Acronym

I remember when March of Dimes kicked off its new branding several years ago, so it was interesting to read the terrific article in this month's Chronicle of Philanthropy that shows which media vehicles worked and which failed in terms of accomplishing the organization's many specific goals for the campaign. You can read more about the following three lessons learned in "March of Dimes' Evolution in Online Fundraising:"
1) The vetting and targeting of influential and "advocate bloggers" was worth it.
2) The purchase of online ads placed near popular search engine words and terms took creativity and smarts, in my opinion.
3) The failure of a popular web video that was "cool" but didn't get the right job done shows that tracking and reflection can reveal false assumptions and prevent future marketing mistakes.

Kudos to the organization for their candor about the campaign. We all benefit from sharing such insider information.

Wow, we just finished tallying up the total Annual Meeting attendee participation and results from our Community Connections projects, and the numbers blasted previous "legacy project" metrics to smithereens!

The projects--ranging from a 5K fun run to local tours to bike-building and toiletry-kit/school supply stuffing--brought together 487 volunteers and resulted in 125 bikes, several massive boxes of stuffed school backpacks, and more than $17,000--all for the nonprofit Midnight Mission! In previous years, ASAE averaged about 15 volunteers, who would all arrive to donate time on the Saturday before the conference started. Obviously, we've finally found the right formula that will make giving back to the host community fun, accessible, and high-impact.

Here are three cool takeaways that seem to be making the difference:

1. We added far more options. Indeed, the 5K run early on the second day of the meeting hit its limit of 100 sign-ups weeks before folks started landing at LAX airport. Eager tradeshow participants turned a wrench, steadied some screws, and did whatever else was needed to help build the first 100 bikes in the Milwaukee, Travel Portland, and Pittsburgh booths at the Expo. The remaining 25 bikes and all of the backpacks and toiletry kits were completed on Tuesday, the final day of the event. Offering multiple opportunities, pricing, and time commitments ensured that almost all attendees could do at least something to give back....

2. Which led to a happy meet-up between volunteers and the actual recipients of our efforts--the families served by Midnight Mission! Boy, if you could have seen those kids' smiles, and the energy with which they zoomed around the room on their sparkling bikes--well, that will be a strong and positive memory for everyone there. Think those folks will volunteer again? Oh, yeah. They know first-hand that they made a difference in a child's life--and plenty of parents were there to add their warm thanks as well. The same was true on the Saturday when more than 400 people were fed by our attendees at Midnight Mission. Lesson: Try to ensure face-to-face exchanges with the constituency your legacy projects are serving. And lose the polish--focus the exchange on the homeless, the hungry, or the other vulnerable people being helped by your attendees.

3. We learned that our business partners could be real leaders when it comes to good citizenship, and they can teach us a few things in this regard. The Industry Partners group of ASAE was a driving force behind several of the legacy events, such as the bike-building, and others on the tradeshow floor--such as Virginia Beach CVB with its book collection for Midnight Mission, and Rosen Hotels with its continuing donation drive for Haiti earthquake relief--came up with their own ways to help others. Thank you all!

One final point: Chris Wood, director of social responsibility and coordinator of so many of these legacy projects, and the director of Midnight Mission were so inspired by the impact of our attendees that they are working on a case study guide that will 1) help standardize the process of ASAE-charity legacy projects, 2) develop a sample case study that Midnight Mission can use to guide other associations meeting in Los Angeles, and 3) capture the lessons learned by our 2010 experience.

Again, thank you to each of the 487 people who ran, walked, gave time and money, got their hands dirty with bike grease, brought shampoo and soap, and more!

Like all of the ASAE Annual Meetings I've been to, the 2010 edition was packed with sights and experiences I won't soon forget. The five-year-old kid that plays air guitar during Journey at Dodger Stadium. A grilled macaroni-and-cheese sandwich. Certain colleagues' karaoke performances. But of course, I have some actual significant and important memories that will stick with me for a long time, too. Call them takeaways, call them lessons, call them what you will, below are the three major ways my personal outlook shifted as a direct result of the Annual Meeting.

Just the right amount of anxiety was a key message during Bob Rosen's Thought Leader session. He explained that not enough anxiety makes employees complacent, and too much anxiety paralyzes them with fear, but just the right amount will motivate them to act. In itself, this wasn't groundbreaking (though he did frame it nicely), but his emphasis on the leader's role in managing anxiety was a new perspective for me. Rosen said a leader of any healthy organization must be comfortable with anxiety and that such a capacity enables him or her to lead in two ways:

1. The leader can set an example or show others how to live with anxiety;
2. The leader can work to create anxiety within the organization—just the right amount to drive employees toward success.

[Update: Rosen published a book titled Just Enough Anxiety in 2008. So I guess I'm behind the curve on this one, but that doesn't change how much it I liked hearing it.]

Hyper-focused content. In his session with Sterling Raphael from NFi Studios (sadly under-attended, by the way; you all missed out), Ben Martin, CAE, shared how the Virginia Association of Realtors is using news feeds and shared networks to fill out its web content, allowing it to focus its own content generation more efficiently and effectively. The idea that stuck with me, from Ben: "The bottom line is to be extremely hyper-focused on only the content that you can be the best in the world at."

He said VAR used to produce content on staging homes or building real-estate websites, but now it doesn't. VAR focuses on the Virginia angle and supplements its provisions in other topic areas with feeds from the National Association of Realtors and local associations as well as outside news sources. I'm excited to see an association that is making this sort of content model work. [Update: Ben was kind enough to send along the slides from their presentation. See slides 10-15 for some ideas I particularly liked about content, community, and commerce.]

Social media is just a fact of life now. While there were, by my count, five Learning Labs specifically about social media, I got a general impression that social media is just baked in to all the things associations do now. Not every association is at the same level of expertise, of course, but in several instances I saw social media come up as just one part of a discussion of a bigger topic (communications, fundraising, leadership, etc.) rather than being its own topic.

Perhaps not everyone agrees with my assessment, but it's a thought that's been growing in my mind for a while and was confirmed at the meeting, at least from my vantage point.

For links to thoughts and takeaways from other Annual Meeting attendees, see the various Quick Clicks entries from the past week.

Discussion of Annual Meeting continues--and I continue to be floored by the quality and passion of the post-conference commentary. Thank you to all of the bloggers and commenters out there who have been and will be part of this conversation.

(On an administrative note: After this post, we'll probably roll future Annual Meeting-related posts into the regular weekly Quick Clicks rather than breaking them out separately. The next weekly Quick Clicks will be this Thursday.)

- Peggy Hoffman enjoyed seeing a new kind of conference attendee while she was in LA, and she suggests that associations need to get ready for what these new attendees are looking for.

- Jeff Hurt discusses three things he found rewarding at Annual and three things about the conference that need rethinking (plus two bonus items that need reconsideration as well).

- The folks at the Connect blog have 19 takeaways from the conference. (My favorite is probably item 13: "Hire staff who know more than you, and your organization will always excel.")

- At the Splash blog, Elyse Savaki shares her notes from the Learning Lab "Get Your Data Under Control."

- Gary Polmateer of NimbleUser and Lisa Hasen of DAXKO Connect provide their take on the exhibitor experience at Annual.

Our association runs a show just like most of you out there...and it has always irritated me the amount of transients who float between sessions, like vagabonds or railroad bums. 'How rude of them to leave a session!' scoffs my inner monologue as I kindly open the door and then let it close softly so as not to disturb our delicate speaker with attention deficit issues.

But, I think I have to admit these folks have figured it out...and the best part of being at someone else's show is you can do whatever the hell you want! I've stayed in sessions before when I wasn't getting much out of the experience; not to say that the speakers weren't giving, I just for whatever reason wasn't taking, but I stayed and frumped (inner monologue only). But this year I'm done with that. I've left two sessions and I'm proud of it! The sessions themselves were fine and I am sure helped many people, but they weren't what I was seeking.

So here are the 3 reasons:

1) You never know who you'll run into in the hall. I had a chance to chat with a web design consultant who looked at our website and told me what is wrong with it, in like 5 minutes! Man, that was huge.

2) You may be missing out in that other session down the hall. ASAE needs to write another 'Decision' book, called the 'Decision to get it together and choose which concurrent session you want to attend'. I normally want to go to 5 or 6 of these things, so if I am getting the sense up front that the session isn't for me, maybe I should bail and go to my next choice. What if it's that one piece of information that will move me from vague awareness to clarity?

3) I am supposed to do these in threes so I made this one up--I really only have 2 reasons you should leave a session in the middle.

See you in the hall!

Responses to Annual Meeting continue to be written (and thanks again to everyone who's taken the time to share their honest and heartfelt input--we're privileged to have members and participants who post such detailed and thoughtful feedback). Here's a roundup of the latest:

- Stefanie Reeves, a new association blogger at Association Advocacy Chick, posted on what the Annual Meeting meant to her.

