Rants & Raves

September 17, 2008

Overheard at a Bar

Posted by Kevin | (3) Comments | Print This Article

A woman speaking to a friend of mine about employees.

She said, “Oh, this early-twenties guy that had been working for me a couple of weeks, I asked him to make some copies. He sort of sniffed at me and said, ‘I don’t do Xeroxing.’

“Well, the first thing I thought was, ‘Who uses the term Xeroxing anymore?’

“But the first thing I said was, ‘We will no longer be requiring your services.’”

September 12, 2008

A Few Random Posts I’ve Been Meaning to Expand Upon, But, Really, Who Has Time?

Posted by Kevin | (0) Comments | Print This Article

Most of my little posts go in the “asides” here on the blog, and most of them are fairly inconsequential (okay, okay, I know that all my posts are inconsequential, but roll with me here).

Then there are other thoughts that I jot down on occasion in draft form because they’re small but I think they merit some fleshing out. Of course, when I’m totally honest with myself, I have to concede that most of them probably won’t get fleshed out because I just don’t have that much time to spend on this blog.

So, here are a few of them — I may revisit them in longer form at some point, but here they are anyway:

Time shifting. The DVR hasn’t just changed television, it’s changed everything. (Well, really it’s just one aspect of a larger change.) People expect their consumption of media to revolve around their own schedule. But I wonder, should this mean more than just offering recordings of live events? What does “live” mean anymore? (And speaking of DVRs, I need to remember to set mine because It’s Always Sunny is coming back next Thursday.)

There are no legacies. Call it a paradox: the nature of associations are such that they tend to attract leaders who are very interested in grand gestures, big footprints, and lasting legacies; and it is also the nature of associations and their rapidly-shifting structures that such things are often quickly forgotten.

It’s okay to have an agenda. Why do so many people pretend that they don’t have one? Partnerships, collaborations, and organizations of all stripes at all levels would work much better if everyone was just honest about what they want, in my opinion.

Meet the We Bees. Around the country, former proponents of term limits are seeking to overturn (or at least lengthen) them, in part because, according to the NYT on Wednesday, they believe they “leave too much power in the hands of civil servants.” One elected official said, “We call those folks the We Bees, as in, ‘We be here when he’s gone.’” Does that make staff the We Bees of the association world, and what are the implications of that kind of sentiment?

True “ownership.” Staff don’t and can’t “own” an association, but the associations that are the most innovative and fastest-growing are those whose staff feel like they have a personal stake in its success. They “take ownership,” so to speak. But the successful association executive learns to feel like an owner without losing sight of who the real owners are. Sometimes that means letting go of strategies or tactics that you feel very strongly about, and sometimes it means doing something that you might not personally think is the best way to go. All without letting it impact your ability to keep creating, innovating, and “owning.” It’s a hard lesson to learn but probably the most important one in association management.

There are some more, but I’ll save them for another rainy day. (Oh, earlier I’d promised some news from the Event Technology Expo this week — unfortunately, something came up and I wasn’t able to make it.)

September 5, 2008

The Hard News About Associations

Posted by Kevin | (2) Comments | Print This Article

I’ve always been frustrated by the dearth of objective news reporting about the association sector. There’s a lot of content available for association executives in the form of case studies and commentary — national and regional magazines, websites, listserves, even blogs — but actual news reporting about association-specific activities is much more limited.

I subscribe to and read Association Trends, and find it occasionally interesting (sometimes I get a kick out of Jill Cornish’s editorials), but it is thin and tends to lean toward the press release. I read it online while the print version (which seems to arrive rather randomly) is sometimes passed around and sometimes simply thrown away — so I wish they would offer an online-only subscription option (it doesn’t even have to cost less). (UPDATE: Trends tells me they actually run four online issues and one print issue each month, and mail the print issue. I did not realize that this is how they ran their publication schedule and probably explains why I thought the print delivery seemed random.)

The revamped CEO Update has fleshed out its coverage and partially filled the vacuum. While it contains the expected personality profiles, it also fills out its news section with articles on association activities that are a little more in-depth than the usual fare. But they too seem very wedded to their business model of “print newsletter of job listings” and I believe they would find it to their advantage to offer a monthly online subscription option.

And there are all sorts of publications and websites that take a news approach to covering the meetings industry — but it’s not the same thing.

Most of us associations are very familiar with trade press, because we either work closely with trade press in our own membership sectors, or, in some cases, we are the trade press in our own membership sectors. But associations themselves lack significant trade coverage.

I wonder why. Is it because we’re too close-knit, too closely-guarded, too interested in our members’ industries to be much interested in our own? Is it too hard to build a business case for an association trade newspaper? Or are association executives just not that interested?

