Acronym

Another busy year for the association-management blogosphere is in the books. To cap it off, I've assembled a list of my favorite association-management blog posts, shared below.

I tried to find a way to get the total number of blog posts in the "associations" folder in my Google Reader for 2011, but had no such luck. Simply put, there were a lot. Far too many to count. And there were a lot of great, interesting, informative, provocative, entertaining ones, which we've been sharing here via our quasi-regular Quick Clicks posts.

If you're not plugged into the association-management blogosphere, you're seriously missing out. Make that a New Year's resolution to start following some of these blogs. (See the "Blogs on Associations" list in the right margin on the Acronym homepage to find some good ones to follow.)

The posts below are listed in chronological order and, though they're not numbered, there are 31 of them. In the interest of spreading out the link love, no blogger appears more than once. (Some of you more prolific bloggers made that difficult.) And, as a disclaimer, the selection process here is wholly unscientific, involving no formal criteria and no panel of judges. It's just me and what I remember as particularly good posts this year. If you have some favorite posts from 2011 that aren't included here, please add them in the comments.

See you in 2012!

• "Just What Am I Joining?" Jamie Notter, January 5
• "Think you could never be homeless?" Jeff Cobb, February 22
• "When I get older..." David Patt, CAE, March 2
• "Words Make Worlds - Part 2 - Membership vs Citizenship," Shelly Alcorn, CAE, March 8
• "Uh oh, the pledge and no American Flag," Cindy Butts, CAE, March 26
• "Are your lousy systems affecting staff retention?" Wes Trochlil, April 12
• "Why Private Social Networks for Associations Aren't About Networking," Joshua Paul, April 21
• "Influence in the Context of Associations," Maggie McGary, May 31
• "How to Hire for Social Media Management," Maddie Grant, CAE, June 23
• "Mall Science: What Your Conference Can Learn From The Mall," Jeff Hurt, June 28
• "The Association Cycle," C. David Gammel, CAE, June 29
• "In the Beginning was the Leadership," Judith Lindenau, June 30
• "Psst! Want Your New Executive Director to Succeed?" Tim Wolfred and Jan Masaoka, July 16
• "Staff Meeting 24/7... Its the ONLY WAY," Tom Morrison, July 18
• "Have we lost the ability to argue?" Mark Golden, FASAE, CAE, July 18
• "Getting Extra Credit," Laura Otten, August 3
• "6 Tips to Make Membership Research Work," Adina Wasserman, August 3
• "The Life and Times of an Association Executive," Dan Borschke, CAE, August 10
• "ASAE St. Louis 2011 - in 71 Seconds" [YouTube video], Tom Ingram, August 11
• "Marker-Wielding Board Member Holds Strategic Planning Session Hostage," The Association Onion, August 13
• "Innovation: Small Staff v. Large Staff," Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE, August 16
• "Reflections on ASAE 11: The Sexiness of Unsexy Innovation," Frank Fortin, CAE, August 17
• "Getting More Players on the All-Star Team," Jeffrey Cufaude, August 24
• "The "Hook" for Profitable Engagement: Changing your Conversation with Members and Customers," Anna Caraveli, August 30
• "Should Committees Report to the Board?" Eric Lanke, CAE, September 26
• "Five Ways to Get More From Your Board Meeting," Andy Freed, September 29
• "The 25 Most Important Lessons in Membership Marketing," Tony Rossell, October 10
• "Balancing the Board-CEO Relationship," Skip Potter, October 18
• "Mission: Volunteer Leader Training Part 2: Growing the Leader," Lowell Aplebaum, November 15
• "Association Pareidolia," KiKi L'Italien, November 28
• "Lobbying is not a four-letter word," Stefanie Reeves, CAE, December 1