ASAE Annual Meeting Daily Now

To cap off the 2011 Annual Meeting & Expo tonight, attendees will experience a smorgasbord of food and entertainment stretching three city blocks in downtown St. Louis.

The street party, dubbed “St. Lou is Rockin’,” showcases the Washington Avenue entertainment district. Nine restaurants between 9th and 12th Streets—plus four local food trucks—will each feature their own unique food and beverage, including sushi, tacos, snow cones, pizza, and grass-fed, dry-aged steak.

Other highlights include free bowling at Flamingo Bowl, an acrobatic trampoline act, photo booths with St. Louis Rams cheerleaders and Budweiser Clydesdales, and live music ranging from brass to rock to Irish.

Cohosted by the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission and the St. Louis Area Hotel Association, the party begins at 7 p.m. and continues to 9:30 p.m. Attendees may enter at the intersection of 9th Street and Washington Avenue. Check out the map for preview of the various restaurants and attractions awaiting tonight’s guests.

Associations need more oddballs.

That’s one of the messages Joe Gerstandt wants to deliver in his Learning Lab titled “How to Fly Your Freak Flag,” taking place today from 9 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. in room 275.

“If we really want to be innovative, if we really want to be creative, then part of that involves bringing more difference and uniqueness into the workplace to feed that innovation,” says Gerstandt, a speaker and consultant. When people are free to express their honest beliefs and concerns, he says, new ideas are introduced—and when that’s part of the culture, people tend to feel a closer connection to an organization.

The problem is that many associations have a culture of conformity where new ideas are difficult to express. And the nonconformists are the ones who may be most concerned about rocking the boat. “Being authentic and flying your freak flag comes with a little discomfort and fear,” he says. “That’s OK, but you need to be aware that that’s part of the process.”

During his session, Gerstandt will discuss strategies for introducing new and provocative ideas without sowing alienation. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, though.

“We all have different comfort levels; we all have different skills and different gifts,” Gerstandt says. “What’s important is making sure that you actually know where you are, what your gifts are, and what you’re here for. Then you can start to ask yourself, ‘Am I acting accordingly? Is that stuff showing up in the way that I interact, behave, and relate with other human beings?’ Because if it isn’t, then you have some work to do.”

Is the perfect the enemy of the good? That’s a question Peter J. O’Neil, CAE, thinks about often in his work as executive director of the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA). As he assumes the role of chairman of ASAE and the ASAE Foundation, he discussed that question and more with Daily Now.

What do you most look forward to at Annual?
For me it’s an opportunity to connect with my peers and find out what’s new and different and what’s really going on in other organizations. I always walk away refreshed and with more ideas about how AIHA can be what I call better, different, and more.

How does the ASAE Foundation fit into ASAE’s larger mission?
It’s the part of the organization that helps the profession look at what’s coming and what impact it might have. Rigorous research needs to be put around what these changes may be, so we can help qualify and quantify them for practicing association management professionals. The Form 990 work really gives me the opportunity to know internally how well I’m faring compared to others.

How prepared do you feel ASAE is to adapt to changes in the industry?
I think when many organizations want to put out a Cadillac, they usually want to keep the car in the garage until it’s built and shiny and pretty before its proverbial unveiling. I think ASAE has gotten a lot better at saying, “It’s got four wheels and a steering wheel, and we’ll install the radio later, but it’s working right now, and we’ll roll it out.” Maybe the color gets changed, and maybe the tires need to get bigger or smaller, but to me that represents an organic, learning organization that doesn’t have to make things perfect before something gets released or launched.

There’s no doubt that you’ve picked up a lot in the past few days, whether its business cards, a new idea, or even a new way of thinking. But once you get back into your daily routine, it’s easy to forget those bright ideas and lessons learned. So how can you capture those thoughts and keep them fresh? Here are a few tips to make it happen.

