Archive for the 'Associations' Category
December 18, 2007
Why you should hire Mickie Rops
Mickie is an excellent consultant because she says thing like this when asked if she is an advocate for certification programs:
If certification is really right for the field, then I’m an advocate. If it’s not, then I’m not.
Sounds obvious but she makes the point in her post that a lot of consultants are happy to help you build a certification program whether your field needs it or not! You need advisors who will question your basic assumptions before you make significant investments instead of cheering you on without analysis.
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December 14, 2007
Rapid and Participatory Publishing
Here are the slides from another presentation I gave at ASAE’s Great Ideas conference: Rapid and Participatory Publishing. In this presentation I discuss two cases of traditional book publishers who have leveraged the Web to enhance and extend their publishing efforts. These models are a great fit for most associations that have existing publishing operations. The short-form ebook model could also be a good option for an organization looking to get into book publishing.
I have an article discussing this material forthcoming in ASAE’s Journal of Association Leadership. The new issue with my article should be out this month.
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December 10, 2007
What is Innovation?
I gave a presentation at ASAE’s Great Ideas conference this past Saturday on innovation, technology and risk for associations. This post is the first of several I’m going to write this week on elements of the presentation. A good question to start with is: what is innovation?
Innovation often gets mythologized in the business press to the point that mere mortals feel that they cannot hope to do something innovative in their work. However, to innovate merely means to do something as you haven’t done it before. Not much more to it than that.
Peter Drucker, in his seminal book, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, defines two kinds of innovation: supply-side innovation and demand-side innovation.
Supply-side innovation is when you improve the use of your resources in support of existing value delivered to your customers. This is often in the form of greater efficiency but could also mean achieving the same end via means that result in improved employee morale, for example.
Demand-side innovation refers to changes that create greater value for your customers. This could be improving an existing product or service or creating entirely new offerings. The impact of the innovation is on the value received/perceived by the ultimate customer.
Looking at it in those terms, it is easy to realize that you probably innovate something every week if not every day. Innovation is merely the creation of new value.
Update: Here are the slides from the presentation:
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November 29, 2007
Lighting up a Board Meeting
I’ve been exploring photography a bit as a hobby recently and have been reading up on technique. Via a great blog on lighting, Strobist, I found this video which might be valuable to a lot of my association executive and event planner readers.
David Tejada walks us through how he lit a conference room to do head shots and some candids of a board meeting. I found it pretty interesting and it shows how a good photographer approaches doing a potentially deadly boring subject. You can see more of David’s videos on YouTube.
Good lighting is not an accident.
This is also a great example of using social media to spread your ideas and value, drawing people to you.
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November 9, 2007
Unleashing Web Strategy in Cambridge Maryland
I am presenting this afternoon at the Maryland Non Profits Annual Meeting in Cambridge, Maryland. The session, Unleashing the Strategic Potential of the Web, is about aligning your web strategy with that of the overall organization.
I will introduce several concepts and tools that are useful for defining and creating strategic alignment. We will then walk through the process right in the room. Everyone should leave with a good start on defining how their site should contribute to their overall mission and goals.
I am making an audio recording of the session. Let me know if you are interested and I’ll give you first crack at the audio product when it is ready.
Update: See the store for this now.
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October 19, 2007
When Data Crunches You
My most recent post on the We Have Always Done It That Way blog appears to have made a direct hit on the pitfalls of being too data-oriented: When Data Crunches You. Several comments so far and counting.
My co-authors and I are working on a new edition of the book, which was originally developed via collaboration on the blog. The current edition is available from both Lulu and Amazon if you haven’t read it yet.
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August 30, 2007
Social Network Fundraising ROI Calculator
Here is a nifty tool: Is It Worth It? An ROI Calculator for Social Network Campaigns:
You can use this tool to calculate an estimate of cost and return on investment for the recruitment and fundraising efforts of your staff in social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace. It works sort of like an online mortgage calculator. Just enter the starting assumptions in the yellow boxes below and the tool calculates results automatically.
This web-based spreadsheet (you edit the variable values right on the page and then click the ‘Update’ button to recalculate) might help you to understand the cost of investing time and effort into social networking compared to what you might realize from it. This tool is designed specifically for fundraising but you could probably use it for membership recruitment as well.
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August 16, 2007
Deep Thoughts from Peter on Associations and Participation
I was at ASAE’s Annual meeting earlier this week in Chicago and did not blog a single thing about it. Lots of others did, though. (An aside: seems like a blog tipping point was reached at this meeting. Very active and diverse blogging going on all over the place.)
Peter Turner has posted an interesting idea based on the Decision to Join report and Jeff De Cagna’s Ungovernance session:
The longer your association waits to implement governance and product development changes that are more “open and inclusive” to the rank and file member, the more likely you can expect to generate lower retention rates or product sales.
Closed ended models of governance and product development in an era of open innovation and product co-creation is THE CANCER in association management today.
Rings true to me. I think that all the excitement about social media in the association space is a direct response to the subconscious feeling that the time tested models aren’t going to work for much longer.
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June 20, 2007
Microsoft’s Hammer
Is it just me or has Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) mania taken over the IT world?
I have heard lots of buzz about this package, especially in the association industry, but I’ve yet to see the overwhelming value in MOSS’s interfaces and services over previous versions of SharePoint. MOSS is nice for collaboratively managing documents and searching but beyond that basic project work I think its interface gets in the way. It is a horrible community platform compared to many of the open source and low-cost solutions already available.
Not to mention the organizations that are diving in head first and planning on using MOSS (with MS CMS rolled in) as the total solution for their intranet and public web sites. There is a good reason that different classes of solutions have evolved for public and intranet sites: they have vastly differing requirements for most organizations.
My advice is to bide your time and carefully consider which nails you ultimately decide to whack with the MOSS hammer.
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June 5, 2007
Association Management Meets Content Management
I’m facilitating a panel today at the Gilbane DC conference today that discuss the intersection of association and web content management.
Here is the handout for the session that I am posting for attendees to find as well as readers of the blog. It provides a brief overview of the cases we will discuss today.
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