Acronym

Rene Shonerd, MEd, CAE, a consultant and a member of ASAE &The Center's Technology Section Council, kindly sent us the following blog post with good advice based on the sessions she attended at Annual:

Because I'm currently planning for an upcoming presentation myself, I found myself jotting down notes about presentation delivery while attending the learning labs at this year's ASAE10 Annual Meeting. After reviewing my notes on the long flight home, I found 3 themes:

When it comes to slides - less is more. We can all learn from the great examples at the Ted Talks. Audiences are no longer in awe of out of the box templates with bulleted lists. Instead repurpose those lists as talking points in your speaker's notes and develop slides that are true visual aids. The best slides contain a key takeaway phrase, a simple chart or a professional image that supports the key point. Garr Reynolds's book and blog also contain useful tips to get you started or spruce up your old slide decks.

Internet Connection - don't count on it. I watched several speakers scramble when the internet connection in the convention center wasn't working or wasn't strong enough to run the multimedia features of their presentations. Keep the multimedia segments, but develop a backup plan ahead of time. Download any video presentations (find tools here) to your laptop and save cached version of web pages you plan to show.

Embrace (or at least acknowledge) the backchannel. Tweets aren't just for the tech types anymore. Even if you don't use Twitter yourself, take time to learn how to acknowledge and incorporate feedback from those who do. Simple things like announcing the session hashtag created by conference organizers and including your twitter id on the title slide are great first steps. Check out How to present with Twitter (and other backchannels) by Olivia Mitchell to learn more.

Happy Thursday! I had expected this edition of Quick Clicks to be primarily non-Annual-Meeting related, but people are still posting so much good commentary on the conference that I'm going to focus on Annual after all:

- Mark Bledsoe at AssociationOkie recapped his Annual Meeting experience, and also started a fun game: What are some cities that would be great for Annual Meeting in 2018?

- Brian O'Leary at Magellan Media Partners' blog teases out the major themes he sees in the post-conference discussion about Annual, and shares some of what he experienced there as well.

- Elizabeth Weaver Engel posted her reflections from Annual Meeting. She also started a discussion on the YAP discussion board for suggestions for Annual Meeting 2011 in St. Louis.

- Jeff De Cagna proposed three key questions he hopes to see discussed by the time of next year's conference. (Don't miss the comments on his post--other great questions are proposed in there.)

- Dave Nershi (association executive by day, wine blogger by night) shares his take on the Food & Wine Classic.

- At the Common Thread blog, Jamie Notter worries that lessons learned during Annual might be forgotten in the press of day-to-day work once we're all back in the office.

- Jeff Cobb sees the post-conference discussions as a great learning opportunity (and gives a very kind shout-out to Acronym in the process. Thanks, Jeff!).

- Several posts offer follow-ups and additional information about topics discussed at Annual: Leslie White breaks down antitrust issues and how they relate to social media, and Paul Schneider shares some information on mobile.

- KiKi L'Italien has some suggestions for future presenters based on some AV issues she observed during conference.

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.

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):