Acronym

The following is a guest post from J. Clarke Price, CAE, president and CEO of the Ohio Society of CPAs.

One of the most enjoyable assignments I've had in my involvement in ASAE was working on the Innovation Task Force. Figuring out the answer to "How do we cultivate a spirit of innovation in associations?" was simultaneously challenging and frustrating.

The challenging dimension was that it was fun to engage association executives in conversations around that question. I've heard lots of perspectives on the question, I've heard lots of examples of how associations have empowered staff to innovate, and I've heard how staff and volunteers are routinely challenging the status quo and creating innovative programs and solutions in some associations. It's energizing to hear the enthusiasm that some have for being innovators and creating a culture that promotes innovation.

At the same time, talking about innovation has also been nothing short of frustrating. Many of the CEOs I've spoken with seem paralyzed at the prospect of getting their arms around becoming innovative. While virtually everyone seems to recognize the importance of becoming innovative, they just can't figure out how to do it. Too many seem to be focused on innovation as the next big, grandiose new thing they can develop. They're not recognizing that innovation can also occur incrementally.

Everyone understands the concept of "process improvement" in their organizations, but they don't relate that to being innovative. I liken process improvement to "baby steps." By fostering an environment and culture that promotes baby steps, we begin to get people comfortable with the notion of change, and that can lead to comfort with significant change that can lead to major innovations. It's easy to get people thinking about and acting on simple process improvements, and that's far easier than saying "think big" with a hope that you'll see something innovative develop.

I've been in several conversations recently that have reinforced my belief that too many association CEOs are afraid to tackle the innovation challenge because of reasons like "it's too big to get my arms around" or "it will be expensive," or they rationalize that "I innovate all the time." I'd challenge everyone to think about the issue not as an undertaking that's too big to embrace but rather as something where small steps and a culture change can lead to big things.

Regardless of whether one's approach to innovation is through small steps or big steps, what's most important is that we embrace the notion of innovation as something that can lead to organizational excitement and great new things.

After rounding up some of the best blog posts on association management from the past two weeks, I found I had several pairs of posts on matching topics. So, I paired them up on the list below. Enjoy.

Community management

• Did you know that Monday was Community Manager Appreciation Day? Well, thanks to Maggie McGary, now you do. So go give your association's community manager(s) a belated "thanks."
• Colleen Dilenschneider explains why quality, not quantity, matters most in building your organization's online followers.

Fixing problems

• Laura Otten writes that some struggling nonprofits won't change until they hit rock bottom, much like an addict. "There are those who love the problem so much, they really aren't interested in a solution." 
• Andy Freed shares a "To Don't" list for associations, inspired by and marking 15 years since the release of Built to Last by Jim Collins.

Lobbying

• Stefanie Reeves, CAE, reads about "the dawn of social lobbying" and argues that lobbying has always been social.
• David Patt, CAE, highlights the fine line an association must walk in supporting politicians but also not getting lumped in with them when they draw public backlash.

Member engagement

• Aaron Wolowiec, CAE, explains how a strong pursuit of a relational business model (rather than transactional) can be a key method for recruiting and retaining members.
• Two weeks ago, Elizabeth Engel, CAE, responded to Mark Athitakis's post here on Acronym to say that reading fiction teaches you how to think. So it's no surprise this week that she explains what associations can learn about engaging retired members from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Meetings

• Jeffrey Cufaude thinks a lot of organizations "missed the memo" on effective meetings. Convenietly, he recaps it nicely here if you missed it too.
• Speaking of the future of meetings, after what she saw at the PCMA Convening Leaders and the Virtual Edge Summit, Michelle Bruno writes that the future for meeting planners is one in which "the traditional competencies (and assumptions) will no longer be adequate for the job."

Management. Virgil Carter shares five new management metrics. My favorites on the list are "flow-state percentage" and "positive-feedback ratio."

Customer service. Jeff Hurt explains how organizations are using social media for "digital customer service," like a online version of the bell on a concierge desk.

Nondues revenue. Erik Schonher points out a source of revenue your association might not have considered before: list rentals. And he offers several questions you should ask if you're looking for a list management company to manage rentals of your membership list.