- Jon Aleckson recaps his time at the conference, including his first meeting as a member of the Professional Development Council.

- The American Bar Association's Behind Bars blog (which gets major points from me for its name) responds to Maddie Grant's "Has ASAE Lost Its Mojo?" post-Annual post with some thoughts on what other associations can learn from what she has to say.

- David Patt responds to some of the post-Annual blogging with thoughts on the importance of providing education that suits a variety of participants' preferences.

- Michelle Butler was inspired by Marshall Goldsmith's talk on mojo and found herself getting her own mojo back.

- Matt Baehr has more thoughts about the Annual Meeting, based in part on comments on his earlier post.

- Maddie Grant shares 10 things that she loved at this year's conference.

- Jamie Notter reflects on the Annual Meeting experience this year, both during the conference and afterward.

- Toni Rae Brotons posts an update from her previous post about her experience in the "Guilt By Association" sitcom.

- Teri Carden says she achieved her goals for the conference, and so much more.

- Some perspectives from the exhibitor side of the conference: Bill Walker shares his view from the DelCor booth, and Dawn Taylor at Nonprofit Staffing Solutions relates a few conversations she had with visitors to her booth.

- Jeff Hurt collected tweets from the "Free: Future of a Radical Price" Learning Lab.

- The SocialFish blog rounds up the liveblogs they did during education sessions at Annual.

- The ConventionPlanit blog recaps the last day of the conference.

Committee meetings are challenging, sometimes painful. Even here, at the fountain of knowledge for experts in running committees, we struggle and toil together often. Committees have the extraordinary ability to take an idea that once seemed so clear, and confound it with opinion, experience, and yes, a little bit of egoism.

On the flipside, sometimes these meetings move fast and decisions are made rapidly, leaving some feeling content and others feeling left behind.

Either way, we seem to always find that our ideal process doesn't match the actual conglomeration that is a normal committee meeting. But I believe that there's good to be found in most committee meetings, even when they're frustrating. Here are 3 reasons to smile after any committee meeting:

1) Ideas Need to Be New, Even if They are Old: Sometimes we need to feel like our ideas are new...Committee members are seeking some type of fulfillment, we aren't getting paid; our ideas matter in the sense that we are there, in the room, together...of the thousands of other people who could be there, we are the 10 or 20 who showed up.

2) Circles Are More Powerful Than Squares: Our human nature seems to lead us in the direction of creating boxes in which everything has a logical progression and makes sense to us. Truth is, most of what we are trying to manage is as much a product of chaos, luck, and perspective...so we analyze and re-analyze in circles, shaking our heads at each other. We might forget that the process of renewal and repetition is inherent in all natural things, and when people discuss and plan together we should not discount this process. Sometimes the place where we started is where we need to be, but we need to get everyone there at the same time.

3) People are a Force of Nature: Some of us are strong, we know where we stand and we want others to stand with us; some of us are flexible, we want to develop, cultivate, and contribute; some of us are of the pack, we enjoy communion and shared experience; and some of us builders, we see order and design always.

What point is there in working in such a weird model to make decisions? The point is that we will never truly understand the forces at play when a group of committed, passionate people get together. But we can do our best to ride the wave and harness the energy that we all create, and mold it into a more cohesive and inclusive framework than what we could do alone.

As I promised yesterday, I'm continuing to gather reactions to this year's Annual Meeting. (If I've missed any that you know, please leave a comment or email me at ljunker@asaecenter.org, and I'll be happy to include a link in a future post.)

- Maddie Grant has some extensive thoughts about several things that concerned and saddened her at Annual. There's also a great deal of discussion in comments to her post.

- Toni Rae Brotons, one of the participants in the "Guilt by Association" sitcom, was disappointed in the experience.

- It's not available as I write this, but at noon today the Social Media Sweet Spot will be discussing Annual. You can see the live webcast or view it after the fact here.

- Robert Barnes shares learnings, musings, and afterthoughts from the conference. (And thanks to Robert for traveling so far to be with us!)

- Jamie Notter has some thoughts about ways Annual could have been more social, connected, and action-oriented for learners.

- Bruce Hammond explains why a fraternity executive attends Annual.

- Elizabeth Weaver Engel has a new video of the YAP Annual flashmob (or at least new to me).

- Bojan Tercon shares his take on traveling to Annual and Los Angeles.

- The ConventionPlanit blog has two recap posts, one on the weekend and one on Monday.

- The associationTECH blog is seeking notes and summaries from technology-related sessions at Annual.

While many of us were consumed with the 2010 Annual Meeting & Expo (as evidenced by the last 30 or so posts here on Acronym, including the #asae10-related quick clicks entry that Lisa posted earlier today), I have been informed that the Earth indeed continued to spin all the while. The links below from the past week prove it, because none of them has anything to do with the conference. Enjoy.

• Fear. It's "the reason your organization sucks," says Jamie Notter. He offers a simple solution: courage. "Courage doesn't dissolve fear. It is simply a different way of acting when fear is present."
• Email subject lines. Personally, I consider CopyBlogger to be the single best source of guidance and advice on writing for the internet, and today's post on three key elements of good subject lines is no exception.
• Preventing workplace violence. Certainly not a subject any of us would like to think about, but Blue Avocado provides an excellent guide about what employers should do when an employee is a potential target of domestic violence.
• Too much experience. Seth Godin offers a different way to think about failings in an organization's senior management. "[S]enior isn't about old, it's about how long you've been there," he says.
• Liars. And how to spot them. The author of Liespotting offers a few tips about how to detect when you're being duped.
• Unselfishness. Apparently, being unselfish and sacrificing for the good of the organization can make your colleagues dislike you, according to new psychological research. One more reason why people can be both your biggest asset and your biggest problem.

Now that I've finished this list, I'm realizing that almost all of these topics are depressing. So, I made a point to go find someting a little more fun, even though it has nothing to do with associations or even organizational management: "The Stories Behind 8 Back-to-School Essentials" from the mental_floss blog. (Stories behind common objects used in your association's industry could be a good idea for an article or blog post at your association, though, so there's your related value.)

Here are just a few images from the last day of Annual Meeting. Thanks again to our talented staff photographers, Amy Hissrich, Peter Hutchins, and Scott Briscoe, who took these shots; and of course the full pool of photos from Annual is available on Flickr. Thanks to all the participants who made Annual such a great experience, either in person or virtually!

Annual Meeting summaries, reflections, and recaps are popping up all over--it's great to read all the different perspectives. Here are the posts I've found so far ... but I'm sure more are being written even as I post this. I'll link to 'em as I find 'em.

- Several bloggers posted takeaways and responses to specific sessions, including Shannon Otto at the Splash blog, who wrote about an interesting ethics session she attended as well as a session on engaging members with mobile.

- Jeff Hurt posted twice about that same mobile session, first with notes and takeaways and then with 18 questions to ask your members about mobile.

- Lynn Morton live-blogged the session on deconstructing social media guidelines.

- The Connect blog posted major themes and ideas from a session on great IT on a tight budget.

- Annual by the numbers: KiKi L'Italien has a list of her top 5 personal highlights from Annual. Matt Baehr posted 10 thoughts on the conference. Thought Leader Carmine Gallo posted 7 secrets from his Annual session (plus some Flip video he took during his talk).

- Shannon Otto shared some great photos her colleague Kevin Patrick took during the meeting.

- Wes Trochlil recapped his Annual Meeting experience. So did Talia Salem at the Smart Meetings blog.

- Thomas Getchius wrote up his learnings from the last day in LA.

- Jeff Cobb wasn't at Annual (for a very good reason!) but he still participated through social media. He shares what the discussions he saw onlinetell him about the future of learning.

- Stephen Nold at the Trade Show News Network shares his impressions (and concerns) from walking the expo floor.

- Maggie McGary riffed off of some discussions going on at Annual to talk about the depth of associations' commitment to social media. In a similar vein, Dave Lutz' preparations for Annual got him thinking about conference websites and how they can fail.

Another post from guest blogger Marc Mestdagh of 2Mpact from, well, from Belgium, obviously:

1. Associations (act) now!
I came to L.A. with practically no expectations other than the hope to learn and see how far ahead association management in the US is in contrast to Belgium. No matter how this would present itself, talking to people, listening to the speakers, the study-tour to two associations, etc. If I look back now at my trip, it surprises me to see that on the one hand there seems to be a greater awareness of the importance of associations (the Power of A) and all issues concerning thoughtful leadership, innovation, social media were omnipresent throughout the conference. But if you talk to attendees and look closer to what is really done in practice, I had the impression that what seems to be perceived as strategically important are foremost rather basic issues of association management (membership issues, dues, education programs, etc.). In that respect the meeting is not merely about how it is done, but to a certain extent about how it could or should be done more successfully.