• Keep new connections. If you haven’t already, take some time to shuffle through the business cards of the people you met during the meeting. Add a note to cards you keep that explains why the person is important and one interesting tidbit you recall from your conversation. Then consult your calendar as soon as possible and set a date reminder to follow up with each person.
• Clean up your notes. Was that an “s” or just a doodle? Take a close look your notes, blog posts, tweets, and even scribbles. Find places where you can expand on your notes to round out your thoughts and add some reflection while the information is still relatively fresh in your mind. Organize your notes and put them in a central location for traveling home. Once you get back to work, combine electronic and handwritten notes into one place for easy reference in the format you prefer.
• Share what you learned. It’s likely that some of your coworkers couldn’t attend this year’s meeting, but that doesn’t mean they can’t benefit from what you’ve experienced. Plus, telling others what you learned is a great way to recall information. When you get back to the office, hold informal discussions with your colleagues to let them in on what you got out of Annual and keep the new ideas going.

We’ve all seen it happen. Someone has a terrific idea that generates excitement and then, well, nothing.

“It’s one thing to have an idea, an aspiration,” says Peter Sheahan, author of Fl!p and Making It Happen: Turning Good Ideas into Great Results. “It’s a whole other thing to package that in such a way that people can part with time, money, and energy for whatever that idea is.”

Here’s Sheahan’s list of idea killers:

1. The idea is too broad. It dies when “no one gets narrow enough in taking that idea and packaging it into what I would call a ‘commercial offer,’” says Sheahan. He cites associations’ frequent pledge to properly leverage social media. “That’s an interesting idea, but to what end? What value are you going to add in that environment? What value are you going to take from it? Going that extra layer down helps you get much more focused on what it is you want to do [so] you have a much greater ability to pick your messaging [and] designate who’s in charge.”
2. The workplace has (yawn) little activity. Inertia due to executives’ failure to act smothers an ideation culture. “One [challenge] in the association environment, particularly in cause organizations, is the presence of usually quite large boards and very diverse stakeholders, all of which have some say in the future direction of that organization,” Sheahan notes. “As a result, you sometimes become paralyzed by attempts to gain consensus.” To overcome inertia, he advises leaders to consider “being a little more ‘guerilla’ in their attempt to influence stakeholders in their association environment.”
3. The targeted market is too wide. “We often spread ourselves too thin with our ideas, either by trying to sell them to too many people at one time or to appeal to too many markets at one time,” Sheahan warns. At a recent priority-setting exercise conducted with an association client, he and its board found that of the group’s 13 going-fine-but-not-great initiatives, the one deemed most critical was also the most underserved.

Hear more of Sheahan’s thoughts at today’s Closing General Session at 12:15 p.m. in Hall 1.

Mobile devices allow association professionals to be as productive on the go as they are behind their desks. Whether you have a smartphone or tablet or both, a variety of apps, accessories, and tools can help you increase your productivity.

In this morning’s session, “Tips and Tricks from Association Mobile Gurus,” four of the association community’s most reputable mobile warriors will share their wisdom. Explore which apps are best for travel planning and file sharing, what accessories you need most on the road, and how you can leverage mobile devices to deliver unique and useful products and services to your members.

Daily Now asked the presenters for their favorite app or tip:
Sandra Giarde, CAE, executive director, California Association for the Education of Young Children

Favorite app: “My favorite app is TripIt.  It takes confirmation emails and makes chronological itineraries. It even includes directions and weather forecasts.”

Ben Martin, CAE, product and community manager, NFi Studios

Favorite app: “My go-to app is from the travel site Kayak. Kayak builds an itinerary for your trip that can be accessed online or through the app. You can even check your flight status from the app.”

KiKi L’Italien, senior consultant, technology manager, Delcor Technology Solutions

Favorite app: “My favorite app is Dropbox. I always save my presentations in my Dropbox folder in case something terrible happens to my laptop when I’m on the way to give a talk.”

Renato Sogueco, chief information officer, Society of American Florists

Mobile tip: “Quick Reference (QR) codes are barcodes you scan with your smartphone to launch a website, send yourself a text, or even start an online video. Try Bakodo for iPhone or QR Droid for Android devices.”

Come prepared to share your own mobile tips and tricks, too. Today’s session will take place in room 240 at 9 a.m.

“I am a chieftain princess goddess,” Vickie Lester, MBA, CAE, told a packed room of attendees at the first of yesterday’s two Ignite sessions. Her statement isn’t strictly true—her official title is president of Lester Management Services—but that line helped introduce her lively, quick-hit presentation about an annual road trip she takes with three close friends and association professionals and what traveling the country taught her about her work.