Membership models. Lowll Aplebaum makes a guest appearance on the Affiniscape Blog to argue that the end of the traditional membership model is not a sign of impending doom but rather an opportunity to remake the membership model in any way we can imagine.

Strategic planning. Eric Lanke, CAE, concurs with Humanize authors Maddie Grant, CAE, and Jamie Notter that strategic planning is a term that should be done away with.

I've read so much contradictory information about whether it's better to work by oneself or in groups that I finally needed some alone time to think about it.

Associations Now has done its bit to promote the virtues of introversion: We've run articles on the importance of finding time to think by oneself, on how introverts aren't the insecure souls the stereotype suggests, and on how social media helps introverts better engage with associations. Of course, we run plenty of articles about the virtues of collaboration too—our Volunteer Leadership Issue is, in essence, a handbook for how association boards and staff leaders can work together and be more productive. So which work style works best, in which contexts, and why?

The cheeky answer to those questions is obvious: Well, I'd have to think on it a little more, but if you want to talk with me about it, we can. (The rest of this week is booked pretty solid with meetings, though, sorry. How's your Tuesday?) What I can say is that it was a little dispiriting to read "The Rise of the New Groupthink," an essay in the New York Times by Susan Cain about how more and more activities in the workplace have become collaborative ones. "It's one thing to associate with a group in which each member works autonomously on his piece of the puzzle," Cain writes. "It's another to be corralled into endless meetings or conference calls conducted in offices that afford no respite from the noise and gaze of co-workers."

Cain points out plenty of downsides to that go-team office dynamic: Studies show that open office plans make employees sicker and more insecure, and though group brainstorming sessions produce a high quantity of ideas, there's no evidence that the quality of those ideas are any better than those generated alone by individuals. Her prescription is for "a more nuanced approach to creativity and learning" that allows us more time to hunker down, be it to generate ideas or just to knock things off our to-do lists.

It's a good idea, but how do you put it in motion? I've read plenty in the business and association press about how to create better collaborative environments; there's much less out there about how carve out more time for individual creativity and productivity. Is it something organizations can institute, or do we just hope our employees get around to it between meetings?

In the space of a few hours earlier this week, I came upon two articles about human interaction that seemingly contradicted each other:

• "Opposites Don't Attract (And That's Bad News)," by Jonah Lehrer at Wired's Frontal Cortex blog
• "The End of the Echo Chamber," by Farhad Manjoo at Slate

In the former, Lehrer explains a newly released study that found that college students at larger universities have less diverse social groups than those at smaller universities. The conclusion drawn is that a larger environment allows the natural tendency toward seeking relationships with similar people to play out more thoroughly. As the study's authors put it, "Our findings reveal an irony—greater human diversity within an environment leads to less personal diversity."

Meanwhile, many experts have assumed that the boundless environment of the internet has allowed this same dynamic to turn the net into an "echo chamber," leaving us all increasingly isolated from differing people and viewpoints. The Slate article, however, points out a massive study conducted on Facebook that suggests the opposite is true: social networks (or at least Facebook) expose users to a large amount of novel information (i.e., ideas you most likely wouldn't have found on your own), because the vast majority of online social connections are weak ties. Simply put, the echo chamber theory doesn't appear to be true.

So, in person, opposites don't attract, but seemingly opposites do attract in the internet. The important difference between these scenarios is strength of connections. The former study examined the diversity in close personal relationships, while the latter examined the diversity in weak connections. Very different scenarios, and the evidence from each supports a fairly simple (and perhaps obvious) conclusion: strong relationships arise naturally from compatibility, while weak connections require less compatibility and thus allow for greater diversity.

So why might any of this be relevant to you as an association executive? I see a few lessons to draw, and while none of them are new or novel, the studies serve as important reminders and reinformcements of the following ideas:

Weak ties are conduits for knowledge sharing. My colleague Mark Athitakis asked "What's a Weak Tie Worth?" a few weeks ago and suggested that it might be difficult to turn weak ties into strong ones. I think both of these studies confirm that, but the Facebook study in particular further proves the great value in a large network of weak ties. Working to grow that network—and to help your members grow their weak-tie networks with each other—is a valuable goal in itself.