In one of the sessions David Gammel said "The best technology for success online is what you have access to right now." To me it seems this applies not only to technology but to all aspects of association management. Associations have to act with what knowledge and experience is at hand. As an example I refer to mobile - everybody seems to agree that mobile is becoming big, but many associations are still in the study or planning phase, looking at their first mobile version of the website, considering applications for smartphones in the future, and so on. It does somewhat cast a shadow on what I've been reading about association management in the US on the web, blogs, and Twitter. Nevertheless it strengthens my belief in the importance of associations and associations management.

2. Talk social media to me!
Social media is hot, or at least it is hot to say that you find it hot. Not taking into account of what my heroes like Jamie Notter, Maddie Grant, Jeff De Cagna, David Gammel are doing, I'm not convinced that associations are really into social media. Appointing a staff member social media strategist because he happens to know something about Facebook or Twitter doesn't count. In Belgium, while talking to association executives, I avoid the term social media; I prefer to convince them of the fact that their organizations have to become more social in a sense of being connected, listening, collaborating, adding up value to create unique content--and preferably as soon as possible. Internet technology (including social network sites) has opened up so many opportunities to be in contact with the members and all sorts of stakeholders. Doing a Facebook page for an event may have direct results but is not sustainable. Future associations have to be "social" in everything they do, everywhere and all of the time.
In that respect I'm wondering what ASAE will do with the social media 'capital' (bloggers, posts, tweeps, tweets,...) it raised during the meeting. Who's behind the ASAE-twitters ? Will they answer or follow up on small things like vegetarians prefer meat and veggies on separate plates or big things like how big was the budget for the Guilt by Association movies? Or shall we all just wait until the #asae11 hashtag is released and start all over ?

3. Everyone should write a book!
What I really liked about the conference was the bookstore. Not hidden away in a little corner with books piled up on tables, but a genuine island of knowledge. I love the internet, but frankly I like books even better. You can imagine how awesome it was for me to get free copies from keynote speakers or even being able to buy them and get them signed. Speakers who have written books generally are more interesting than others. They have been straightening things out in their heads for so long in order to get their story right. I don't have to agree with that story or even feel any affection for the writer, the mere fact of the generosity of sharing is sufficient for me. I would advise everyone at one time or another to get in front of a pc and start writing a book. Let it be my 'mojo' from L.A.

Presented at the Tuesday general session at the 2010 Annual Meeting & Expo, below are parts 7-9 of "Guilt By Association," a sitcom of sorts about a CAE study group. See parts 1-3 here and parts 4-6 here. Or, see all nine parts here.

Marshall Goldsmith, author of Mojo, offered his advice to association professionals on how to find happiness and meaning in work and life in Tuesday's general session. Below are three (of many, many) tweets that came through on the #asae10 hashtag during the session.

I had the chance to attend a fantastic Learning Lab this morning with Jennifer Baker of the American Physical Therapy Association and Ray Saputelli of the New Jersey Academy of Family Physicians. The discussion focused around "mental models"--assumptions and generalizations that influence how we understand the world, make decisions, and act.

Essentially, mental models are the framework we use to sort and interpet things we see, hear, or otherwise experience as we go through life. The plus side is that mental models make it possible for us to get through the day without having to painstakingly analyze every detail; on the negative side, we're often unaware of the way our mental models affect us. We can disregard information that contradicts our mental models--even in the face of overwhelming evidence. As Jennifer and Ray said during their session, unless we surface our mental models, test them, and improve them, we're hemmed in by barriers that we don't even know are there. When you say "Our members will never ..." or "Our members always ..." you're revealing assumptions that can be barriers to your own thinking.

Jennifer and Ray's session was aimed at healthcare executives, so they asked participants to discuss the mental models that could be affecting discussions of healthcare reform among healthcare associations. A lot of the mental models and assumptions discussed were specific to healthcare-related societies, but I heard a few that could impact any association. (Note that the interpretations below are my own).

1. Lack of a common definition (in this case, of healthcare reform). If the players in a dialogue aren't operating under a common definition of terms, they can be having two different conversations without realizing it.

1. "All change is bad, and I'll get hurt." If you assume that change will have a negative outcome, you'll dig in your heels and fight it, avoid it, or spend your energy looking for ways to protect yourself instead of looking for ways to help create a positive outcome.

2. "There will be winners and losers." If you assume that someone has to lose in a particular situation, chances are you'll fight to be a winner, right? Or, potentially, if you think you can't win, you'll give up and disengage from the dialogue rather than waste energy on a situation you've already "lost."

I think I'm going to spend some time on the plane home thinking about my own mental models and how they're shaping my work ...

Cameron Herold, a Thought Leader at the Annual Meeting, is a straightforward, engaging speaker. As his overflow session filed out, I asked three people to give a single quick thought:

1."I was interested in his ideas about free software being the way to go. If he's right about that, and he makes a convincing case, then there's going to be a whole lot of upheaval to the way organizations run and use software." Len Mafrica with the Oncology Nurses Society.

2. "He has me thinking that maybe I need to get off the bus." Name withheld by request, national trade association executive. (A little context: Herold talks a lot about hiring and firing and employees being in the right places for them.

3. "He was great. The best thing for me, and I took a lot of notes, and he said a lot of things that are worth thinking about and exploring, but the best thing for me is just the thinking I'm doing while I'm taking the notes. He unlocked the creative flow. He gets us to reach and to unlock the executives we all should be." David Trust with the Professional Photographers of America.

Lots of great tips and ideas shared for creating fun, attractive, and useful videos in Tuesday's Learning Lab "It's a YouTube World: Using Video for Communication," presented by Jeff Lenard, VP of communications at National Association of Convenience Stores and Wendy Mann, CAE, director of communications at the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association. Here are three of them:

1. When you get a camera, get one that films in high definition, even if you don't plan to show it in HD. At the very least, consider the quality for archival purposes.
2. Don't overscript. Get answers and testimonials from video subjects from the heart, not the head.
3. Use video to communicate key advocacy or consumer-related questions. Film your board chair or an industry expert answering a common question about your industry and send it to reporters and media outlets. It'll be more likely to resonate than a long article or research report.

The third idea comes from Lenard at NACS. Below is a screen grab of the NACS "So Who Owns All the Gas Stations?" series. The videos aren't embeddable, unfortunately, so just click the image to check them out.

Third day of the 2010 Annual Meeting & Expo, a third set of interesting slides.

Handouts for today's Thought Leader sessions and Learning Labs are available online. For ones that provided their presentation slides, as well, I've selected three slides that I found interesting. Click each slide to open the full handout PDF.

From "How Google Analytics is Turning the Webstats World and Your Site Upside-Down," presented by Jim Kelly, Dave Martin, and Betty Whitaker (9 a.m., Room 150AB):

From "Accountability in Action: Enforcing Board Member Responsibilities," presented by Melanie Lockwood Herman, Jonathan Howe, and Eileen Morgan Johnson (10:45 a.m., Room 501ABC):

From "Consensus Business Strategies for Large Associations," presented by Kirk Pickerel and Dean West (10:45 a.m., Room 404AB):

Presented at the Monday general session at the 2010 Annual Meeting & Expo, below are parts 4-6 of "Guilt By Association," a sitcom of sorts about a CAE study group. See parts 1-3 here and stay tuned for parts 6-9 later today or tomorrow. Enjoy.

Day three of Annual Meeting was packed full of learning and conversation (and ended in some great parties and receptions). For more photos, be sure to visit the 2010 Annual Meeting Flickr pool.

Welcome to the last day of the Annual Meeting! I hope you enjoyed the Food & Wine Classic, the YAP party, or wherever else your travels took you yesterday.

Here are some blog reactions to the conference so far:

- Cynthia D'Amour attending a truly eye-opening education session and shares her impressions of the experience.

- KiKi L'Italien hosted the Social Media Sweet Spot webcast live from LA yesterday. The archived video and chat are available on the Sweet Spot's UStream page.

- Sue Pelletier rounds up some video from the conference, including the first few segments of "Guilt by Association" and a video of the flashmob from Sunday.

- Lynn Morton and Elizabeth Weaver Engel posted the Prezi (a.k.a., slides) from their session "Plays Well With Others," on engaging members through multiple communications channels. Elizabeth also posted a list of tips from the session and additional resources as well.

- Maggie McGary (who is missed at Annual this year!) posted five things that make her wish she was here at the conference. Joe Sapp, who is also missed, posted some of the sessions he'd be attending if he were here.

- Shannon Otto posted photos from her time at Annual so far at the Splash blog.

