article_abstract.aspx?ar=1768&l2=21&l3=37&srid=63&gp=1

I don’t follow basketball regularly—I’m more of a football person myself—but I’ve been following the news about the NBA referee cheating investigation in Sports Illustrated. For those of you who haven’t been, here’s the short version: the FBI is investigating whether a former NBA referee manipulated point totals through suspect calls and conspired with gamblers who had ties to organized crime. This is not something you want to have happen in your professional sports league, to put it mildly.

This week, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was quoted in another Sports Illustrated column as saying to his officiating department, in reaction to the problems the NBA is facing: “Let’s be thankful it wasn’t us. But let’s react like it was.”

What a great statement. When a competitor (or even a noncompetitive organization) faces a major crisis, it can be easy to bask in the schadenfreude and think, “That won’t happen to us.” Instead, we should all see situations like that as opportunities to raise our own game. What should that other organization have done to avoid or mitigate the problems they’re dealing with? If we’re not already doing those things, how soon can we start?

Various bloggers are still posting reactions to Annual Meeting 2007; I've collected the posts I've found below. If there are any I've missed, feel free to link to them in comments.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the thoughtful guest bloggers who joined us here and posted so diligently during Annual: Jason Della Rocca and Kristi Donovan. Thanks also to Jeff De Cagna, who coordinated the guest bloggers for Annual this year as he has before. All of you did a fabulous job and added a lot to Acronym in a relatively short time.

Now, to the roundup of other bloggers' posts:

Peter Turner’s detailed thoughts on thought leader sessions he attended and other experiences: Part I and Part II, plus David Gammel’s response to some of what Peter had to say

More from Sue Pelletier:

- The emergency preparedness session
- Thought Leader Robyn Waters
- Designing better RFPs
- Response to the bloggercon

Dave Sabol’s lessons learned from the conference

Jamie Notter’s lessons learned from the conference

An exhibitor’s perspective on the meeting and a chef’s perspective on the Food and Wine Classic

ETA: Cecilia Sepp's view of the conference

Matt Baehr's list of the ideas he took away from the meeting

Let me start by saying that, overall, I thoroughly enjoyed ASAE 2007 and got a tremendous amount of value from attending. In fact, my brain was hurting from taking in so much new knowledge, info and insight!

In the vein of Jackie Huba's comment that often your biggest critics are also your biggest evangelists (ie, they want/help you to get better), here's my short list of constructive criticisms:

1 - Kill the Fluff

Despite their best efforts to make the song-and-dance elements enjoyable (and, they were kinda funny and well done), I just kept repeating to myself "shoot me now, please just shoot me now". Over 1 hour of each 1.5 hour general session was spent on all the singing, dancing, back patting, clapping, etc, etc. All zero value to the attendee, and mostly painful to watch (especially at 8:30 on Sunday morning!).

My understanding is that much of those elements used to take place during a dedicated awards ceremony - but nobody showed up. Great, so instead of making the ceremony more interesting and compelling to attend, some genius decided to stuff it all into the general sessions so that attendees would be forced to watch it all. Ya, that sounds very customer/member focused to me. Please, dump that all into a ceremony again and work to make that ceremony worthwhile to attend. If only x% show up, then fine, those are the people who are interested and want to do/see that. Don't force it on the rest of us.

Also, in terms of social responsibility, how much money went into producing the show elements? What if we had not bothered, and instead wrote a check to org(s) working on social responsibility???

2 - Need More Coaching/Context

2/3 of the general session speakers were slick, but had no relevance/value to attendees (beyond very meta level messages of perseverance, commitment, etc). The other 1/3 tied into the ASAE, but was surprisingly clumsy in his delivery. Overall a big disappointment over the general sessions last year in Boston.