Ignite presentations give speakers just five minutes to discuss a topic using just 20 slides, which auto-advance every 15 seconds. Turn to page 25 for some rapid-fire takeaways from eight other Ignite speakers.

“As you’re working together, the most important thing is listening. When we’re really hearing what other people are saying, we can’t formulate our response, our excuse, or our defense.”

Tara Bishop, CAE, associate executive director, National Council of University Research Administrators, “Create a Successful Relationship with Your Boss”

“The real power of Twitter isn’t connecting online—that’s no different than exchanging business cards. The real power of Twitter is when you take it offline and start meeting new people.”

John Chen, publications/project manager, International Society for Performance Improvement, “Twitter Saved My Life; Not Really, but Maybe?”

“We always have choices. We are not being held hostage in our own lives. … The choice that is not available to us is to put it off.”

Jeffrey Cufaude, president, Idea Architects, “A More Sustainable You”

“You need to put yourself out there. … Don’t tell members to call the 800 number. Let people know that there’s somebody in the office who cares about them.”

Christine Melendes, CAE, director, member relations, Professional Convention Management Association, “Members Are People Too!”

“The mind wants to give up before the body does. All of us have more inside of ourselves than we sometimes think we do.”

Jeff Jorge, VP, Billhighway, “Triathlon Lessons That Build Successful Organizations, People, and Leaders”

“ You’re going to hear the word ‘no.’ It’s OK. Treat it as the start of a new conversation. You have to be a ‘no’ detective. Find out the reason behind the ‘no.’”

Miriam Miller Wolk, CAE, senior director of membership, United Fresh Produce Association, “Sales Is Not a Dirty Word”

“It’s all about surrounding yourself with great people. When we’re thinking about staff, are we giving them the opportunities to be creative?”

Stefanie Reeves, CAE, senior legislative and federal affairs officer, American Psychological Association, “What Prince Can Teach Us about Association Management”

“Sacred cows take a lot of different forms, but all those things exist because a war is being fought in the background over them.”

Joe Gerstandt, speaker, shouter, whisperer, “Why Profanity Kicks @$$!”

Tuesday, August 9

7 a.m. – 3 p.m. Registration, Bookstore open

7:15 – 8:15 a.m. Global Good Morning! International Meet & Greet

7:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. Business Connection Lounge, Online Communications & Engagement Lounge open

9 – 10:15 a.m. Learning Labs

9 a.m. – 12 p.m. Deep Dive Sessions: International Marketing Super Session and Innovation and The Will to Govern Well: International Associations

10:45 a.m. – 12 p.m. Learning Labs

12:15 – 2 p.m. Closing General Session and Luncheon with Peter Sheahan

2:30 – 5:30 p.m. Community Connection for Stray Rescue of St. Louis

3:15 – 5:45 p.m. UnSession Learning Tours—Uniquely St. Louis

7 – 9:30 p.m. St. Louis … Jammin’ Final Night Celebration and Downtown Block Party

Few people receive or deliver news and information the way they did a few years ago. That makes for unsettling times, as Tina Brown pointed out during yesterday’s Opening General Session. But her talk focused on the ways that online, print, and face-to-face communication all remain valuable and how the power of storytelling connects all three.

“For news junkies like me it’s an incredibly exciting time to be alive,” says Brown, who is the editor-in-chief of Newsweek magazine and The Daily Beast, a news and commentary site with 10 million unique visitors each month. The two properties merged last year, and they complement each other well, she said, because they allow for a constantly changing mix of quick-hit breaking news stories alongside in-depth analysis. She described how that model played out in a number of recent major news events, such as when Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces last May. Within a few hours, Brown says, the site jumped into gear and brought in a stream of updates by writers and photographers, including some reporters on the ground in Pakistan, together with more detailed essays and editorials.

The takeaway for organizations is to recognize the kinds of stories that intensely capture their readers’ interests, and move quickly to satisfy those needs. “You have to know when a topic has become ‘obsessional,’ Brown says. “There’s often only a very tiny window of time when people want to hear about things, and you have to be there for them.”