Growing diversity is another case for online social networking within your membership. Another reason to count the Facebook study in the "pro" column for engaging members through private online community platforms and on external social networks. It's not just a greater volume of connections that can be made online than in person; the online environment allows for the diversity of those connections to be higher, too. And we know that greater diversity in ideas and information being exchanged leads to better decisions, more innovation, and so on.

But just creating a diverse environment isn't enough. Particularly when it comes to your staff or your volunteer leadership, where weak ties that might exist need to be built into strong ties for effective work to be done. Getting a diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints in a room together is the right start, but human nature (sadly) will still resist the forming of diverse relationships unless they're fostered intentionally. Cross-functional teams, task forces, and committees must be created with purpose.

I'm curious if these studies align with your experience with your relationships and networks and those you see in your associations.

Last week I wrote about the virtues of skepticism when it comes to storytelling—why it's important to be wary about organizations that use storytelling to burnish positive images about themselves, because there's a good chance they're covering up messes that don't neatly fit the narrative. Your comments to that post got me thinking more about when storytelling does and doesn't do its job. (And as an editor at Associations Now who's stared at plenty of blank screens trying to write, I think about this a fair bit.)

So let's add one more complication here: At the Harvard Business Review website, author Anne Kreamer writes about "the business case for reading novels." By "business case," Kreamer means to say that reading fiction bolsters the kinds of qualities that we admire in leaders but which leaders sometimes have a hard time cultivating: emotional intelligence, empathy, poise, conscientiousness. There's data to back up the claim. According to one study she cites, people who read fiction were better equipped to detect emotional cues in others. Moreover, Kreamer argues, fiction is a way to experience the rougher emotions we try to avoid in everyday life, the better to deal with them when they do come up.

I like the idea in the abstract, though I think fiction is only so beneficial as a leadership tool. As Kreamer points out, people who already have "high interpersonal skills" won't necessarily benefit. And however I look at it, I'm not convinced that the novel I'm reading at the moment, Charles Johnson's Middle Passage, which is set on a mutinous slave ship in 1830, has much to teach me about leadership, even in an inverted, here's-how-to-do-it-wrong kind of way. But I don't read fiction to be taught so much as to be reminded: to remember that there are sometimes voices I hadn't considered, that some of the verities I was sure of years ago (or last month) aren't necessarily so, and that the essential but hard-won personal stuff Kreamer mentions—emotional intelligence, empathy, poise, conscientiousness—still matters. Novels aren't formal training; at best they're refresher courses.

But let me throw it to you, an association readership that I know often balances the must-read business books with less-business-y ones. Is there a business case for novels, as Kreamer argues, or do they serve to bolster the storytelling instinct that threaten to make our narratives a little too pat?

Quick clicks took some time off over the holidays, so there's plenty to catch up on. We start, though, on a sad note. Long-time association executive Mark Bledsoe, CAE, passed away December 22. Mark blogged on association management via his AssociationOkie blog. Friend, colleague, and fellow blogger Cynthia D'Amour shared her memory of Mark. His voice in the association blogosphere will be missed.

Looking back at some of the top posts from the past few weeks, many association bloggers turned their attention to predictions and resolutions for 2012:

Words for 2012. Following a theme that she started last year, Shelly Alcorn, CAE, shares five words that will define her work with associations in 2012. As she points out, several others joined her in sharing their words for 2012, as well: Lowell Aplebaum, Kiki L'Italien, Nikki Jeske and Jay Daughtry.

Changing the world in 2012. Maddie Grant, CAE, posed a question on her blog: "How are you going to change the world in 2012?" Several association bloggers responded with posts, which Maddie has conveniently gathered up in a recap post.

Technology challenges. Wes Trochlil has followed up ASAE's 2011 Technology Conference & Expo with a series of blog posts titled "Things I heard at the ASAE Tech Conference." He's up to seven so far, with topics ranging from internal users groups to new association management systems to training.

Membership. Maggie McGary tried out a consumer membership at the Consumer Electronics Association in 2011, only to see CEA discontinue it shortly after launching it. Her account is a good example of how a new member experiences an association.

