From the category archives:

Asides

Ah, Associations … We Are Ancient

by Kevin on October 30, 2009 · 3 comments

Preparing for trip and skimming through “A Traveller’s History of Paris” I stumbled across this passage: “Two booksellers, Fust and Schoffer, brought printed books to Paris in 1463. Fearful of competition from this new art, the powerful scribes and booksellers guilds had the books confiscated.”

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

That Thing You Do

October 29, 2009

The November issue of Associations Now includes a “Horizons” column I wrote wondering why completely different markets all just happen to need the same kinds of things, according to the associations that serve them. I don’t see the November issue online quite yet but through creative URL typing I was able to locate the article here. Thanks [...]

Read the full article >

More Forecasts

October 16, 2009

Judith Lindenau riffs on the little “predictions” from my last post with an eye toward what they may mean specifically for Realtor associations, to her usual straightforward and thought-provoking result.

Read the full article >

A Million Instant Pundits

October 8, 2009

The publisher of Cook’s Illustrated has an interesting op/ed in the NYT today on the lamentable death of Gourmet magazine, the success of his own subscription (membership) model, and the modern “click-or-die” marketplace: “The world needs fewer opinions, and more thoughtful expertise — the kind that comes from real experience, the hard-won blood-on-the-floor kind.”

1 comment Read the full article >

Customers First, Then Product

September 11, 2009

Compelling theory that “startups are more likely to fail from a lack of customers than from the lack of a product.” I think this applies also to associations since I believe firmly that associations have a market, not a product (products can be developed to meet market needs and jettisoned when they don’t — what [...]

Read the full article >

More on Membership

September 10, 2009

Scott Briscoe’s starting an interesting conversation on “the death of membership” over at Acronym. I’m having my say in the comments.

Read the full article >

Gone, Google, Gone

September 1, 2009

LOL. If you’re using Twitter, think your hashtags thru. I’m sure it wouldn’t have taken a whole lot of forethought to see how #gonegoogle would wind up being used. Edit: I just realized I typed “thru” instead of “through” without even thinking about it. Why does it bother me that that doesn’t really bother me?

Read the full article >

The Power of Search — And of Monopoly

August 26, 2009

Mortgage lenders are apparently freaking out that Google may be getting into the mortgage quote business. Too many industries have looked at Google as an advertising killer without thinking about what other possible sectors their powerful search engine may be able to disrupt. (Do you really think text ads alone will continue to pay their data center [...]

1 comment Read the full article >

Connect with Me, Connect

August 20, 2009

So the “Connect with Me” song and video at ASAE turned out to be actually catchy, clever, and cooler than I thought it would be when I first heard about it. Everyone in it should be very proud. It was a little too catchy, as I haven’t been able to get the damn tune out [...]

4 comments Read the full article >