Quick Clicks: Matchmaking, ethics, and creativity (or a lack thereof)
My turn at recommending some reading material this week. Here goes:
- Volunteer management: Associations should emulate matchmaking services like eHarmony and Match.com to connect volunteers with the right volunteer opportunities (and vice versa), says Peggy Hoffman at Mariner Management.
- Ethics: Conflicts of interest at associations and nonprofits aren't always black and white, and they aren't always financial. Jan Masaoka at Blue Avocado examines some of the more subtle, unexpected ways conflicts can arise and how to shape a policy to prepare for them.
- Conference planning: Help A (Meeting) Planner Out and offer your feedback on a draft of an association speaker-confirmation letter, over on Jeff Hurt's Midcourse Corrections blog. (On a side note: I think associations could emulate the "Help A Reporter Out" model to facilitate collaboration and problem solving among their members.)
- Human resources: Checking a job applicant's profile on Facebook or elsewhere online might seem a prudent way to look for red flags, but it could get you in trouble in regard to anti-discrimination laws, explains Leslie White at the SocialFish blog.
- Social media staffing: A warning about the pitfalls of isolating social media work into a single employee or staff department, from Elisabeth Sosnow of BlissPR on the Convince & Convert blog (this has a PR-firm focus, but the lessons are universal).
- Creativity: Bad news via Newsweek: Americans are becoming less creative. Add "finding increasingly rare creative people" to your list of big-picture concerns for the future (generational change, demographic change, etc.).
- More creativity: A sidebar to the Newsweek article about creativity says "Forget brainstorming" and offers some real methods for fostering creativity. My favorite: "Ditch the suggestion box."
- Poetry: Speaking of exercising the brain, Jeff Cobb at Mission to Learn recommends you memorize a poem or three, and he offers seven reasons why.
- Derring-do: The August issue of Esquire focuses on the impossible and the people who are actually doing these supposedly "impossible" things. The whole issue is worth a read, but my favorite is the story of the man who plans to soon skydive from 120,000 feet (but not because he's a daredevil; what his team learns could one day save the lives of astronauts).
Enjoy!
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