- Peter Turner posted the slidedeck and some key points from his session "It's All About What's Locally Relevant" (on entering or expanding global markets through meetings) as well as a link to some additional case studies.

Exhibitors at Annual Meeting have their finger on the pulse of the industry. The inquiries they hear on the tradeshow floor can give you a good sense of the worries and ideas that are top of mind for association execs.

Three exhibitors were kind enough to speak with me about what they were hearing and thinking about in response to their clients' concerns:

1. Michelle Boucher at the CommPartners booth told me that they see associations taking a look at the future of virtual events. In particular, CommPartners is interested in how you keep participants engaged for a longer period of time with an event taking place in the virtual space, and with pricing for virtual events.

2. Colette Trohan, CPP-T, PRP, of agreatmeeting.com, says that "efficient use of time" is a key concern for the people she's speaking with. Execs are looking for ways to do more with less, and that includes finding ways to speed up and streamline their board and committee meetings.

3. Duncan McCreery of Memberclicks says that engaging members is top of mind--how to show them the value of membership, how to keep them coming back for more, and how to provide such a great experience that they tell their friends about it. Associations that have lost membership are looking to regrow it, and he sees a lot of execs willing to re-examine their time-tested membership strategies and try new approaches.

Presented at the Sunday general session at the Annual Meeting & Expo, below are parts 1-3 of "Guilt By Association," a sitcom of sorts about a CAE study group. Enjoy.

Stay tuned for parts 4-6 and parts 7-9 in the coming days!

I swung by the APAC booth this morning to see what burning questions they're hearing. Chris Vest and Carla Lochiatto of ASAE's public policy team (who are not pictured above, by the way) were kind enough to fill me in:

1. What's going on with the new 1099 reporting rules? Despite heated debate, the House failed to pass the Small Business Tax Relief Act (which would have eliminated tthe new reporting requirements) before the August Congressional recess. More information is available in a post on the Power of A site.

2. What can I do about the new 1099 rules? As of this morning, more than 400 people from more than 40 states had signed on to ASAE's Form 1099 letter. If you'd like to read the letter, or sign on yourself, it's available online.

3. When is the Summit Awards Dinner? September 29 at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. You can get more information on this year's Summit Award winners, as well as the dinner, here.

Bruce Hammond, director of communications/editor for Delta Sigma Phi Fraternity sent us these three takeaways from the "Quit Annoying Your Website Users!" session:

1. Presenter Dave Coriale from DelCor said: Things that MUST be tested for usability--registration/sign-up, your search results, e-commerce, and password recovery.

2. Presenter Cecilia Satovich from Results Direct said: Usability for desktop and mobile are NOT the same. For the desktop, content is king. For mobile devices, context is king.

3. Presenter Dina Lewis from Distilled Logic said: Looking at analytics is extremely important. For usability especially, look at the navigation path people are using to get to content they're looking for.

Overall, my favorite session so far.

Another day of the 2010 Annual Meeting & Expo, another selection of interesting slides.

Handouts for today's Thought Leader sessions and Learning Labs are available online. For ones that provided their presentation slides, as well, I've selected three slides that I found interesting. Click each slide to open the full handout PDF.

From "Govern for Growth: Engage Your Nonprofit Board in Effective Governance," presented by Nancy Axelrod (1:30 p.m., Room 402AB):

From "Generate Nondues Revenues from Alliance Building," presented by Ozair Esmail, Rob Batarla, and John Bell (1:30 p.m., Room 504):

From "Quit Annoying Your Web Site Users!" presented by David Coriale, Dina Lewis, CAE, and Cecilia Satovich (8:30 a.m., Room 153AB):

Day two of Annual Meeting was full of action--from the early-morning 5K to the opening general session and the packed expo floor. For more photos, visit the 2010 Annual Meeting Flickr pool (and you photographers who are with us in LA, don't forget to add your photos to the pool!)

- Carrie Hartin has posted at the Connect blog about her preparatory reading for Annual Meeting.

- Thomas Getchius blogged his takeaways from Bill George's opening general session keynote and from a session on the Decision to Learn study.

- Mike McCurry has questions about the value of the virtual conference.

- Lynn Morton shares some thoughts from her first day at the conference, as well as a commitment to encourage conversation on Twitter over the next few days.

- Maddie Grant liveblogged David Gammel's Learning Lab on making money online.

- Cynthia D'Amour writes about her experience with a new type of name badge.

- If you'd like to check out the sitcom "Guilt by Association" from the opening general session, it's embedded below. (Stay tuned for part 2 in tomorrow's Quick Clicks!)

Steve Smyth, VP of marketing for TriStar Publishing, Inc., sent us the following blog post based on his experience with the Healthcare Community Committee on Saturday:

As a long time member of ASAE who more then occasionally wondered "Where'd they come up with that idea?" when ASAE launched an innovative new product or service, I'd like to report that I think I've discovered one source of that genius - ASAE's volunteer-led Committees.

I'm the incoming Chair of the ASAE Healthcare Community Committee (HCC), and on Saturday I had the great good fortune of working with a new group of healthcare association leaders during our afternoon Committee gathering. The mission for the event was to integrate the new folks into the 3 main Working Groups through which most of the Committees work was accomplished, and then to initiate some strategic thinking regarding tasks and goals for each group. What actually transpired during our 3 hours together didn't exactly match my expected outcomes, but instead gave me something much better - a close up look into what can be accomplished when engaged, intuitive professionals who have a passion for their work get together to brainstorm. I can't wait to see what this group spins out to the greater ASAE community in the coming year!

Here's 3 lessons I learned from working with the Healthcare Community Committee on Saturday:

1. Plan a targeted agenda for your committee meeting- but don't plan to be a slave to it. As a neophyte group leader who wanted to make sure I made good use of the time these volunteers were contributing, I went into the meeting thinking tight adherence to the agenda would keep everyone on track, allowing us to meet our stated objectives. What I learned was that creative discussion has it own flow. Sometimes you just need to go with it.

2. Fresh thinking helps build a bigger vision. Having served 3 years on the HCC had me coming into the orientation/planning meeting with a pretty clear vision for what I saw as the Committee's challenges and opportunities for growth. What I learned was fresh ideas can really help bring that vision of the future into sharper focus. It may reveal some previously unknown challenges as well . Challenges that once understood, are much easier to overcome.

3. If your plan for the meeting has "big issue" items - make sure they're presented in the right order. Pointing back to my first lesson - we did have an agenda item that was to be introduced to the whole Committee and lead off the Working Groups' individualized efforts. Because of a scheduling challenge, this order flip-flopped. What could have created some backtracking on goals the Groups had established before hearing of the bigger initiative instead led to some very productive discussion on how the component elements of the Groups' work can function in synch to achieve the larger mission. In hindsight, having the right presentation order would likely get you to the same place - just without the momentary panic!

End result of the meeting - stay tuned, ASAE.....

(Shameless plug: For a fresh example of how ASAE's Healthcare Community Committee is helping provide uniquely targeted executive-level education - make plans now for ASAE's Healthcare Association Conference, November 18-19, 2010 at the Fairmont Hotel in Chicago.)

I spoke with Shirley Wong (above), council member at the Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation, after today's Learning Lab "Fundraising in the New Economy." She was kind enough to share three important notes she wrote down during the session:

• Giving is competitive. Your organization and other organizations are fighting for the same dollars from donors.
• People give when they're directly asked—so never be afraid to ask.
• Challenges or matching gifts are a big motivator for donors.

For more on the topic of fundraising, see the session handout from presenter Chris Looney, operational VP at CCS. And for ideas on taking good notes, see "3 tips for taking notes at a conference." (No, none of the tips in that post was "share your notes with an Acronym blogger," but it certainly couldn't hurt.)

I dropped by the Career Connection Lounge today and had the opportunity to talk with June Cline, CSP, CSAC, of Open Heart Communications, who's one of several coaches meeting with Annual Meeting participants during the conference. I asked June what questions were top of mind for the folks she'd met with so far, and she told me the real question everyone is asking her is, "What's next?"

"Most everybody loves what they do, it's not a matter of that," she said, but people do question whether they should continue to invest in their current position or whether it's time to seek something new.

If you're wondering what's next for your career, June has some advice for you:

1. Ask yourself, "Does your job give you joy?" Or, put differently, "Does it give you energy or does it take it away?"

2. Ask yourself, "What's working? Why is it working?" and "What's not working? How is it not working?"

3. Based on those answers, ask, "What do I need to renovate, update, or eliminate in my work?" as well as "What do I want to intentionally create?"

With all of those answers in mind, you may find yourself with a much clearer sense of what's next for you.

In his Thought Leader session on Sunday, Bob Rosen, Ph.D., chairman and CEO of Healthy Companies International, talked about how leaders create healthy organizations by fostering their human capital and building the capacity to live with anxiety. At the end, audience members asked some thoughtful questions. Below is a sample of three of them, with a bonus. [Note: paraphrasing below, not direct quotes.]