Most of the thought leader sessions were well delivered, and some of them made the effort to relate their material to the association world. ASAE needs to do more to get thought leaders to take that extra step. A great example of this is comparing Jackie Huba's member evangelists session with Robyn Waters talk on trend paradoxes. Waters' was slick, well prepared and gave good insight, but it was a 100% canned presentation that she's probably given dozens of times without changing a single word. In contrast, Huba covered material from the ASAE's Decision to Join research/book, referenced past ASAE sessions, talked about her personal association experiences, and gave examples from the association world - all in addition to her usual non-association material. Waters was good/valuable, but Huba took it to a whole other level. Every thought leader should do the same!

In terms of the learning labs, I'm sad to say most association professionals suck at presenting. With few exceptions (eg, Jeff De Cagna, Richard O'Sullivan, Ben Martin), the learning lab speakers need a massive amount of support - a group conference call is not enough. Both in terms of their delivery, and more importantly how they structure their content. The labs are important, but are still so hit or miss.

3 - Need New Lab Format

The format of the learning labs is broken. One may actually be a "lab" with group discussion and tasks. Next time, it is just one guy giving a lecture and taking some audience Q&A at the end. Another, you may get more of a panel of experts. Etc. Worse is that the room setup of banquet rounds does not match in every case. For example, in the final "60 tips" marketing session, the room was packed wall-to-wall and out the door, for what was, in essence a straight lecture from three speakers. There was zero value/use in having the room setup with rounds. If the room was set classroom or theater style, many more members would have been able to sit to enjoy the session.

Further, you never know ahead of time if the lab you want to attend is going to be more lecture oriented or more group/discussion oriented. Knowing this would impact decisions based on learning style, energy level, etc. Ditto for listing the level of expertize.

Instead, the labs should be split in two. Keep the "learning labs" for those sessions that are more group/discussion oriented and that require banquet seating for small teams. Additionally create a lecture series (or some other fancy label) for sessions that are essentially lectures by one or more speakers. Also, add a "level" rating for each session.

4 - More Content Slots

Despite all the learning, I'm hungry for me. I don't like how they shut down the conference portion as a way to direct traffic to the expo floor. I got bored of the expo floor after wandering around all the CVBs, hotels, etc, for about 30 minutes. Fine, take a lunch break, but content sessions should be running all day long. Also, there's no reason why the expo floor can't be open along side the conference sessions. Folks can then choose whether they want/need to spend more time on the expo floor, or go to more learning sessions. Again, leave it up to attendees to decide what they want instead of limiting available choices at any given time.

Well, there you have it, my major criticisms and some suggestions for improvement. Again, let me say that ASAE 2007 was massively valuable. And I'll certainly be back next year!

Rosetta Thurman at Perspectives From the Pipeline, a blog focused on nonprofit leadership from a young leader’s perspective, has a great essay up on her blog about using blogs as low-cost learning tools. It’s a nice take on the value of blogs, since I think a lot us tend to default to thinking of blogs as communication vehicles even as we use them as learning tools ourselves.

She has a lot to say, but I particularly like her ideas for using blogs as a group professional development tool within a nonprofit organization. She suggests starting by distributing a list of blogs for staff to read, perhaps as a hyperlinked Word document (I would add that giving staff instructions on how to set up a feed reader like Bloglines or Google Reader would also work well). She also suggests scheduling regular half-hour “knowledge jam sessions” for discussion of what staff learned from blogs in the past week.

Michele Martin just happens to be posting on a related topic in her blog: how to help staff at your organization create their own personal learning environments. Michele has a bunch of great ideas on how to nurture a culture of learning and on the many tools staff can use to become self-directed learners.

Lots of good stuff—especially as professional development becomes more and more important to professional staffers.

I'm going to take Virgil up on his invitation... and I'm creating a new post to initiate conversation on a few items I haven't read about or heard much about.