Wifi at conferences. On the NTEN Blog, Jason Samuels shares how the National Council on Family Relations provided wireless internet for conference attendees via mobile broadband hotspots. It worked, but not perfectly, and Jason shares all the ups and downs and lessons learned.

Consensus. Mark J. Golden, FASAE, CAE, makes an argument for the value of consensus in associations, but he also makes some important clarifications about what consensus is and isn't.

Convention management. Sue Pelletier is at the Professional Convention Management Association Annual Meeting this week, and she provides a thorough recap of the first day's keynoters: John Medina, Jane McGonigal, Sally Hogshead, and David Brooks.

Volunteer recruitment. Susan J. Ellis relates author Steve McKee's "spark plug theory of marketing" to volunteer recruitment and connecting with volunteers who "want to be challenged to solve problems in new ways."

Diversity. Elizabeth Engel, CAE, is disappointed in the lack of diversity in a collection of association CEOs in an industry publication and says the lack of progress on diversity in general is a threat to the survivial of associations.

Tradeshows. Michael Pinchera a t MPI's PlusPoint blog shares a video that gives a behind-the-scenes look at the construction of a booth at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Marketing. Cindy Butts, CAE, offers six reasons why sponsoring a sports program (such as a local pro or college team) can benefit your association.

Online communities. Terry Coatta asks if you are promoting your online communities as "deadly jelly babies." If this doesn't make sense to you, the point is that it probably doesn't make sense to your members, either.

The 2012 Associations Now Volunteer Leadership Issue includes a feature by Mark T. Engle, FASAE, CAE, titled "Balanced Conflict, Better Decisions," which presents research that Engle conducted on how associations can best handle conflict in decision making. One of Engle's key findings is that conflict is best handled at the committee level rather than at the board level, and I think this says a lot about the importance of creating open and inclusive governance models in associations, which we discussed here back in November.

[Engle's feature article isn't published online; see page 26 of your print edition. However, in October we published a short article based on an interview with Engle.]

In the feature, Engle stresses that the importance of the consensus approach at the association board level runs opposite to what other research says about decision making in for-profit boards, that conflict at the board level improves decision making. A quote from Steve Smith, CAE, executive director and CEO of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, sums this up well:

"Fairness and due diligence are critical within [association] committee or board processes," says Smith. "If a process is seen as unfair, such as when all views are not heard, the focus is likely to be on personal issues or affective conflict."

In other words, in the association context, if the decision-making process is un-inclusive, conflict will arise precisely for that reason.

The association model is such that, by the time a decision reaches the board level, a strong consensus should already exist about the decision to be made. All the various stakeholders should already be on board because they should have already been asked for their input. If they weren't asked, they'll question the decision. In many cases, I suspect, conflict might present itself as healthy debate on the merits of the issue but in truth be rooted in personal or political conflict stemming from a sense of unfairness in the process.

This presents a deeper question: Is the decision-making process more important than the decision itself? For associations and their member-driven governance systems, the answer might be yes. The evidence in Engle's research on conflict and decision making suggests this, and it makes yet another case for more openness and inclusion in decision-making in associations. If you haven't read the comments from that post from November, go back now and read them. They offer some good ideas for meeting this challenge.

It's four days into the new year, and with any luck you're still sticking to your resolutions to be healthier, kinder, more creative, more organized, and so on. All good things. But I hope you'll forgive me for handing you this double-fudge sundae of a resolution-wrecker: Maybe this is the year you stop trying so hard to apply order to things and instead spend more time acknowledging life's inherent messiness.

I say this after spending some time over the holidays reading the transcript of a talk that economist Tyler Cowen gave at the TedxMidAtlantic conference. (The talk—in the video above—was in 2009, but the transcript appeared late last month.) Cowen's talk is about stories—more specifically, our human instinct to organize our lives as stories. Cowen understands that storytelling is baked into our nature, but he's concerned that our need to describe our lives in terms of conflicts and beginnings, middles, and ends oversimplifies things. "Every time you're telling a good-versus-evil story, you're basically lowering your IQ by ten points or more," Cowen says. Good-versus-evil stories deflect nuance and complication, and it's often the subtle things you need to be the most concerned about.