Question: Is there any hope for creating a healthy company despite a leader at the top that casts a shadow instead of showing the light?

Rosen suggestions were to find financial data, if the leader is a financially minded person, that might make a business case for self reflection or to show the leader success stories of great leaders that he or she can follow and benchmark against.

Question: How do effective leaders find the right balance between fearing risk and driving for success?

Rosen said that if you have a philosophy that life has ups and downs and you learn from those ups and downs, then it changes the way you interpret risky situations.

Question: How does inclusion factor into a leader creating a healthy organization? (The questioner noted that Rosen hadn't used the word inclusion during his presentation despite a focus on human management.)

Rosen suggested that success with inclusion depends on very foundational qualities, such as generosity, understanding, and openness. He said, "To get to respect for diversity, you have to start with being a good person."

And a bonus lesson: an audience member asked a follow-up question to the last one above, noting that a fine line exists between striving for inclusiveness and creating a sense of entitlement among stakeholders. Rosen responded with a one-minute version of his lesson about the four choices a leader has for methods to make decisions, which Scott blogged about just last month.

What are association execs thinking about right now? I thought I'd ask in the bookstore. Right now, it looks like education, governance, and social media are fairly top of mind. The three best-selling books so far during Annual include:

1. The Decision to Learn

2. The Will to Govern Well, Second Edition

3. Tie between Association Compensation and Benefits Study, 2010-2011 Edition, and Social Networking for Nonprofits

I'll be curious to see if these are still in the lead at the end of the conference!

Three things I got out of Bill George's General Session that you had to be listening closely to catch. His big four leadership qualities are align, empower, serve, collaborate. And, on crisis, the topic of his talk, he had a great line: "At Medtronic, we had plenty of crises, but we never had one that was covered in the crises management plan."

But these were the three semi-hidden things that struck me:

1. Power is not a finite commodity. Too often leaders horde power, feeling like to empower someone else means their own bank of power is somehow lessened. Now, no one would admit doing that, but I know I've seen it. A lot. George's point: empowering others enhances your own power influence rather than diminishing it.

2. Society will hold us accountable for our actions. George didn't spend a sentence on social media. But I read social media into everything about this statement. Of course, society has always held companies accountable, but social media is a game changer. Associations, you are no different. If your members are on the wrong side of an argument, shouldn't part of your job be getting them on the right side of it, rather than try to convince the rest of society that they are wrong?

3. Failing early is important. What a great message for any young professionals reading this. I know I never wanted to admit failure when I was starting out--not even to myself. But understanding that failure is critical to your career development, embracing it, finding the lessons, taking responsibility--if these things don't make you more attractive to a future employer, then you should consider whether or not you actually want to work there.

Here are just a few of the photos from day one of the Annual Meeting, courtesy of the conference Flickr pool (and our wonderful staff members Amy Hissrich, Scott Briscoe, and Peter Hutchins, all of whom are great photographers):

Scott Oser of Scott Oser Associates sent us a few thoughts from Saturday at Annual Meeting:

1. If you are not volunteering you should be. The people you meet and the things you get to work to accomplish are awesome.

2. The association community is incredible. The connections you make last forever. You can even see people once a year and feel like you just saw them yesterday.

3. Never ever get in a fight with another association member at an opening reception. (Especially if you are a girl).

Shawn Boynes, CAE, senior direction of education for APIC, shared this blog post from this morning's CAE breakfast:

Robert Tucker provided a great start to the morning at the CAE breakfast by sharing thought provoking ideas & smart perspectives on the absolute necessity for innovation:

1. Surely as association execs we appreciate the need to innovate but how many of us really make time to challenge our assumptions and change our organization's culture around innovation? He shared that we should assault our assumptions!

2. Everyone in the organization has the capacity to innovate; it's everyone's business. We've got to nurture and encourage it, though.

3. Associations have the potential, so let's shatter those old and comfortable ways of doing things, rise to the challenge, and make innovation the fabric of our community.

Saturdays at the Annual Meeting are traditionally full of committee and council meetings. Depending on their experience, volunteers can leave those meetings feeling energized and excited for the year ahead or they can feel confused, disengaged, or even left out.

Aaron Wolowiec, chair of the recently-renamed Young Association Executive Committee, wanted to try some new approaches during Saturday's YAEC meeting. He and Jamie Notter of Management Solutions Plus, who facilitated the meeting, spoke to me about what they tried and how it worked.

1. Aaron told me, "I have a strong belief that people can't be successful and connected to the goals of a committee without being connected to each other." His major goal for the day was for the group to get to know each other better and build strong connections to sustain their engagement throughout the year. Jamie noted that during the two-and-a-half hours of the meeting that he facilitated, he only spoke for about 30 minutes--primarily to put "exclamation points" on the discoveries the committee members were making by talking with each other.

2. Rather than presenting his thoughts on leadership to the committee, Jamie asked key questions so they could build a model of leadership as a group. "I grow weary of traditional messages on leadership as if it's something that's present 'out there,'" says Jamie. "Leadership is everywhere in the system." He began by asking committee members to pair up and discuss what being on the YAEC means to them. I found it striking that six out of the 10 pairs reported that a major motivation behind their joining the YAEC was "wanting a voice."

3. Leadership, Jamie says, is all about translating "passion into action," so he asked committee members, "If you could put your passion behind one thing in the coming year, what would it be?" Some of the committee members posted the question to Twitter, and it was picked up by members of other councils as well. Aaron was pleased to see that the ideas YAEC members found inspiring were impacting conversations going on in other councils and committees.

Aaron and Jamie agreed that the YAEC's approach to its meeting Saturday has built a very strong foundation for a successful year, but, even more important, it's built a foundation for ongoing learning among the committee. They left the meeting with a homework assignment: How will they know during the year if something isn't working anymore? As Aaron noted, a mechanism for that kind of feedback is critical so they can correct course if need be.

Handouts for today's Thought Leader sessions and Learning Labs are available online. For ones that provided their presentation slides, as well, I've selected three slides that I found interesting. Click each slide to open the full handout PDF.

From "Emotional Intelligence - The Leadership Spark that Ignites Association Excellence," presented by Tom Pierce (1:30 p.m., Room 518):

From "Risky Chapters? Maximize Outcomes & Minimize Liability," presented by Peter Houstle and Leslie White (3:15 p.m., Room 502B):

From "Take Your Conferences Online," presented by Jeff Cobb and Tony Ellis, CAE (1:30 p.m., Room 501ABC), data presented from a survey of associations about virtual conferences:

With Annual Meeting in LA this year, I suppose it's not surprising that participants are seeing a few more celebrities than they have in years past. Here are some sightings captured on Twitter yesterday:

@PeachJC: Incredible night in LA #asae10. Shook Seacrest's hand, drinks with Emmy winners "A History of Us" at their Emmy party! Great.

@thomasgetchius: I am sitting next to @Bill_George on my @delta flight to #asae10. What a great experience! I can't wait for his talk tomorrow morning.

@sgiarde: Holy crap! Just had great conversation with Matthew Winert, creator of Mad Men. Shaking.

@sfeuer: NPH and Robbin Williams!!!!!!!

@nonprofithrconf: Wow came to #asae10 and got to see Seth Green!

@jchurch27: Onboard flight to LA for ASAE conference.So is Melissa Etheridge!She plays for us!See autograph! http://twitpic.com/2gwp3d

There hasn't been a ton of blogging from Annual Meeting so far (I think everybody was at the opening reception with Melissa Etheridge instead!). But a few brave souls have posted since yesterday:

- Steffanie Feuer posted a few photos from her travels in California and the Annual Meeting so far.

- Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer will be liveblogging using Cover It Live on the Socialfish blog periodically throughout the conference.

A lot more activity is going on through Twitter, Flickr, and elsewhere--check out the Annual Meeting Hub at http://asae10.org (apologies for the lack of a direct link--our blogging software is being cranky for some reason) to see the latest!

1. ASAE is revising its website to make it easier to find what you are looking for.
2. ASAE has developed a free app -- myASAE -- available for your iphone that will allow you to start getting more customized info.
3. I still don't like eggplant. Even if you bury it in lasagna it doesn't work for me.

Good morning! Marc Mestdagh of 2Mpact, an association management company and consultancy in Belgium, has kindly contributed another guest post about his Annual Meeting experience and thoughts so far:

Being not only a foreigner but a newbie as well, and eager to get the most out of my visit to LA, I have been doing some preliminary research. In addition to my endeavors in connecting to my association management heroes, using the powerful instrument of Twitter, I've been trying to figure out what I can expect of the educational program. I dug into to the ASAE Annual meeting website, and it was a long visit. For me, this is so much more than a visit to a conference.