Venue: Gorgeous new building. The waste generated by the food and beverage service alone was awful (individual-serving plastic cups? really?). The city of Chicago is always fabulous. Transportation between hotels was rough - for the first two days, I'm pretty certain my bus didn't take the same route twice. Grade: C

General Sessions: Unremarkable. I didn't get anything out of Woodward's or Cooperrider's presentations, and while Gardner was an exceptional and engaging speaker, I didn't hear anything new beyond what I had already seen in the media. (Keep in mind, both Woodward and Gardner made their media rounds last fall and winter... I was home on maternity leave, and saw more of them than I really ever care to see again.) And while the musical format was cheesy, it was effective in communicating many of the must-dos of a general session - acknowledging sponsors and award winners, and communicating upcoming iniitatives. Can I still name the strategic partners... Baltimore, USA Today, Detroit, Canada... 4 of 7 is pretty good, huh? I bet they're happy. Grade: B-

Thought Leader Sessions: Only one of the three I attended was worthwhile... admittedly I didn't pick the ones that most folks blogged about. Pat Mitchell's was terrific. Grade: B

Learning Labs: I think I made some bad choices. I was only able to sit through one entire session - DeCagna's Ungovernance session. I sat through half of the RFP writing session which was useful. And got some great tips on free and almost free web-based tools in the Technology in the Marketing Mix session. Oh, and Robin Lokerman was great in the SR session. But, overall, I still give the labs a C+.

Exhibitions: Geez... I plan conferences and I'd still like to see more vendors NOT of the hospitality/CVB/hotel genre. Grade: C+

Social: This is the reason I come to the conference. Great to see folks, though it would have been helpful to get my hands on that reg list before I left DC. I loved the setup of the opening reception with the lounge areas, but, wow, was I disappointed to see the go-go dancers on catwalks - I expect better than that. Glad to have the 30 min between sessions (though you need it in a place like McCormick). Though I don't expect anyone to actually check badges at the door, I was pretty blown away by the constant stream of folks into the CAE lounge who were not CAEs who appeared to be seeking food - which speaks to another poster's comments on the lack of snacks. Grade: B-

Overall: Worth my time? Absolutely. I found ASAE & The Center staff to be exceptional in particular. Would really like to see the conference greened beyond going paperless. Overall Grade: B+

This isn’t about bar-b-que; it’s about the ASAE annual meeting in Chicago, just concluded. It was very good. I’m amazed at the insights and energies of all of our blogger’s daily postings. They’re great. For myself, however, I decided to wait and let the experiences simmer to see what sort of recollections emerge. I’ve long ago learned that I will experience ho-hum sessions (days, even) and then discover an exhilarating session (or day) that makes the trip worthwhile. That’s the way it was again this year. Here’s an early post-mortem on the bones:

Venue: McCormick Center’s new west building is an architect’s delight with all of the requisite gee-gaws. It’s modern, pleasant, and spacious and has great views to the lake. It also rivals Opryland, as the second venue I’ve experienced that spans three time zones. A colleague described it as larger than Rhode Island. Did I mention it sprawls? Travel time from one session to another could easily be 20 minutes, non-stop. Grade: B-

General Sessions: Covered the gamut, from inspiring personal stories to an association-specific ASAE initiative--social responsibility (see separate comment). It was all good, but bigger picture stuff--nothing directly and immediately applicable to association management, Grade: B

Thought Leader Sessions: Some good, some not so good. Too many to participate in everything I desired. Picking and choosing meant the inevitable excellent sessions contrasted with ho-hummers. The blog postings highlight many of the really exciting ones. Grade: B+

Learning Labs: See Thought Leader Sessions. Ungovernance by Jeff DeCagna was excellent—Grade A. Overall Lab Grade: C (despite considerable due diligence, I made some unfortunately bad choices). The blogs point out that there were many outstanding Labs that I missed.

Exhibitions: Dominated by the hospitality industry exhibits by 3 or 4 to 1, but with some highly interesting association-specific booths. Food was same every day—no variety, except by visiting hospitality industry booths (hint: who served Philly cheesesteak?). Grade: B-

Social: Great opportunities.to meet and mingle. I missed the opening reception for dinner with friends in the North Loop and found the best salmon of my life. Navy Pier and Northerly Island evenings were terrific. Natalie Cole is not to be missed. Grade: A+

Social Responsibility: (Putting on Curmudgeon’s hat) ASAE announced a new social responsibility initiative involving one of the general session presenters. Presentation was not well delivered and the audience was left to ponder based on their personal values and priorities about the subject. Will it return value to ASAE members and their organizations? Grade: Jury still out. Stay tuned.

