Acronym

Compelling stories have emerged as potent tools in forwarding discussions about what values members gain when their associations are involved in socially responsible practices, programs, and goals. At both my morning and afternoon tables at the Global Summit on Social Responsibility, association professionals barely took a breath between sharing and commenting on each other’s stories, whether they had to do with an organization’s actions or an individual’s choices. Frankly, it’s a challenge to capture every anecdote for later thought or follow up, but one colleague told me that he had taken almost 25 pages of notes in less than six hours!

I’m feeling especially attuned to the power of storytelling today because I’m halfway through the excellent book Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, which I thought would be good prep for the summit. Also, co-author Joseph Grenny—whose last best-seller, Crucial Conversations, was referenced several times at my table today-- is speaking August 19 at ASAE & The Center’s Annual Meeting and Expo.

According to Influencer, “people will attempt to change their behavior if (1) they believe it will be worth it, and (2) they can do what is required.” Stories that guide people to those conclusions must contain both “a clear link between the current behaviors and existing (or possibly future) negative results” and “positive replacement behaviors that yield new and better results.”

Those of us at the summit today heard such “high-point stories” recounted on the stage, in the coffee line, and from attendees at some of the 14 connected sites across America. I liked the examples given by CEO Scott Steen of the American Ceramic Society. First, Scott described the rapid membership growth achieved by the National Association of Counties after it cleverly arranged a deal with a corporation that allowed the association to provide prescription discount cards to members for free distribution in every county in America.

Second, he cited the National Academy of Engineers’ inspiring work with members to identify 14 “grand challenges” such as making solar energy affordable and reverse-engineering the brain. The organization then spotlights research and grant money focused on those topics. “They’re saying to their members, ‘Here is where to go to make a difference as an engineer,” explained Scott, adding that the organization is using the initiative to “define their mission in the world and show how engineers and their industry are making huge differences.” I can’t wait to hear what comes out of Thursday’s “dream” process….

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.

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

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!

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+

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.)

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 Smash TV. The IGDA presented him with a lifetime achievement award a few years back.

Admittedly, it was nice to break loose from McCormick Place and connect with some of my peeps :)

After sharing stunning Imax photos, dramatic video of flight lift-offs and passionate descriptions of what he believes leadership means today, former NASA space shuttle pilot and astronaut Charles Bolden got a standing ovation today at the Annual Meeting & Expo.

It was an unusual, sometimes emotional presentation with such compelling imagery in the background, and Bolden used that majesty to urge leaders to develop their skills so that they could take even small steps toward making the world a better place.

“Earth is unbelievable; it’s breathtaking,” he said. “It goes in 45-minute spurts--17,500 miles per hour—so it takes 90 minutes to go around one time. Every 45 minutes you see a sunset or a sunrise.”

His favorite photo of the thousands he has taken is a spaceship view of the Middle East because “it’s so peaceful looking and organized.” Can you imagine seeing such sights and not feeling protective of the planet we occupy?

Although Bolden’s presentation hadn’t been scheduled with any particular tie-in to ASAE & The Center’s new Social Responsibility Initiative, I thought that this recent Astronaut Hall of Famer may have made one of the most inspiring appeals of the day for association leaders to “do what is right,” to use their business and leadership savvy in much broader, more powerful ways toward positive world change.

Much of what Bolden said about leadership was not necessarily new to regular attendees of ASAE & The Center programs. But he did a good job reinforcing the most important elements and then concluded with the startling power behind the words of 12-year-old Nikosi Johnson, who at the time of his death in 2001 had been the longest-living AIDS patient: “Do all you can with what you have in the time you have in the place that you are. … If we just live by Nikosi’s philosophy, we can make a difference.”

Probably 50 people crowded around Bolden when he finished, just to shake his hand, compliment him and get a quick photo. Others headed straight to the BrightSight Group rep who handles Bolden’s speaking engagements. Me? I thought of exactly the right spot to put Nikosi’s quote on my office wall.

Here’s another collection of Annual Meeting blogging from around the web:

Another podcast on the meeting from Ben Martin (previous podcasts can be found on the main page of his blog)

Fred Simmons on Steven S. Little’s Thought Leader session

Jeffrey Cufaude on David Cooperrider’s keynote

Matt Baehr on his experience so far

I’m not sure that many meeting planners would want to serve one of President Bush’s favorite lunches at their next event, but they might secretly smile as they munch them in private: peanut butter and honey, BLT (bacon, lettuce and tomato), grilled cheese (white bread with a single slice of Kraft American cheese) or a nice burger.

