Without further ado...

So, how did it go? Were you still humming "Strategic Plan" under your breath? Did you cringe the first time someone used the word "extreme?" Did your association's HQ seem strangely cozy compared to Opryland?

Tell us about your first-day-back experience with us, and let us know how you plan to share what you learned in Nashville with your colleagues.

Thru the Eyes of Children

For the 1st time in the 20+ years I've been attending the Annual Meeting, I brought my family (wife and 2 daughters) with me. It was interesting for me to get my daughters' (ages 15 and 11) perspectives on the meeting -- and the association management profession -- in more than monosyllabic responses.

Beginning and ending with conversations

The Sunday morning of the Annual Meeting began -- truly, 7:00am -- with an Executive Insights (aka the EMS Book Club) conversation facilitated by Diane James. The conversation -- sparked by Sidney Finkelstein's book "Why Smart Executives Fail (and What You Can Learn From Their Mistakes)" -- proved to be wide-ranging and provocative, as participants shared personal insights and stories.

For my last formal learning session at this Annual Meeting, I chose a participative, interactive session on The Cafe Model: Engaging Associations in Meaningful Dialogue, led by Janet G. McCallen. Engage we did -- in round robin discussions at paper-covered cafe tables, complete with crayons. The discussions centered on trust in associations -- getting it, keeping it -- but the process --intense, focused and very involving -- was the real "topic" of the session.

Complete contest rules and instructions are available here. We hope you'll share your perspectives and give yourself a chance to win!

If you show me your wiki, I'll show you mine...

Fascinating example cited by Elliott Masie on how Microsoft is going to use a “wiki” -- “a blog on steroids” -- to produce content for the users manual for its next operating system. 10,000 users will contribute, with the content immediately available in 47 languages. For someone of my generation -- 50+ -- this is really intriguing and neat!

Any associations doing this? Or, perhaps more directly applicable to our world, will associations by and large embrace or rebuff this coming reality (and the others to which Masie refers in his fascinating presentation)?

Thanks Chip. You ask a very important question and, in fact, this blog is something of an example of what Masie is talking about. The overwhelming majority of the content on this blog was created by members of the Annual Meeting community rather than association staff. (Associations Now editor-in-chief Scott Briscoe was a integral contributor.) The primary bloggers for this meeting, as well as its X-Blog contributors, are all volunteers. ASAE & the Center placed its trust in us. Would your association do the same?

Cutting Edge Fundraising Strategies Offered by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

At the session entitled, Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future: Sharing Experiences with St. Jude Children's Hospital, two development experts offered insight into strategies that can really help your development program. Phil McCarty and David Tucker traced the history of St. Jude and the original opening of the hospital by Danny Thomas in 1962. At that time, the hospital raised $1.2 million each year. Today, $1.3 million a day is required to adequately run the hospital and the more than 1 million square fee of research laboratory space.

Opryland's unwanted "brand"

I can't help but think that the Opryland folks must cringe every time they hear speakers make (joking) references to how confusing the property is to navigate. Think about it: Philip Kotler refers to needing a GPS, Nashville mayor Bill Purcell urges us to come back to find lost members of our party, Malcolm Gladwell says there must be a hospital in the “complex”, Elliott Masie jokes that he left a trail of bread crumbs and so forth.

All very humorous, but it speaks to the perception or “brand” image of the property that people have. Don't get me wrong: I think Opryland is a fabulous property/destination and the service is great. But if you're the brand owner, do you want words like “confusing”, “complex”, “a maze”, etc. to be the ones that come initially to customers' minds?

Memorable Messages

"Don't equate the environment or setting with the experience - the experience exists WITHIN a person." (James Gilmore, author of The Experience Economy)

Thanks Mickie. Apparently, Stan Slap is quite quotable, and that's absolutely awesome!

Making time for the important stuff...

It was interesting to notice the patterns and insights that emerged among the four "Conversations that Matter" sessions I hosted during the meeting, with groups as diverse as small-staff association executives, professional development practitioners, emerging leaders, and technology/IT professionals. For example...both PD and technology folks had the same big key insight: "STOP and THINK"...(and someone in each group actually wrote that down in big capital letters as their key insight for the session) referring to the power of making time in our schedules to reflect about what's going on in our work and what we can do about it, whatever that might be. We're simply not as effective if all we do is run the maze everyday. It's a powerful thought...and if you're thinking right now "I don't have time to stop and think, I'm too busy"...you might need to do it more than the rest of us.

And while that may seem to disagree with what Malcolm Gladwell talked about...it doesn't really. Our minds, need the refreshment and support that periodic deep reflection can provide. Remember...judgment is fragile and needs care!

"No one wants to feel like they're a problem to be fixed, but they do want to matter."

Conversation was a major theme at this year's ASAE and the Center for Association Leadership Annual Meeting. The tone was set from the very beginning of the meeting last Saturday with the Future Leaders session featuring David Gammel, Kristi Graves Donovan and Betsy Boyd-Flynn. Springboard papers -- published in the Journal of Association Leadership -- provided thought-provoking starting points for discussions that took off, sometimes in surprising directions. Many of the most active conversations were focused on associations and social responsibility.

XtremeASAE Bloggers Note: What is the role of associations in promoting social responsibility? This seems like a particularly pertinent question now, given ASAE & the Center's new cause: helping associations transform society through the power of collaboration. But transform society in what ways? Will the work of transformation be done to serve the interests of association members or of the greater good?

Of course, the success of an event blog such as this one is directly related to the caliber of the meeting it seeks to cover. If you've been following this blog over the last several days, you know ASAE & the Center put on an INCREDIBLE event in Nashville, one of the best most of us have ever attended. The buzz is very strong because the meeting was very strong, and the XtremeASAE bloggers and contributors are delighted we could play a role in this smashing success!

So, with your kind indulgence, I am going to put up these posts so you can read them. They are well worth it. And to all of our X-Blog contributors, a profound apology for falling down on the job. I hope you know how much your hard work is appreciated by your XtremeASAE blogging colleagues, ASAE & the Center and your association community colleagues nationwide. Thanks for your dedication to this effort.