Overall: My personal expense to attend was well in excess of $2,000—a not cheap event. Was it worth it? Yes—great work by all involved to plan and deliver the event. Staff grade: A+ Worth a repeat next year. Overall Grade: B+

What’s your scorecard say?

Jeffrey Cufaude ponders social responsibility and meetings

Matt Baehr on Douglas Rushkoff’s Thought Leader session

Ben Martin’s final two annual meeting podcasts: August 14 and August 15

Sue Pelletier has a whole bunch of posts on the Face to Face blog, which for some reason weren’t popping up in my Google Alerts before today; my apologies, Sue!

- Opening general session
- General session, day 2
- M&E Days sessions
- Ken Schmidt
- A session on Gen Y: Parts one and two
- A final collection of her impressions from the meeting

The Credentialing Talk blog responds to some posts about the bloggercon meeting

Mickie Rops shares her favorite certification quote from the meeting

Wes Trochlil’s thoughts on the general sessions and the thought leader that impressed him the most

Jamie Notter builds on a point from Stephen M.R. Covey’s session

Lindy Dreyer has a couple of posts about planning for her time at Annual and why sometimes you shouldn’t call a blog a blog (reacting to a tip she heard at the bloggercon meeting)

Dave Sabol's musings on the importance of face-to-face meetings for building relationships

Wow, I'm pretty exhausted. Tired from late nights. Tired from running across the cavernous McCormick Place. Tired from stuffing my brain with so much new knowledge and insight!

I started Tuesday in Jeff De Cagna's packed session on "ungovernance" (summarized in his Associations Now article). As I told Jeff, I'm already drinking the coolaid, now we just need to figure out how to implement this stuff! Will be interesting to hear of any dissenting feedback post conference...

For the final thought leader session I dove into Robyn Water's Hummer/Mini session. It was a slick lecture on leveraging paradoxes born from our increasingly complex world. It was a good session, but Robyn should have made the extra effort to better relate her body of work/research to the association world.

For the last learning lab, I jumped into the jam packed "60 marketing tips in 75 minutes" session. It was surprisingly entertaining and chock full of great tips. Though, after tip #4, I realized that the pace would not allow the presenters to do much more than read each tip verbatim from the slides. So I made a note to get the slides and bailed. Then I tried to get into the data driven session...

...which was standing room only, with folks peering in from the doors. Now sure why these two sessions were not slotted into bigger rooms. The "situation room" session barely had two dozen people and it was in a massive room. Anyway.

I finally settled into the demand-driven strategies session, which was quite valuable (hint, don't just study your members, look at your members' customers and anyone is benefits from your members' success).

Oh boy, here it comes... barf....

The closing general session with Chris Gardner was entertaining/colorful, and inspiring. Lots of personal/human takeaway - though, once again, zero professional value (other than meta lessons of perseverance and commitment).

General session speaker Chris Gardner says that he’s often asked how he became homeless. Was it drugs? Was it alcohol? No, he says, “It was life. Which is often just as lethal.”

But life wasn’t enough to keep him down, as you know if you've read his book or seen the movie "The Pursuit of Happyness." He gives the credit to his mother, who, he says, told him he could be or do anything he wanted. She told him once, “Baby, if you want to, someday you could make a million dollars.” He says that before she said it, it never crossed his mind that he could earn that much money. After she said it, he absolutely believed he could. It was just a question, he says, of “finding the right venue.”

It’s amazing how much we close ourselves off from possibilities without even realizing it. Chris Gardner’s story is amazing, but I think one of the most amazing parts is his mother—not just her faith in him, but also her ability to see possibilities and open his mind to them.

So for my last learning lab of the conference I decided to go to one where I tend to disagree with the basic premise of the title of the session: “Data-driven Strategies: How Remarkable Associations Make Information Work for Them.” Leave it to Reggie Henry and fellow presenter Alan Browning to disappoint me.