Brown says that one key to success of the merged The Daily Beast and Newsweek is the generational mix of its staff, which is made up of younger digital natives, who are assigned to seek out and summarize the most relevant news stories quickly, and seasoned journalists who write the longer pieces. “You have the kids and the grownups,” she says.

In addition to discussing the distinct virtues of print and online communication, Brown offered her perspective on the importance of in-person meetings. Last year she helped to stage the first Women in the World Summit, a three-day event in New York City that brought in well-known female leaders such as Hilary Clinton and Madeleine Albright to discuss global women’s rights issues. That event brought in $250,000 worth of donations to the causes discussed during the summit, which was enough to inspire Brown to create a dedicated foundation that will launch later this year.

Brown acknowledged that the The Daily Beast/Newsweek combination presents a complicated problem in terms of revenue and said that the merged publication isn’t expected to break even until next year. But though she said she was hesitant to run a website when she was first asked—“I felt I was a print person to my toes,” she says—she now says a blended approach is critical for anybody delivering information. “It’s very scary in some ways, but it’s also exhilarating,” she says.

Diving deeper with Tina Brown
Yesterday Tina Brown held a brief VIP Q&A session with about 30 attendees following her Opening General Session presentation. Brown fielded questions on topics ranging from the future of publishing to social media’s place in journalism.

One of the biggest challenges facing publishers today is competing for readers’ time. Brown says that part of the way to solve this problem is by employing concise and well-directed content rather than an overload of information and ensuring that you’re reaching your audience with the information it wants exactly when it needs it.

When it comes to building revenue with the future of publishing, Brown says that advertisers are looking for a “360 model … It has to be a digital platform, the magazine, the events that we’re doing, the newsletters, all of those things together will make the revenue.” Plus, she says, it takes a willingness to make an upfront investment in the products you’re creating.

And while Brown says tweeting is a good tool for communicating, she doesn’t see those tweets as a new form of journalism. “There is the whole crowdsourced journalism … I don’t consider that journalism though, really. I mean, sometimes you can pluck somebody out of that who shows great talent. But I still feel that it is a craft that has to be learned, even if it’s not a ‘journalist.’”

As for the printed page itself, Brown says she sees the iPad app as the new newsstand, asking attendees, “When was the last time here anyone raced to the newsstand to buy a magazine?” However, Brown says that people are spending money for iPad app subscriptions, which will serve as a “very, very healthy thing for the economics of print publications.”

By Kristin Clarke

Employers’ attitudes toward the financial health of their workers has changed significantly in recent years, according to Jean Chatzky, bestselling author and financial consultant to NBC’s The Today Show.

“Through my work with Principal Financial Group, I’ve had exposure to a lot of plan sponsors, and what I’ve seen is that they are now feeling much more responsibility for the overall well-being of their employees,” Chatzky says. “It’s led them to explore issues like debt reduction for their employees, because they know that being heavily in debt is a huge stressor, and that anything they can do to alleviate that stress is beneficial.”

Among the actions associations are taking are lunch-and-learn programs, onsite retirement coaching, earlier vesting, articles on employee intranets, and financially related staff meeting reminders and news.

Chatzky urges organizations to focus on three areas to help employees build stronger financial futures. “First is education around the retirement program,” she says. “Employees need to understand that they need not only to get in but also to contribute sufficiently, they have to max out if they can, and they have to allocate their assets in a way that makes sense.”

Second is providing the same education about health benefits, “because that’s a huge area of worry for employees,” she adds.

Third is addressing the “debt crisis” of many workers. “We’ve got so many homeowners under water, and so many people struggling with what to do with credit card debt,” Chatzky says. “That is an issue that if employers are able to help their workforces get a grip on it, they’ll have happier and more productive employees.”

Catch Chatzky’s Game Changer session today from 1:30 to 2:45 p.m. in the Ferrara Theatre, where she’ll outline The Keys to Personal Financial Happiness and Success. Then, visit her blog at www.jeanchatzky.com for tips on reducing debt, saving, and investing.

Kristin Clarke is a business journalist and writer and researcher for ASAE. Email: kclarke@asaecenter.org