August 20, 2008

Congrats, ASAE (and San Diego), and Thanks

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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

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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.

August 19, 2008

The Best Conversations Are the Surreal Conversations

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Also at the Food & Wine Classic … an older gentleman said he used to live in San Diego in the ’80s and he pointed toward an area that, he said, used to be known as the place where “hippies” and drug addicts hung out. “Lots of people with no teeth,” he said.

“Really?” I said. “I thought that was a meth thing.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” he said. “They called it crank then. It was new. They came up with it because they couldn’t afford cocaine.”

“Really? That’s interesting.”

“Yeah,” he said, almost wistfully. “I was there at the birth of meth.”

August 18, 2008

Overheard Tonight at the Food & Wine Classic

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A gentleman is attending who is a member and officer of his association, not a staff person. Someone said: “Wow, what’s it been like listening to all these association people complain about their members and Boards?”

August 18, 2008

Plan for Failure

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An important point raised during this morning’s workshop on “The Power of Partnerships” (yes, my second workshop on partnerships — can you sense a theme?) was about planning for failure. Jeff Tenenbaum, an attorney with the Venable law firm (and an excellent attorney he is — he is our organization’s outside counsel) talked about ensuring that the legal documents drawn up in any partnership include a well-thought-out exit procedure (be they some sort of cooperation agreement or the creation of a jointly-owned legal entity).

“Planning for failure” is something that those of us with an entrepreneurial bent have a hard time getting used to. It’s a gung-ho nature and optimism that fuels many outrageously successful things. But part of maturation as an association executive is recognizing that the world’s roadside is strewn with many great ideas and grand visions that fell down along the way. And it’s one thing to try something new and fail all by yourself; when other parties are involved, it can get messy.

As Jeff asked — what happens when the partnership ends? Who owns the intellectual property? How are assets split? Who can end it, why and how? It’s important to address these issues at the beginning, while being very careful and clear-eyed, before the stars in your eyes dim.

August 17, 2008

Around the World, Everybody’s Got an Agenda (Just Like In the USA)

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Good workshop today on “International Partnerships” from the CEO of the Society of Petroleum Engineers assisted by the manager of the association’s Dubai office. Primarily focused on case studies of SPE’s activities co-presenting conferences and events on various continents. I attended and took note because we may be looking at some international partnerships down the road. A few key points:

• Choose partners wisely. You need to know their real motivation, their real agenda — and as one audience member noted, you can’t just come out and ask them.
• Of course, in some parts of the world, you may not have a choice — in order to access the nation and the appropriate market, you’re going to have to use a particular partner (either because the government wants it that way or because the organization has a lock in some other way)
• Know your exit strategy and make sure you have a way to get out of the partnership should you need to. SPE CEO used example of one agreement they have that is only for three events, so to continue, agreement will need to be renegotiated.
• Make sure management responsibilities are clearly define and allocated — shared responsibilities difficult if impossible to make work.
• In agreement, spell out clear performance benchmarks and tie them to revenue sharing — for example, if three groups partner on an event, make sure they are each responsible for 1/3 programming to ensure 1/3 share of any surplus.

Interesting that more than half of SPE’s board is from outside the US but they are still sometimes perceived as a US organization.

Finally, speaker got a good laugh from the audience with the line, “We may be not-for-profit, but we’re also not-for-loss.”