The title brings forth the data-driven strategy chapter in 7 Measures of Success. I’m on record—and I think one of the few—who think this chapter needs to be treated gingerly. I’m in favor of data, I just don’t see it as a problem in associations. I think a far more insidious problem in associations is overreliance on data to make decisions.

I’m going to have to go back and re-read that chapter, because I remember it being about all the traditional association data sets: butts in seats, retention, membership growth, advertising sales, member satisfaction surveys, etc. I remember the book saying remarkable associations use these things to make decisions. It’s part of decision making, and should only be part of it. If the data says do one thing but your heart says do another… well, I’d try to figure out why, but my guess is that going with the heart will give a better chance for wild success.

So how did Reggie disappoint me?

Well, he talked about all the traditional measures, but he said we’re not thinking about recording and quantifying and using nontraditional transactions: blog posts, discussion participation, wiki posts, “other web wanderings,” etc. These things measure community involvement. As Reggie notes, recent research notes that younger generations are just as apt to join organizations as preceding generations, but their expectations are different. They expect a membership experience that is centered around community involvement. “What we need to get good at measuring is less and less about money, and more and more about engagement.”

I’m becoming a bigger and bigger believer in the necessity for associations to build an engagement index and then make that the central point of every activity they do, from how they attract new members to how they serve each member.

Great (and very true) quote, from the “60 Tips in 75 Minutes” session:

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou

How are you making your members feel?

I’m in the “60 Tips in 75 Minutes” session on communicating with members, and it’s not just standing room only—there are people filling every chair and most of the floor. I think I see someone hanging from the ceiling.

Tons of great tips are being shared; here are just a few:

- If you have an e-newsletter with a feature article, use the title of the article as your subject line, not “ABC Association E-newsletter” or something similar.

- Immediately deliver recent back issues of your publications when a member joins. Make them feel welcome; don’t make them wait for these important member benefits.

- Develop local level template press releases. Local media attention is relatively easy to get in small- to mid-size cities, and you can help your local members connect with their local papers with customizable template releases on topics important to your association.

- Acknowledgment cards for members who appear in national, state, or local media. Set up a Google alert for keywords related to your association so you can easily find stories that appear about you and then take the time to follow up with a personalized cards (signed by your president or executive director).

- Offer a money-back guarantee on your education programs. It builds trust and shows your belief in your product. (And if a lot of people take you up on it, it shows you that you have a problem.)

- Re-survey conference attendees 90 days after an event to see if the content of your conference is still relevant and helpful to them.

In the Health Politics session with Mike Magee, MD. He’s talking about where healthcare is heading. First, a look at megatrends impacting healthcare:

1. Aging – Moving from a 3 generation family to a 4-5 generation family. It will be more and more complex to hold families together; impacts elder and pediatric care. Emergence of an informal caregiver population – mostly women aged 45-65.
2. Health Consumer Movement
3. Changes in Caregiver Relationships – moving from paternalistic approaches to partnership approaches; defined by early trust to prevent later. Unfortunately the current system only rewards the paternalistic approach.
4. Internet – Lends a voice to people; removes boundaries for practice; destabilized market that affects pricing
5. Emergence of new sectors – technology, finance and entertainment.

Check out his web site.

Jim Clarke of ASAE & The Center is talking about the changes to the Form 990.

Clarke says that an update to the form certainly is needed—things have changed since 1979, when the form was created—but ASAE is arguing that a 90-day comment period, mostly during the summer months, isn’t long enough for a real discussion of the changes. ASAE is requesting that the comment period be extended (right now it ends on September 14).

In addition, ASAE has concerns about several specific aspects of the new form. Clarke noted that the first summary page of the new form asks for calculations of executive compensation and fundraising contributions as a percentage of total revenues. He said that a lot of readers won’t get past the first page of the form when looking at an organization, so these ratios could have an impact that would be disproportionate to their value as indicators of an organization’s success in pursuing its mission.