I was astonished by the way the event presents itself. I can imagine that it takes quite some resources and organization skills when you expect more than 4000 professionals. But what surprised me most is how the meeting is presented as not to be missed. Show whoever is responsible for paying the bills that you really have to be there. I refer to the Justification kit. Never seen this before. Begging on bare knees, for sure, but being able to hand over an entire 'dossier' why you are going to have a professionally justified good time...

Another thing that caught my attention was the link to booth prizes. I would expect this to lead to an overview of exhibitors who have received a prize because of their innovative products or services, in short a showcase of excelling association management companies. But no, the "booth prize"-button brings me to attendee's heaven - I tried to count up the values but had to stop as I fell of my chair at 30,000 dollars.

What I really enjoyed up till now is the overall feeling of excitement that I encountered in blog posts and tweets. People from all over the country seem to be packing and preparing to fly in to LA for the annual meeting. It gives a tantalizing buzz and a eagerness to get to the Convention Center as quick as possible. This feeling is being fed by several unusual--for me that is--but exciting things, like finding the presentations up front, reading about the many side-events, such as the flashmob, Kiki L'Italien's live show, the Yapstar party and so on.

I know this post should be a triad, but this one really stands out, and is by far unequalled in Belgium. I refer to the part on "Leaving a Social Legacy". Apparently it has been a longtime tradition for ASAE to organize events to help the less fortunate in the cities where the meetings take place. Respect!

There's been a lot of pre-Annual-Meeting blogging going on! Thanks to Scott for yesterday's roundup; here's what's been posted since:

- Sue Pelletier at the face2face blog can't be in LA this year (Sue, we'll miss you!) but she's still blogging about what she sees from afar. So far, she's written about some plans for the general sessions and about recharging stations available in the convention center this year.

- Elizabeth Weaver Engel is also thinking about the folks who can't be here in person, and lists the top 5 ways to be part of the Annual Meeting action remotely, including the Hub and the virtual conference.

- For those with an interest in learning, Jeff Cobb has put together a list of learning technology providers exhibiting at Annual Meeting this year.

- And for those of you who can read Dutch, Theo Jonkergouw has written his pre-Annual Meeting thoughts (which, if I'm following the Google translation correctly, are focused around the Annual Meeting "re" theme this year). Safe travels to LA, Theo!

Bruce Hammond, of Insights from a Future Association Executive fame, kindly sent us the following guest blog post during his first day in LA for the Annual Meeting:

I got to LA early this morning and had a chance to spend the day in LA leading up to my first obligation of ASAE10 that takes place tomorrow - the Communication Section Council meeting.

Upon arrival, I had three first impressions of this year's Annual Meeting:

1. LA & ASAE are both pulling out all the stops - If you've ever been to LA Live, you know how neat of a place it is. When I was walking down to the registration at the Convention Center, I was able to see all of the amazing preparations taking place to transform LA Live into an ASAE hot spot. It's awesome!

2. LA Convention Center is HUGE - Checking in at the convention center was an interesting experience because the Convention Center is just absolutely massive. Should be fun finding all of those meeting rooms!!

3. The community is going to be FANTASTIC - I have been following the Twitter feed on the Hub, and the chatter and community is already fantastic... Can't wait to read all of the tweets about each session when the event starts.

As I have for the last two years, I can't wait for the great content and connections that we're sure to get at the 2010 Annual Meeting.

I'm frantically packing and trying to get some last-second work done before getting on a plane for 5 hours headed to ASAE & The Center's (one of the last times you'll see that phrase in this blog) Annual Meeting & Exposition in Los Angeles. I'm a bit stressed, what with needing to remember cords and chargers for two cameras, a video camera, two microphones, an iPhone, an iPad, and a laptop. Oh yeah, and those wonderful ASAE & The Center logo shirts we have to wear (I especially love Saturday's "coral" color -- kind of a hot pink/bright orange mix). So not only am I stressed because I'm sure to forget something (or some things) and I have a ton of work that I just couldn't quite squeeze in this week that I'm going to have to find time to do today and tomorrow, but I have serious questions about my wardrobe--much like KiKi L'Italien... but we'll get to more blog posts about the meeting in a second.

I'm stressed is what I'm saying, and so I was thinking about a conversation I had with Lisa Junker recently who used to always write Quick Clicks for Acronym, and she mentioned how pleased she was that Joe and I, who now help her out with that assignment, continue to be irreverent in the naming of each edition. (I must be stressed, that was one huge run-on sentence I just wrote.) So I thought about naming this edition: Quick Clicks: the PMS edition -- for PreMeeting Selections. I realized that would be bad for many reasons, one of which is, well, it's just bad. But another is that I'm a guy, so I would describe my actual experience with PMS as"do-whatever-you-can-to-stay-out-of-its-way" variety. Plus its sexist and could get me in trouble. But I feel like I've let Lisa down with this title, so I decided to risk a little trouble and tell the story anyway so that, Lisa, at least will have a little respect for me. Now on to actual Quick Clicks, which is going to be a roundup of all the preannual meeting posts we saw (thank you so much to Lisa who pointed out most of them. All right, all of them.)

First up, is a nice three parter from Reid All About It's Deirdre Reid: post 1 ( a lot like this post, actually -- I mean this post from here forward, not the top part. Deirdre's much too classy for that.), post 2, and post 3.

There are several posts by bloggers on presentations they are giving (Frank Fortin, Mickie Rops, and Jamie Notter.

Shannon Otto, who is scheduled to write a guest blog post or two here on Acronym, pretty much laid out her whole schedule on the Splash blog.

Maddie Grant did a nice Twitter fountain, had some nice things to say about being excited about the meeting, and gave the meeting website a little bash, gave her schedule as well as some other handy info -- all in a single post. By the way, Acronym blogger Joe Rominiecki responded to the little bash, and Maddie posted it on the associationTECH blog.)

Lisa Hasen gives some ASAE & The Center annual meeting tips, and, finally, Maggie McGary, on the SocialFish blog, is sad to not be going to LA, but plans to stay in touch and involved.

So that's what I got. I'm sure I missed several posts -- I'm sorry. Did I mention I'm a little stressed? Please, give us a link to them in the comments section.

3 things you must bring to ASAE in LA:

1. Lots of business cards--how else can you really let people know where to find you after the meeting?

2. Comfortable shoes--yes it is a conference with lots of educational sessions in which you will sit but you will appreciate the shoes as you are working the Exhibit Hall, from session to session, potentially back and forth to your hotel and to and from networking receptions.

3. ChapStick--between the dry air on your flight out and in your hotel room and all the talking you will be doing while not necessarily hydrating as you should ChapStick is a lifesaver.

Hope to see you in LA.

A number of people now leaving for ASAE & The Center's Annual Conference & Expo in Los Angeles Aug 20-24 may be hoping to learn about ways to recruit, retain, and motivate staff. A new article in Knowledge@Whartoncontains the results of a fascinating series of studies about whether ranking workers (and, in particular, sharing that rank with the employee) would inspire good performers to greater heights and poor performers to buckle down.

Short answer: no. The worker rock star began slacking off, while the loser workers became discouraged but--although companies apparently hoped otherwise--generally didn't quit their jobs to move on.

After reading the article, I wondered how old the workers were. Would age affect this result?

I had recently listened to the September issue of Success magazine's CD, which shares interviews with 3-4 leaders of interest to entrepreneurs and small business owners. Featured was a terrific conversation with three inspiring and insightful Millennial leaders of the nonprofit Invisible Children.

Invisible Children aims to prevent child soldiering, the kidnapping of youngsters by rebel tribes in Northern Uganda for use as horrific "soldiers" in their battle against the government. The nonprofit, born out of a documentary filmed by student 20-somethings, has been remarkably successful at raising political attention to the problem and engaging supporters of all ages to their cause. (See here for a short video of its Schools to Schools program.).

One quote really stuck with me. The interviewer asked the trio what companies and organizations can do to attract, retain, and motivate Millennial workers. "Millennials value the impossible," one answered. They'll "work like crazy" and are "extremely passionate," but they want to have fun doing it, and they are attracted to projects, causes, and programs that are trying "to do things never done before." They also want their organizations to think beyond themselves and to take their role as a global citizen seriously, the leaders said.

I'm hoping that conference attendees will keep an open mind and the reality check provided by these three brave nonprofit founders as discussions begin again on worker "reward" systems in associations.

Slow food, slow money, … slow chapters? If you've never heard of slow food, it's a movement begun in Italy in the 1980s to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions, and people's dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes, and how our food choices affect the rest of the world. Slow essentially means local, authentic, and connected. If you eat a slow meal, the food on the table came from the place where you are, maybe even was grown and produced by people you know. By and large, slow food is better for you.