The line that really hit home for me—and that got me thinking about associations—is Cowen's suggestion about what you should do when a story feels a little too enchanting to you:

Pull back and say, "What are the messages, and what are the stories that no one has an incentive to tell?" and start telling yourself those, and see if any of your decisions change.

Associations, of course, tell stories about themselves all the time: In the annual report, in the board minutes, in the marketing programs, in their internal messages. Those messages can be as simple as "We've supported our industry for decades." But what if the industry isn't the same as it was all those decades back? The decades make for a nice story, but they're not what matters—and, as Cowen implies, leaning on that story isn't going to drive you to make changes in what you do.

So here's the question for the new year (and please do weigh in with your answers in the comments if you're willing): What are the stories you've seen associations unwilling to tell themselves? And a bonus question: Where does that lack of incentive come from?

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

First off, a quick list of blog posts from around the association community that highlighted or recapped last week's ASAE Technology Conference & Expo:

• New Infographic: Associations Going Mobile (Lindy Dreyer)
• What Online Community Managers Want You To Know (Chris Bonney)
• Gems from the Technology Conference (Shannon Otto)
• Ten steps to building a community blog that rocks! (Maddie Grant, CAE)
• Get on the Mobile Bandwagon (Jamie Notter)
• Post Conference Depression (KiKi L'Italien)
• What the Tech? (Elizabeth Engel, CAE)
• Mobile First (Maddie Grant, CAE)
• On the go… (David Patt, CAE)
• Friday Top 5 (Elizabeth Engel, CAE)

And now on to other interesting commentary from the last two weeks:

Governance. Cindy Butts, CAE, says board officer positions should not be linked with specific tasks, and such requirements definitely should not appear in an association's bylaws.

Collaboration. Nilofer Merchant at Harvard Business Review explains eight reasons why collaboration appears dangerous. (Shared via Robert Rich, CAE and his "Association Strategy and Innovation" Scoop.It page.)

Meetings. Sue Pelletier shares news about the Occupy movement and a quasi-convention that arose from it last week in Florida.

Speaker selection. Jeff Hurt says conference organizers have too much power, particularly in regard to their role as the gatekeeper of information, choosing what education sessions make the cut.

More speaker selection. Stefanie Reeves, CAE, likens conference speaker selection to college football's Bowl Championship Series. The sports fan in me loves this quote: "What are we doing to make sure the Boise States of the association community get their moment in the spotlight?"

Jargon. Dan Pallotta says meaningless business-speak is an epidemic. "I'd say that in about half of my business conversations, I have almost no idea what other people are saying to me," he writes. I agree.

Housekeeping. Andy Freed offers a year-end checklist for associations: to-do's that will get your organization refreshed for the new year.

Marketing. Colleen Dilenschneider offers four ways nonprofit organizations can benefit from their employees personal brands.

Inclusion. Joe Gerstandt explains why The Golden Rule isn't as great as everyone thinks it is. (Hint: it's about the difference between good intentions and good outcomes.)

Some imaginary situations:

• An association that promotes international cooperation in an industry has, at long last, assembled a diverse, global board—whose members now can't get along.
• The staff of an organization that promotes literacy receives regular emails from the Executive Director that are riddled with so many typos and so much opaque jargon that some people are starting to wonder how the ED got hired.
• An association promoting green technologies has routine staff squabbles on its internal website about office recycling. What is that eco-friendly go-cup lid doing in the trash? Excuse me, but why did I just see a soda can in the mixed-papers bin?

If you'd asked me a while back if there were a term for this sort of thing, I might have just shrugged and said, "Uh, bitter irony?" But a recent edition of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly has set me straight. David Allyn, director of development for New Jersey SEEDS, calls the phenomenon "mission mirroring," a situation in which "organizations routinely become mired in internal conflicts that look eerily like the external problems they were founded to address." The main cause of mission mirroring, Allyn argues, is that stakeholders are hyperaware of the kind of issue they've come together to fix, so that very same issue has a way of bubbling up more often in staff and board interactions.