He also noted concerns about the disclosures of activities outside of the United States. The new form would require associations to file additional schedules disclosing expenses and revenue for every country in which they do business. For a lot of associations, this information isn’t broken out by country in their financial systems, and it could be extremely time consuming and difficult to break it out annually for tax purposes (especially for international associations doing business in many different countries).

There’s a fairly energetic discussion going on in the room here, with lots of questions about the details of the new form, what its implications will be, and how it defines certain terms.

ASAE has posted additional information online if you’d like to know more.

Another thought from yesterday's “Diamonds in the Rough: Turning Speakers into Exceptional Content Leaders" session Jan Ferri-Reed and Gail Swanson: one of the audience questions was on how to prepare a conference of, say, 100 speakers. My immediate thought was of a webinar or teleseminar. Thinking myself pretty smart, that was one of the options given, and, noted Swanson, it's something that ASAE & The Center did for this conference. Ok, so I'm not so revolutionary smart--but I do have access, so I caught up with Senior Manager, Learning Megan Denhardt, who pulls together the Learning Labs for the annual meeting.

She said there are more than 250 speakers in the labs. This year, ASAE & The Center did a conference call only, in previous years, they've integrated the Web into it. She estimated that 50 to 60 percent of speakers participated, and noted that they record the session and send it to all speakers on CD.

Gary Rifkin, himself a speaker at many ASAE & The Center events and someone who trains speakers as part of his work, facilitated the discussion with Denhardt. The session covers all the basics--the room sets, the demographics, how to tailor a presentation to the audience, and just basic tips on delivering a strong presentation from a variety of different settings (single-person presenter to facilitated discussion to panel discussion).

They also open it up so that anyone can share their own tips and tricks. She also noted that the Speaker Orientation session is only one of several ways they prepare speakers for the annual meeting.

A final note: the 3 general session speakers and the 20 thought leader sessions receive more one-on-one care and handling.

Someone in the audience in the ungovernance session asked how to find strategic thinkers within a membership that could eventually be good strategic thinkers on your board. Jeff De Cagna threw out a few ideas as a starting point:

- What books do they read? Their reading lists reflect their interests, and if they’re reading books on strategy, history, or chess (not an exclusive list) that could be a good indicator that strategy is an interest of theirs.
- Who do they talk to? We are drawn to those who share our interests.
- Are they gamers? Gamers use a lot of nonlinear strategic thinking.

What questions or ideas would you add to this list?

Some food for thought from Jeff De Cagna’s Learning Lab on ungovernance (where he’s offering his thoughts on creating an entirely new approach to association governance):

- The value we create as association is based on relationships and access to information, Jeff says. But technology is creating new and often more direct ways to build relationships and access information—so, he asks, why do people need to “pay bucks to a centralized bureaucracy?”
- How many of your members go to Google to search for information before they come to you?
- In Wikipedia, if there’s an error, someone can go in and fix it immediately. If there’s an error in information your association provides, how many committees have to weigh in before you can fix it?
- Do you spend more time worrying about the details of governance and hierarchy (will the nominating committee report be turned in by June 22?) than about the value your association’s governance model is supposed to be creating?
- Using the resources and capabilities we have now, how can we build business models for associations that will be sustainable and inclusive of all stakeholders?

(For more of Jeff’s thoughts on ungovernance, check out his article in the August 2007 issue of Associations Now.)

Attending Jeff DeCagna's session right now... some notes:

Fundamental beliefs:
1. Associations exist to create value, not to be governed
2. Innovation is about creating new value for stakeholders
3. Associatoin stewardship must focus on the business model

Principles:
1. Simplicity of access and engagement: Subtract the obvious, add the meaningful. Remove hierarchical structures that no longer serve their intended purpose. Allow groups to form organically to accomplish the work that needs to be done.
2. Distributed responsibility for innovation: We need an ecology that is disbributive, not centralized. We give the resources, and let go.
3. Diversity of perspectives and contributions: We need to go out and look for new perspectives that will add to the conversation. Create a "participation brief" - possibly a nonlinear approach to creating work that engages broad audiences.

