Archive for August, 2008
August 26, 2008
Understand the Statistics You Use
Posted by Kevin | (7) Comments | Print This Article
David — I hope you (and the associations you mention) realize that email open rates are meaningless.
August 26, 2008
The Hard Truth About Tradeshows
Posted by Kevin | (0) Comments | Print This Article
If your association runs a tradeshow, then you must read Tim Bourquin’s post (and all the comments) here. Would sure love to see some folks on the convention center side respond to his excellent points.
August 26, 2008
I Can’t Stop Changing My Template
Posted by Kevin | (0) Comments | Print This Article
I’ve grown tired of trying to create and maintain my own Wordpress theme. We’ll let this one ride for a while. (They say red is not a good web color, but I like it, and what the hey, everybody reads feeds anyway.)
August 26, 2008
The Digital Generation?
Posted by Kevin | (0) Comments | Print This Article
Interesting: “Perhaps the report’s most surprising finding — at least to parents who can barely peel their college-age children away from their Facebook or MySpace pages — was that only one-third of students said they were comfortable reading textbooks on a computer screen. Three-fourths said they would prefer a print textbook to an electronic one if the costs were equal.”
August 22, 2008
More of the Same
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The “secret session” at ASAE: a bold social media experiment about a new way of doing business and getting buzz, or just plain old-fashioned hyperbolic marketing using slightly different tools? As usual, Cindy Butts nails it.
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).