August 22, 2008

ASAE Post-Mortem: Top Ten, Split in Half

Posted by Kevin | (5) Comments | Print This Article

God, I am still on California time and can’t get to sleep so might as well go ahead and write this post. Here are two top fives, five good and five not-so-good:

5 Little Things About the ASAE Conference I Liked (And May Steal):

• Loved the Toronto Imaginarium — only ducked in once, but it was a very fun concept.
• The “Stop!” signs inside the booths of conference sponsors.
• The little map things with the neck straps given out at the opening and closing parties.
• The many ways in which next year’s conference was promoted so heavily (see Imaginarium above) — I realize a lot of this was to do with the efforts of the Toronto CVB and associated properties, which isn’t really something applicable to other associations, but I believe each year’s event functions as a commercial for the next, and picked up a lot of ideas for expanding on this.
• The yellow padfolio things with the plastic sleeve organizers were kind of useful.

Now, the 5 Little Things About the ASAE Conference I Could Really Do Without in Future Years:

• Political agendas masquerading as “education.”
• People who believe that just because something is important or valuable to them, it must be objectively important or valuable.
• Consultants leading workshops who casually mention what they have to sell every third or fourth slide in their presentation.
• People who say things like, “Associations must [DO THIS THING I LIKE OR SELL] or they won’t survive.” (Actually, the only thing any association has to do to “survive” is make more money than it spends. Everything else will vary from market to market, and culture to culture.)
• Three days of exhibit hours — love the expo, love all the exhibitors, and I know how hard it is to balance exhibitor and attendee needs (and the importance of doing so) … but as an attendee, I have to say, two days is enough (or cut back the time per day to two hours rather than three, or break up the time more throughout the day).

August 20, 2008

Congrats, ASAE (and San Diego), and Thanks

Posted by Kevin | (1) Comments | Print This Article

Had an incredibly busy last day of the conference, and took a lot of notes to flesh out in blog posts, and perhaps will get a chance to do so. But just finally got back to my room and have an early am flight tomorrow so won’t get to post everything I wanted before leaving.

Except for two notes:

1) I’d looked forward to Rene Mauborgne’s keynote the whole conference (finally, a general session about something actually applicable) and she did an admirable job for the time allotted — unfortunately, the bulk of the scheduled 75-minute general session was taken up by association trivia that lasted nearly an hour, and she had to skip over most of her presentation. It was unfair to her and, most importantly, to the attendees such as myself who wanted to hear what she had to say. I was extremely disappointed.

2) The 2009 conference ended with a pretty stellar block party in the Gaslamp and as it ends I have to say, overall, kudos to the ASAE staff for putting on another fine and worthwhile learning event (and to the folks from San Diego for putting on some really amazing social events that were the most enjoyable of all the ASAE conferences I’ve attended). Everyone will have something to quibble about (see my point one above, and there will likely be a few more in post-mortems to come) but this is a very difficult event to pull off, and ASAE did it. I’m leaving energized and ready to kick off my busy fall season with some new ideas and renewed commitment. Thanks, ASAE, and congrats to each and every staff person (I must say, the ASAE staff are all polite, professional, and calm, or at least that’s the way they came off during the conference, which is not an easy thing to do).

August 19, 2008

Trends from the ASAE Expo Floor

Posted by Kevin | (1) Comments | Print This Article

Just a few of the things/trends I noticed on the expo floor the last couple of days:

• So many Wiis! Like, too many. I felt kind of bad for the exhibitors who had them — not because people weren’t enjoying them, but because they didn’t stand out. Sort of like iPod giveaways a few years ago. In fact I thought I saw one exhibitor having a drawing for an iPod and thought, “How quaint.” Then I realized it wasn’t an iPod, it was an iPhone 3G.
• Downsizing! I noticed a few folks with small booths who used to have islands. (Miriam Miller mentioned on Acronym how much she missed the Philadelphia cheesesteaks, which I found amusing because I had thought the exact same thing.)
• This is probably not a new trend but maybe something I just noticed for the first time — the number of different companies who offer “online event registration.” This is not terribly difficult to do yourself, so I was surprised to hear myself continuously saying, “Look, there’s another one!”
• Most memorable booths, based on the simple criteria of “I can think of them offhand right now”: the Hyatt exhibit, with its big digital tower things; Omaha, whose “Omaha Rocks!” was a corporate kind of “edgy” but still edgy nonetheless, because, hey, it’s Omaha; and Albuquerque, with its cinnamon-and-anise cookies that, the cook insisted, are called something else, but I don’t remember what it was.