Walter Scheib made a lot of those during his four years as White House chef to the Bush family, but he created plenty of fancier foods as well, of course. Hired away from the Greenbriar resort by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton in 1994, Scheib was charged with bringing “what’s best about American food, wine and entertaining to the White House.”

To Scheib, that meant food that was flavor-driven, not technique-driven, and meals that reflected the changed ethnic landscape of the country with its resulting influence on regional and local cuisines. It meant more unusual flavor combinations and cooking approaches, an emphasis on seasonal and local produce, greater attention to origin and nutritional value, and incorporation of new and emerging organic and sustainably produced food options.

If you’re in Chicago at ASAE & The Center’s Annual Meeting & Expo, you’ll be tasting a few of Scheib’s memorable recipes, seasoned with some stories behind their inspiration. The man himself is featured chef for Monday night’s Food & Wine Classic at Chicago’s Navy Pier from 7 to 9:30 p.m., and frankly, I’m so psyched to be going that I read Scheib’s new cookbook, White House Chef: Eleven Years, Two Presidents, One Kitchen (Wiley, 2007), in one night.

His emphasis on healthy cooking is clear, and Scheib readily agrees that chefs and other food professionals have become more attuned to the obesity epidemic and other public health issues—and adjusted their cooking accordingly. “It comes from two directions,” he says. “Obviously, chefs--while they are artists of a sort--also are business people, so as demand for these sorts of [socially conscious menus] increases from clients, they are more apt to fill that need. Also, many forward-looking chefs are trying to do these things ahead of the market….

“That’s got two benefits—it’s responsible to the client in terms of nutrition and flavor, but more importantly, it allows chefs to do what they do best…. If a chef uses that style of locally produced, tremendously fresh and seasonal product, he’s 50% toward a great dish before even putting the first grain of salt on it. It makes common sense to use that style of product, and on top of that he can talk about how it’s better for his guests.”

“… The biggest dilemma as we try to dine healthier is that we have a tendency to get preachy,” he continues. “The last thing you want to do is lecture somebody.… The secret is to change the style of dining very subtly. You can still have a piece of steak. It’s the accompaniments that go with it [that could change]. Instead of a baked potato, for instance, you might have a peach and ginger chutney, a Malaysian peanut sauce, a spice rub or a corn and chipotle sauce.”

Scheib notes that in addition to the trend toward healthier dining, taste preferences of businesspeople have been changing because they’re traveling more, especially abroad, making them “more aware of all the wonderful flavors and cooking styles that are available to them.” That presents a challenge to meeting planners who want to wow members.

“For meeting planners, they need to be a little bit brave,” he advises. “I do a lot of event planning and cooking for associations and other private clients, and I always tell them, ‘Don’t be afraid to try something new. Don’t always fall back on the standard 4-ounce filet, a chicken breast, a piece of salmon or these mix-and-match plates. Pick a theme and stick with it. Break the rut.

“Meeting planners have as much influence as just about anyone in the country in terms of exposing great numbers of people to great kinds of foods if they just challenge the chef….” he continues. “I think they will find that their clients are a lot more open to that kind of thing than they might suspect.”

Scheib also supports the concept of food as an important element of community-building, a key goal of many planners: “Dining isn’t about food--it’s about socialization…. Anything we can do to get people conversing is really good, whether it’s a new type of food, a new type of service, a tasting, family-style [serving] or something that takes action or involves participation at the tables.”

One recent event he attended started with a Korean-style first course of a dozen components, including a small, steaming pot of broth, raw beef and vegetables that everyone assembled to their personal taste under the instruction of a waiter.

“It really broke the ice!” Scheib enthuses. “We were a table of 10 strangers, but by the time we were done with the first course, we at least knew something about the other people because you had to show something of yourself as you assembled your own first course. These sorts of things really work, and people like them. Everybody’s had enough salads or shrimp cocktails put down in front of them for life, and that’s tedious and boring. They want to try something new and a bit more fun.” Sounds like four-star dining to me! Special thanks to Leading Authorities for arranging this special guest visit.

The concept of “branding” sounds very academic, but as the Special Libraries Association can tell you, it can rouse deep feeling in members. As Thomas Calcagni of SLA said in the “Changing Your Association’s Brand” Learning Lab today, “I’m going to tell you a story that involves bare-knuckle politics, separation of families, deep concern … I’m talking about SLA’s previous effort to brand itself.”