I'm not entirely sold on the idea. The single case study Allyn addresses is anonymous and a little too on-the-nose: conflict at an organization whose mission is conflict resolution. (It's a doozy of an internal conflict, though: "At one donor event," Allyn writes, "two guests nearly came to blows over the use of a chair.") But it doesn't strike me as unthinkable, either. Moreover, Allyn argues that awareness of mission mirroring should be an essential part of its work, to forestall such conflicts down the line. Organizations that do so will be "less likely to get trapped in vicious cycles of accusation and reprisal," he writes.

Have you ever experienced (or even heard of) a case of mission mirroring? Is simply acknowledging the problem quite enough to help fix it?

So #Tech11 is about a week past us now, and I'm still letting what I saw and heard soak in. I regret to say that I was only present for about half of the conference, what with other responsibilities to tend to back at the office, but I didn't need to be there very long to come to the following conclusion:

Whatever amount of resources your association is currently devoting to technology and web development is not anywhere close to enough. Double it. Triple it. Probably still not enough.

I promise no technology vendors paid me to write that. My first inclination would be to increase in-house tech and web staff anyway. And I say this acknowledging that money, time, and staff don't grow on trees, of course. I just think it's time for a significant reorganization of priorities.

In speeches and presentations at the conference, I heard references to companies like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple, Yahoo!, Instagram, and Rovio (makers of Angry Birds). To be clear, these aren't just companies that are good at technology. They are tech companies. Tech is either the majority or the entirety of what they do. The common reaction is to take these examples as inspiration for lofty but unattainable ideas and think, "Yeah, but we're an association. We're not a tech company."

Are you sure about that? Here's a rundown of common association endeavors, each with a tech/web component:

• Membership (online application and renewal, member directory, discussion groups)
• Volunteer management (discussion groups, document sharing and collaboration)
• Meetings (online registration, digital or mobile/tablet program guides, recording and livestreaming, virtual conferences)
• Publications (e-newsletters, mobile and tablet editions, audio and video, e-books)
• Communications (email, social media)
• Advocacy (alerts, online petitions)
• Education (webinars, self-directed online learning, digital course material)
• Research (electronic surveys, interactive databases)

This list is not complete, but you get the idea. How many of your association's activities can you think of that involve no technology whatsoever? There aren't many. In-person meetings and face-to-face collaboration still count, of course, and they count for a lot. But when I look at this list above, I wonder what associations actually did before the invention of the internet. I really do.

And so it's with that mindset that I wonder why associations still devote such a small percentage of their in-house resources to technology. An association might not be a "tech company" in the traditional sense, and associations will always need technology partners for big, hairy projects and for highly specialized work. But if nearly everything your association does involves technology and the web—if the core of the business is helping people meet, communicate, interact, and collaborate, almost entirely online—how can you justify not shifting a larger percentage of your resources toward making those tech and web components excel? Luke Wroblewski said associations should start thinking about mobile first. That's going to be tough if you're still in denial about being web first.

Another busy day on the #tech11 hashtag on Twitter. Here are a few gems shared by attendees during the closing day of the 2011 ASAE Technology Conference & Expo. Plenty more where this came from on the full hashtag stream.

The world of information is different now, David Weinberger said during his closing general session of the Technology Conference. We can now serve people who need to know more about pagan harpooners.

Weinberger, who's perhaps best known as a coauthor of The Cluetrain Manifesto, brought up "pagan harpooners" in the context of how people can now make use of Amazon's listing for Moby-Dick. There isn't too much literature about pagan harpooners out there, but Amazon can now provide a repository of "statistically improbable phrases" for users with very granular interests. The multitude of ways people can slice and dice categories for Moby-Dick "is a giant stinking mess," he said. "There is not an information retrieval textbook before the 1990s that would suggest it as a good way to reach out to consumers." But that messiness has value. Indeed, what the internet can now do is take that granular information and give it value it wouldn't otherwise have.

What does that mean for associations? For one thing, they can no longer assume that they're the last and best resource for information---even information about the industries they serve. Until recently, Weinberger said, knowledge was defined by "stopping points"---the academic, the expert, the encyclopedia or authoritative book that purported to be the last word on a subject. But there is no "last word" anymore, and more successful organizations recognize that a variety of members require a variety of content.