Likewise, slow money is better for the place you live. By circulating within a township, for instance, slow money supports producers that generate value for sustaining the life of a place. If I use a global currency, say my major bank checkcard, to buy a drink at a local café, that transaction is drawn from money lent and deposited on the books of financial institutions anywhere on the planet. Such money has no connection or care for what's happening on the ground in my town. If, on the other hand, I use a local currency to buy my drink, that currency is designed to support only local value exchanges.

So what do slow chapters look like? A robust network of "slow" chapters is inherently diverse in size, activity, focus, and so on. For example, if the U.S. Green Building Association has chapters in every major metropolitan area, the chapters in the southwest will provide training in green adobe construction, while the chapters in the northeast will focus more on commercial, high-rise construction. Some chapters will be oriented more toward technical knowledge and some to social connections and networking. Slow chapters feature more specific locally available knowledge, practice, and cultural preferences. This diversity optimizes effectiveness at the local level and enriches the field as a whole, making the national association a more vital force for evolving the field, particularly as it values and supports diversity.

I've had the chance to read some particularly great books lately, and the first thing I want to do when I read a good book is talk with other people about it. So we're going to try something new here on Acronym: regular bookblogging.

Each month, starting in September, we'll do a series of posts on a particular book. We'll let you know the books in advance so you can read along--and I hope you will. But even if you don't have time to read a particular book, feel free to jump into the discussion at any time!

I'm going to do the first three months' worth of bookblogging, because I'm a geek, but we'd love to bring in others as well. If you've got a book you're excited about and you'd like to blog about it on Acronym in a future month, let me know (ljunker@asaecenter.org).

Here are the first three books we'll be blogging about:

- September: Delivering Happiness, by Tony Hsieh. The story of Zappos.com and Tony Hsieh's role in building the company, but also a compelling case for the power of organizational culture. Also just a fun read.

- October: The Networked Nonprofit, by Beth Kanter and Allison H. Fine. How nonprofits can leverage social media to drive change. This one I haven't actually read yet, but I really admire Beth's blog, so I'm looking forward to it.

- November: The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande. The subtitle of the book is "How to Get Things Right," and Gawande shares a number of compelling stories about situations and professions where getting it right is crucial--flying a plane, performing surgery, building a skyscraper. But at its heart the book is about how the human mind can manage complexity, and there are some great lessons for association leaders (who have plenty of complexity to manage).

I'm looking forward to discussing these books with you, and to seeing which books other folks suggest. In the meantime, happy reading!

As you know, we're following a "three things" theme on Acronym for the Annual Meeting this year--and several guest bloggers have kindly agreed to play along. Today, Marc Mestdagh of 2Mpact, an association management company and consultancy in Belgium, shares three reasons why he's chosen to attend the Annual Meeting in LA this year. Here's Marc:

I'm really not that keen on flying, especially when it takes more than half a day to reach my destination. And everybody keeps wishing me a nice holiday in L.A. Hello, I'm going on a business trip - no way you get me in an airplane to go visit places and museums and churches in my scarce spare time. Let me sit down just for a moment and try to find out three good reasons why I'm going to an annual meeting of ASAE on the other side of the world.

First of all, I've never been to a conference with more than 4000 attendees, a complete program of key-notes, educational sessions, an exposition and all those other events. I even read there is going to be a special act by Cirque du Soleil (that's Belgian quality by the way). I cannot imagine we have proper infrastructure for that over here in Belgium, unless you rent a football stadium or concerthall maybe. I'm really curious to see how this works.

Secondly, I've really been bitten by the association management bug. I've been getting into it rather deep for more than a year now, and it is exciting to see and learn how associations, and association professionals in particular, can really help transform society through the power of collaborative action. Sounds familiar doesn't it? I guess I just have to see for myself that all of this is real. Association management is hardly known to my Belgian colleagues. Recently I received a thankyou e-mail from a new BSAE (Belgian Society of A.E.) member because after 7 years working as an association professional, he now felt he had a job description and title, i.e. association manager. In other words, I hope to be able to take a lot home.

Finally, what I really am excited about, is to find out why so many people undertake so much effort to attend a meeting 'in the flesh'. One of the major trends I detect in association management is getting things organized using internet technology: virtual meetings, webinars, on line member and knowledge management. Using our time more efficiently, reducing our carbon footprint, this all seems to make so much sense for association professionals. But let me be honest, I already have had the pleasure of experiencing what that is all about.

People are made to meet people. As a little experiment, and challenged by some colleagues (who can stay alone at home), I've been trying to connect to some American association professionals using Twitter (@2Mpact), and I'm really surprised how warm and friendly everybody is, willing to share their knowledge and experiences on association management with a perfect stranger. I even got Maddie Grant to talk French to me - now, where's that airplane?

Good morning, and happy Monday! There's less than a week until the Annual Meeting, so I'm kicking off this edition of Quick Clicks with some Annual-related posts:

- Teri Carden shares some thoughts about what she's most excited about as a first-time Annual Meeting attendee.

- Mark Bledsoe missed the conference in Toronto, so he's twice as psyched for LA.

- Jon Aleckson shares some thoughts on Annual, communities of practice, and why he enjoys working with associations.

- Elizabeth Weaver Engel has posted two top-five lists about the Annual Meeting.

- Bruce Hammond plays along with Acronym's "three things" theme for Annual with three things he's looking forward to in LA.

Outside of the Annual Meeting, there were plenty of interesting blog posts to consider last week:

- Welcome a new association blog from DAXKO Connect, featuring multiple DAXKO Connect staff.

- At the Trade Show News Network blog, Dave Lutz dares you to read his "rant" on six suspicious tradeshow practices (hat tip to Jeff Hurt for the link).

- Tom Peters shares a great collection of words to the wise, all in five words or less.

- KiKi L'Italien is optimistic about the future of associations.

- Harvard Business Review had some good blog posts related to nonprofit management this week, including "We Need to Rethink Fundraising" by Dan Pallotta and "Job Growth Poses Challenges for Nonprofits" by Wayne Luke.

- You may have heard of the One-Week Job Project, but if you haven't, the gist is that Sean Aiken spent a year working 52 jobs for one week apiece around North America; now three students are pursuing abbreviated versions of this same project, working eight jobs in eight weeks. The Texas Society of Association Executives graciously hosted both Sean and one of the new students to give them a taste of association management--and apparently they represented our sector really well. Here are Sean's posts about his association-management experience and three posts from Michelle Attah about hers.

- Eric Lanke continues his great series on innovation in associations, with a guest post on barriers to innovation in associations at the Socialfish blog and a follow-up post on the role of trust in innovation at the Hourglass Blog.

I love Success magazine for entrepreneurs and small-business owners, especially the accompanying audio CD that features three to four interviews with leaders from various industries. I always glean great information relevant to our sector as well, and the September issue is no exception, because it carries a series about giving--why and how businesses should give, why folks in the top positions should adopt a public giving culture, and why some of the highest impact giving has nothing to do with money.

This is refreshing in light of the major publicity given this week to the laudable efforts of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates to convince billionaires to pledge at least half of their wealth to charitable causes in life or upon their death. If the wealth of the 40+ billionaires who have signed on holds true, that means a staggering flow of more than $200 billion into the nonprofit community--and the dynamic duo are far from done.

The pieces in Success had nothing to do with giving of such mind-boggling personal wealth. Indeed, Success publisher and CD moderator Darren Hardy lists 10 "non-monetary tithes" that business leaders could give, ranging from "knowledge tithing" and "mentoring tithing," to "ear tithing" (listening) and "space tithing" (donating the use of an office or meeting room to a nonprofit for events or a satellite office).

The list reminded me of the latest book from Loews Hotels CEO & Chairman Jonathan Tisch, Citizen You: Doing Your Part to Change the World, in which Tisch urges everyone in every field at every level to become "citizen professionals." He defines that term as a professional in, say, architecture who also applies his or her work skills and knowledge to projects and organizations that better their community and beyond.

In my April interview, Tisch echoes Hardy in urging businesses and the organizations representing these trades and professions to talk more specifically about giving. "My hope is that the leaders of many, many associations are willing to have this conversation with their members, ... because the needs are out there, and the reality is that we have so many challenges as a society, if we could use the strength and vision that associations in our country possess--just the sheer horsepower of the men and women who belong to these associations--we could do a lot for this country."

Tisch went on to say that, like Buffett, people seem hungry to do something positive, and they're looking to their workplaces to meet that desire. "Over the years when I've been involved in so many associations," Tisch says, "I have seen people at conventions want to do more. I have seen them ask for more information [about what to do]. When you look back over the past 18 months--one of the most difficult financial periods our nation has ever been through--we've come out of it with a sense of the fragility of our economic system ..., but now that we're coming to a better place, we also have a greater understanding of what we need to do to preserve the pillars of our economy and to try to do more. People are expressing the need to have a roadmap to help them do more."