He shared a few lessons from their experience:

- There needs to be a loud, vocal commitment on the part of the board. Branding can be very emotional and political, and they need to be fully committed for the process to succeed.
- Involve your members’ customers. What do they think about your members? What do they want from them?
- Focus on a broad strategy rather than just a single component—not just the name, the logo, and other things that are building blocks of the overall brand and overall brand promise. One of Calcagni’s board members described it as a “game change, not a name change.”

I do wonder what Ken Schmidt of Harley-Davidson, one of today’s thought leaders, would think of the idea of “changing a brand.” Schmidt described your brand as your “noise”—what your customers say about you when you’re not there. Is there any direct way to change “noise” that can be voted on? Or does it need to develop organically over time?

I’m sitting in the “Open Access” Learning Lab, and Susan Fox is sharing some interesting thoughts on how you should handle the question of open access in your association. She says that the first question to ask your board is “What role do you think the journal plays in the association?” She recalled having problems with a board discussion in the past where a conversation about open access went south … only to discover that the root of the problem was that the board didn’t agree on what the journal really was.

Next, she says to ask (in this order):

- “How does the journal support our mission?”
- “How broadly do we want our journal distributed?”
- “What is our position on open access?”

And then: “What impact would converting to open access have on the association, economically, politically, and culturally?”

It’s worth noting something Fox said: “The business model is changing whether you want it to or not.” If your association has a journal, this is probably a conversation you should be having.

In their learning lab “Diamonds in the Rough: Turning Speakers into Exceptional Content Leaders," Jan Ferri-Reed and Gail Swanson described a simple method to set speakers up for making an excellent presentation at your conference or event: the 7-question metiod.

The last thing you want your presenters to think about, they said, is what you want to say to your audience. Instead, they should be asking what your audience needs to hear. In fact, they say, you and the presenter should jointly come up with seven questions you want their presentation to answer. From there, they can build out their presentation.

I saw Jeffrey Cufaude after the Thought Leader session led by Douglass Rushkoff ("Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out"). He called it worth the price of admission, and I agree.

I saw some other bloggers in the session, so I'll let them chime in, but I now have fodder for several posts. Here's the one I want to put up now.

One of the things that Rushkoff said that is a nice way to think about things is that people are looking for a safe haven--for a place to care. "People want to be geeks for the things they care about."

Are you letting your members get geeky? What can you do to encourage the geeks to get even more into it? What can you do bring some lurkers into the geeking fold?

Ken Schmidt said something else that stuck with me during his session: “The way we treat each other permeates out into the marketplace.” In other words, you can’t fool your customers. If staff treat each other well and are positive and helpful within the office, that will come through loud and clear to members who interact with them. And if you have a negative, crabby, unsupportive culture, your customers will be sure to see that, no matter what efforts you make to treat members differently.

During his session “Make Some Noise,” Ken Schmidt of Harley-Davidson showed a photo of the Harley-Davidson president working the crowd at a motorcycle rally, which apparently is something he does on a regular basis. The president had a pocket crammed full of index cards, on which he was writing customer feedback as he received it. Schmidt drew several lessons out of that photo for the audience:

- Make people feel special. If a customer sees you smile and nod in response to their complaint, they may feel heard, but if they see you writing it down (and even better, if they hear back with constructive followup later) they’ll feel catered to.
- If you’re an exec, you must make time to talk directly with customers. Nothing has the same impact as hearing a complaint directly from the disgruntled member; hearing it secondhand from line staff won’t have the same effect and won’t spur the same response from you.
- Staff watch what you do. In the photo, another Harley staffer was standing near the president—and the staffer had his own pocket full of notecards. The president’s positive behavior was being picked up and modeled by staff—and what great behavior to pass along.

Jackie Huba's session on creating member evangelists yesterday was both well-attended and well-received. Given the level of interest and enthusiasm around her work, I thought I would point people to a podcast interview I did with her earlier this year for my blog.

During the session, Jackie asked the audience how many of their associations had blogs. I think I saw about six hands go up. Frankly, I was appalled. We need to do more to encourage and challenge associations to embrace social media for their own benefit. As others have pointed out, she did mention the Association Social Media Wiki, which I hope you will visit and add resources to if you are able.

I'm a little late getting this post up. It's been much crazier than expected, but the other bloggers are doing a fantastic job!

Five things you can do

1. Never take your eye off your mission – never stop serving your members as effective learning catalysts.

2. Adopt a solution focus—every industry and profession wants to see themselves as part of a solution.

3. Master the business case for sustainable value creation—it’s not a burden or a compliance issue. You need to adopt an entrepreneurial posture that turns the situation into an opportunity.

4. Design whole systems in large group cooperation—learn to work at the scale of the whole.

5. To dare—to discover the unprecedented power of the association of associations.