The challenge for associations, Weinberger argued, is to support enough diversity to help encourage that rich, sometimes messy wealth of information, but not be so diverse that it undoes the organization's mission. "You want disruption, but you want the right disruption," he said. Part of the way of doing that, he argued, is to get out of the cliched mindset that you're supposed to deliver "the right information to the right person at the right time." He suggested a different phrase: An associations should be supporting "the right conversations with some of the wrong people about some off-topic topics in a messy network of fruitful disagreement."

So, how good is your association at doing that? Do you feel that you need those stopping points, or are you OK with things being messy?

What if your association's members did all your online marketing for you? Sounds like a pipe dream, right?

Maybe not entirely. The rise of Web 2.0 has led to the rise of social commerce, in which many of the same community dynamics of real-world shopping can be leveraged online. Avectra's Ben Martin, CAE, and Larissa Fair discussed how associations can drive social commerce in their markets in an Idea Lab Thursday morning at the 2011 ASAE Technology Conference.

They offered six strategies for putting the dynamics of social commerce to work, all based in consistent human behavior:

• Follow the crowd, because people do what they see other people doing.
• Follow the authority, because people trust expert opinions.
• Create scarcity, because people see value in exclusivity.
• Follow those you like: people trust opinions of friends and people they find likeable.
• Be consistent, because people are comfortable with what they already know.
• Repay favors, because people like to do good for those who do good to them.

If nothing about these strikes you as "digital" or "online," that's fine. These aren't new social dynamics. But some of the tactics for tapping into them online are. Martin and Fair shared some examples that can work for associations:

• Bookmarking, favorites, and wish lists in online stores, which show other buyers what's popular (follow the crowd) and also show the association what's in demand.
• Online engagement scores for members. As those with high scores recommend or review products, other users pay attention (follow the expert).
• Exclusive sales, exclusive invites to events, or advance access to services and products for an association's followers on Twitter and Facebook or for its most engaged members (create scarcity).
• Add a button to the end of an event registration, product checkout, or membership application for the user to easily Tweet or post to Facebook to tell their friends about your event, product, or association (follow those you like).
• Allow members to vote on conference session proposals in advance of a conference; that early, small interaction will make them more interested in registering to attend because they're already familiar with the event (be consistent).
• Simply connect with your members directly online and help them when they reach out with questions; they'll be more likely to recommend you to their online friends (repay favors).

These are just a few examples. The underlying theme to all of these social dynamics and methods for utilizing them is that buyers trust their fellow buyers more than they trust sellers. Anything you can do to enable your customers to connect with and learn from each other as they make buying decisions about your products and services, the less work you have do in direct promotion.

The #tech11 hashtag on Twitter was busy today as attendees at the 2011 ASAE Technology Conference & Expo shared wisdom from the presentations and conversations. Below is just a sample of what you can find on the full hashtag stream.

This tweet from @betsyschro at the 2011 ASAE Technology Conference & Expo neatly captures a common concern for associations as they explore their mobile options:

Conveniently, an Idea Lab this afternoon offered some help in the form of advice on how to make apps profitable, to help cover costs or even drive revenue for the association. Alexandra Mouw, senior consultant, strategic web solutions, at Results Direct, suggested associations could learn lessons from the app of all apps, Angry Birds.

Angry Birds has been successful for many reasons, including:

• It's simple. Birds flying and crashing into a structure.
• It can be played in small spurts, in 30 seconds or a few free minutes.
• It offers incentives for progress, such as stars and additional levels.
• Even though it's installed on your phone and played alone, it still becomes community experience.
• It works and rarely crashes.
• The characters have proven likeable enough to be licensed for physical merchandise.

And so in thinking about developing apps for associations, it helps to understand the various models of revenue generation for mobile apps, Mouw says. Here are the leading forms:

• Paid apps. This is the simplest form. Set a price as low as $.99 in the platform's app store. (This is one way Angry Birds makes money.)
• Advertising and sponsorship. This might be the form with the most immediate potential for associations.
• Freemium apps, which come in a couple forms:
• Lite versions: Free apps with limited capability or with advertising. Some of those ads encourage users to download the paid app with additional functions. (Angry Birds does this, too. You can buy a lite version to try it out.)
• In-app purchasing: The app is free, but users can buy additional features or functions from within the app.
• Driving out-of-app purchasing. The app could be free or paid, but it's designed to lead users (subtly or directly) to buy something somewhere else. (Think Angry Birds plush toys.) A common association example of this that came up in the session is certification preparation material; the prep app might be free, but it helps people toward reaching a paid certification.