I'm hoping, like Hardy, Tisch, and likely Buffett, that association leaders are willing to "ask for directions" that let them create that giving roadmap with their boards, members, and customers. At the very least, consider GPSing your own giving route drawing on a full range of "tithing" options.

In ecology, edges are where two different environments come together. Think about the bank of a river, where the interior ecology meets the water ecology. There on the bank is the traffic of life going from one to the other, including deer and raccoons coming to drink and bear and osprey coming to fish, for example. Going the other way, beaver go onto land to fell trees for making their dams in the water. A riverbank is a high traffic area that facilitates the rich exchange of information and materials between the environments. It is here at such an edge that there is an increased variety and diversity of life; these community junctions tend to foster biodiversity.

In the association world, we are familiar with the maxim that innovation comes from the edges. As the eyes and ears on the ground and as the places where an association's industry and its practitioners interact with society and community, chapters are fertile ground where new ideas emerge. I've seen chapters spin out innovative marketing campaigns, fresh new membership programs, and unique products.

Unfortunately, too often these innovations are ignored by the national organization or, worse, actually discouraged. A permaculture approach pays attention to these edges. The energy which gives rise to diverse ideas at an association's edges can be stewarded and protected by recognizing and celebrating the innovations through something as simple as the association's newsletter and supporting that energy with administrative services that enable chapter leaders to focus on programming.

Besides being passively recognized, an association's edges can be actively cultivated. I once toured an urban homestead, a single-family home on the corner of a block within a mid-sized city. The home had a strip of yard on the two street sides, and all this space was being gradually converted to food production. The site featured lots of edges. A myriad of heritage fruit and nut-tree saplings had been planted along the curbs, and in between the trees and the perimeter foot path the farmer created irregularly shaped beds for leafy greens, onions, herbs, and many types of vegetables. At the back of the house, a short slope rising up to a flat area adjacent to the alley had been terraced for expansive vines such as beans and melons. Every square inch was designated for something, depending on the particular micro-conditions it offered. Chickens foraged around the property, yielding eggs, and honeybees enjoyed various flowering plants. All these cultivated edges gave rise to an abundance of diverse edibles, much more productive than a bland, grassed yard.

Similarly, edges in an association can be cultivated and developed to optimize productivity. Chapters can be encouraged to share or sell their innovations across the network, and the national organization can actively encourage new ideas from the chapters with contests or revenue-sharing models. The important thing to keep in mind is that the productivity at the edges will vary, according to local conditions (local culture, local market, etc.), and this is as it should be.

If you know of any examples of valuing edges in the association world, please share them.

A lot of great stuff out there on the information superhighway this week, IMHO. Enjoy.

• Innovation: In a guest post on the SocialFish blog, association exec Eric Lanke offers reasons why associations tend to be bad at innovation, based on research he's leading at the Wisconsin SAE.
  
  
• More innovation: Meanwhile, author Vijay Govindarajan argues over at Harvard Business Review that most organizations' real innovation problem is execution, not creativity: "[I]deation is sexy, while execution is long, drawn out, and boring."
  
  
• Diversity: Jamie Notter followed up the discussion on Elizabeth Engel's post about the TEDWomen conference with some ideas about "Why Diversity Issues Are Hard." The bottom line, he says: "The systems that perpetuate the inequality survive precisely because they have managed to convince the people with the upper hand … that the privilege doesn't exist." The post alone is a must-read, but the ensuing comments are enlightening as well.
  
  
• Volunteer management: Jeff Hurt at the Midcourse Corrections blog offers "10 Ways To Ensure Your Nonprofit Volunteers Fail."
  
  
• Tax exemptions in danger: Nonprofits with annual revenue less than $100,000 must file a short version of the IRS Form 990 by October 15 or risk losing tax-exempt status (and that date is an extension, by the way). This explainer on the Lancaster (Pa.) Law Blog makes sense of the new requirements for you.
  
  
• Big questions: Elizabeth Engel, CAE, at the Thanks for Playing blog poses a question—"How do we connect with stakeholders who have public, digital and highly networked relationships?"—and then answers it in regard to her association. This is part one of a series, so I'm looking forward to more big questions from Elizabeth.
  
  
• Websites: Chris Bonney at the Vanguard Blog suggests 11 questions to ask yourself to answer "How In Touch Are You With Your Website?"
  
  
• Online privacy law: In another guest post at the SocialFish blog, Leslie White shares a case that shows employers can run afoul of the law by gaining unauthorized access to employees' private online sites or groups. "If you ask the owner or administrator for access to a private site and they say no, walk away," she writes.
  
  
• Social media and employment law: Meanwhile, David Patt, CAE, at the AEM blog shares a tip he heard at an Association Forum of Chicagoland meeting that offers a way to check a job applicant's social-media presence without putting yourself at risk of breaking anti-discrimination laws.
  
  
• Membership: Funny how, as associations are worried about membership failing as a business model, media organizations are turning to membership as the model that might save them. At the Nieman Journalism Lab, author Ken Doctor examines how membership programs might work for media orgs in "The Newsonomics of membership" and "The Newsonomics of membership, part 2." Reading how another industry views membership is a little like hearing what people are saying about you when you're not in the room.
  
  
• Web content: Also at Nieman, a fascinating look at how Slate has had great success with long-form journalism on the web. This caught my eye at first because Slate is the homepage on my Mac at home (two facts that surely out me as a yuppie liberal), but it's a valuable read for its ideas both on how you might make in-depth content work at your association and how to inspire your employees or members to make that in-depth work happen.
  
  
• Life: Last but not least, a link that has nothing to do with associations but one that will stick with me for a long time, from the mental_floss blog: "He Took a Polaroid Every Day, Until the Day He Died."

The relationship between a national association and its local chapters tends to exhibit pendulum swings, from reinvigoration and pulling together at times to discord and disengagement at other times. When an association responds to changes in the economy or industry with new marketing, advocacy, standards, products and services, etc., these strategies ripple out to chapters, and differences in opinion between chapters and the national office often color the relationship. The whole business of managing these relationships takes enormous amounts of energy, attention, perseverance, and creativity, yet no one model or method seems to last, and the pendulum swings continue. Isn't there a way to have a more sustainably productive relationship?

Given the interest in greening our economy and "green" in general, I'd like to suggest that a permaculture approach offers tips for achieving a more evolved harmony for chapter relations.

Permaculture is a way of designing agricultural systems that mimics the relationships found in natural ecology in order to sustain productivity indefinitely. Its principles for maximizing beneficial relationships are based on ethics for living in long-term balance. It seeks to meet the needs of people, to care for the health of the land, and to accept limits (i.e. to know what is enough). While industrial agriculture maximizes production at a cost of reduced well-being, permaculture, by contrast, maximizes well-being, even if that means reduced concentrations of productivity over the short term—because permaculture generates stable, productive systems over the long term. Elements in the system are viewed in relationship to other elements, where the outputs of one element become the inputs of another, producing complex synergies and high densities of food and materials with minimal input.

So what does an agricultural philosophy have to do with managing association chapters? Permaculture design principles can be applied to any system of relationships. It's refreshing to translate this approach to the relationship between an association and its chapters. Twelve key permaculture principles include:

• Creatively respond to change
• Value edges
• Value diversity
• Slow and small solutions
• Integrate rather than segregate
• Design from patterns to details
• No waste
• Use renewables
• Apply self-regulation
• Obtain a yield
• Catch and store energy
• Observe and interact

I'll be selecting a couple of these principles to apply to the association context in subsequent posts ("value edges" will be first). I welcome your thoughts on cultivating a sustainable chapter "permaculture" that provides for diverse needs while increasing the relationship capital for future generations. Let me know which of the above principles you might like me to discuss in more detail and if you have experience or further ideas on applying systems-based design principles to chapter relations.

Greetings Acronym readers. Please join me in welcoming a new blogger to our ranks: Kris Prendergast.

Kris is the new director of membership, constituent, and network engagement at Independent Sector and is also currently a member of the board of directors of the Center for Watershed Protection. She is the past CEO of the Social Enterprise Alliance and VP of governance and organization development at the U.S. Green Building Council. (She also wrote an article for Associations Now in 2006: "Dynamic Governance, Dynamite Components.")

Kris's background in strategy, governance, and volunteer management and interest in environmental responsibility give her a unique perspective on how these disciplines intersect. In her upcoming series of posts, she'll tell us what "permaculture"—a form of sustainable agriculture—can teach us about healthy volunteer management and component relations.

Be sure to check out Kris's first post, which will be published shortly, and stay tuned for more in the coming weeks!