Some details I’ve noticed at this year’s meeting (from the perspective of a meeting planner)… some may be new, some not. But I noticed.

1. The tote bag isn’t marred by a dozen sponsor logos. My husband said to me this morning, “I’d actually use this later!”
2. Love how ASAE’s staff shirts change every day. It makes them stand out.
3. Lots of great lounge areas. I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to meet new folks just by taking a seat on a couch. They are great for connecting with otheres!
4. No registration list. It’s driving me crazy not knowing who is here. I realize it would be quite a lengthy document, but it would really help to identify who I want to seek out at the meeting. Maybe it could be made available to registrants electronically prior to the meeting?
5. Evaluations are already out for sessions. I got an email on Monday morning asking me to evaluate the Saturday and Sunday sessions. Nice!

What have you noticed this year?

A few tips from the Learning Lab going on now about “Technology on a Shoestring”:

- A lot of software manufacturers will provide “charity licensing” deals to 501(c)(3)s that provide substantial discounts on most software packages you would need to use in the office. For associations related to education, some software producers offer discounts for “educational licensing” as well (but be sure to read the end-user licensing agreement to make sure your organization qualifies).
- www.npower.org and www.techsoup.org provide other conduits for discount licensing on certain products.
- Audacity is an open source voice recorder and mixer for associations that want to try podcasting without investing in any expensive tools.
- Speaking of podcasting, www.how-to-podcast-tutorial.com provides a great and easy to follow lessons to get your started (including information on using Audacity).
- www.wordpress.com provides an inexpensive, professional, feature-rich blogging platform.
- Spybot Search and Destroy and Spyware Blaster are good anti-spyware tools with a strong community supporting them.
- Postini is “unbelievably effective” (says a member of the audience) as an anti-spam solution.

Ugh, I'm just getting back to my hotel room, and it's past 11pm! Where did the day go? Once again, opting for the condensed summary...

Day 2 of the "big show". Shoot me now. Please, just shoot me.

David Cooperider had a lot of important/inspiring stuff to say. Odd, though, his delivery was off. He was visibly nervous, lost his thoughts several times, fumbled with the clicker, etc. It was a real disconnect for someone involved in such important and far reaching work. Aside from all the social good bits, I'm going to do some research on his appreciative inquiry model purely as a large group facilitation process...

After the general session, I hit the expo floor. What the heck is the crazy big red chair all about? Had a nice lunch chat with Ben Martin, who ate the cheese steak sandwiches kindly provided by the Philly booth. And, had to run off the floor to do a quick interview on game industry career prospects with the Wall Street Journal...

As noted earlier, Douglass Rushkoff's thought leader session was amazingly awesome. Oddly, his anti-corporate angle was in complete contrast to Cooperider's "business will save the world" message. I even got up and asked him to comment on the corporate social responsibility mega-trend. He quickly replied that it was all BS and that corporations are programmed to make profit and it is unethical for them to do anything but.

Despite Rushkoff's overly negative tone, I still found his words/ideas more inspiring (and much better delivered) than Cooperider, as a association executive. The whole idea that associations have to be the place were the geeks can be geeks and love "the thing", and as a place that generates and rewards social capital, etc, was particularly meaningful.

For the afternoon's learning labs, I attended the session on chapter conflict and another on creating fierce volunteers. The conflict session was more theoretical than expected, but still very useful/helpful. The case format of the volunteer session fell flat and didn't provide much take-away value.

After the day full of sessions, I bailed on all the ASAE activities and connected with a handful of local members (ie, game developers) running the IGDA's chapter in Chicago:

Here's a shot of Alexander Seropian (Wideload Games) and Denny Thorley (Day 1 Studios). Trivia snippet: Alexander is the founder of Bungie Studios, the creators of the massive hit Halo. After selling his studio to Microsoft a few years ago he moved back to Chicago.

Carrie Fowler (Electronic Arts) and Eugene Jarvis (Raw Thrills). Trivia snippet: Eugene is one of the elder statesmen of the game industry, having created such arcade classics as Defender, Robotron and Smas