David Nour, author of Return on Impact (published by ASAE's Association Management Press), covered a lot of ground during his lunchtime presentation today at the Technology Conference and Expo. But three points in particular struck me as I listened to him speak. Nour is a fan of the provocative question, so we'll do this in question form:

1. Why are you thinking of social media as little more than a customer-service tool? "Letting the tool determing your social strategy is like letting the tail wag the dog," Nour said at the very beginning of his talk. By that, he meant that too often organizations establish Twitter and Facebook presences and call that a social-media strategy. A true social strategy, Nour argued, is one that uses the behaviors of members on social media as an opportunity to move from one-to-many relationships to one-one-relationships. Though associations are good at gathering demographic data, he said, they need to improve at gathering psychographic data.

2. How good are you at telling your association's story? Nour presented a powerful video from the nonprofit Charity: Water, which helps deliver drinkable water to developing countries. Though social media plays a critical role in its fundraising, Nour said, that was never mentioned during the video. Instead, stories about how it met its mission are put up front. How many associations are good at explaining its mission to members (and potential members) without gunking it up with jargon or explicit calls to purchase? "Charity: Water has become incredible storytellers to show what the impact is," Nour said.

3. What makes you think members will stick around? While writing Return on Impact, Nour interviewed dozens of association leaders, and one of the questions he asked them is, "How are your members better off because they're your members?" The question is meant to force people to think about how member-centric their work is, because members are increasingly demanding more of their associations, and increasingly willing to take their business elsewhere. "Your association is going to go through a Yelp-ification," he said, referring to the community-review site. How does your association need to change when you know that practically every member interaction you have will be publicly scrutinized?

That's just what hit me. How about you?

Luke Wroblewski's mantra, "Mobile First," reminds me of The Onion.

Not because it's a joke (far from it), and not because he's funny (which he is, but that's not the point.)

If you've ever read an interview with writers of the satirical newspaper (like this one), you know that they brainstorm in headlines first. They toss around joke headlines in meetings, and then they assign writers to the stories. The headline is the joke, and the joke is the most important part. The rest is just extra.

Wroblewski, digital product software designer, cofounder of Bagcheck Inc., and opening general session speaker at the 2011 ASAE Technology Conference, says associations should take a similar approach in designing online engagement opportunities for members: "It makes a lot of sense to start thinking about mobile as the first order of business." (So much sense that he wrote a book about it.)

Your first reaction to this might be, "Why design the tiny version first?" Wroblewski's answer is the same that The Onion writers would give about brainstorming joke headlines: because the constraints of a small space force you to focus on the most important part.

When you go from designing for a desktop to a smartphone screen, you lose 80 percent of your space, "which I think is awesome," Wroblewski says. "You put what your customers want first, and as a result your business grows."

For associations, this will be a difficult change. Focus isn't exactly a forte. "Association" has been aptly defined as "a conglomerate of small businesses … with a consensus-based governance model slapped on top." Getting consensus on what's most important, on what makes the cut for the small screen, will be a messy process.

But with mobile devices predicted to overtake PCs in 2013 as the most common channel for accessing the web, if you're not already thinking about mobile first, you might soon find yourself finishing last.

Follow the conversation at the Technology Conference at http://tech11.org, and look for further coverage here on Acronym throughout the week.

A quick blog service announcement: as we did during the 2011 Annual Meeting & Expo, Acronym is looking for guest blog posts from attendees during next week's ASAE Technology Conference & Expo. The assignment is simple: you'd only need to write one post (though you could write more if you'd like), anyone is eligible, and no prior blogging experience is necessary.

If you're not sure what to write about, here's a simple prompt, the same one we used at Annual: Think of a single question that you want answered during the Tech Conference or in a specific education session and then share the answer in a blog post. Pretty simple.

We're hoping to line up a handful of volunteers before the conference, so if you're interested in contributing, email us at acronym@asaecenter.org. Thanks!