The W3C is forming a working group to look standards for Web APIs. This will be good in the long run for making AJAX interfaces much easier to develop across browsers and platforms.
The W3C Web API Working Group is chartered to develop standard APIs for client-side Web Application development. This work will include both documenting existing APIs such as XMLHttpRequest and developing new APIs in order to enable richer Web Applications.
Rich Westerfield posted recently about how you might use a pay what you feel model for meetings. He raises this point:
But we’re forgetting something: cash flow. We often need that early registration cash flow to fund the final mailings and pay for some of the onsite work. For many small and some mid-sized events, B/E doesn’t happen until the final couple of weeks when 50% or so of registrations are in.
I think this misses a point about some new models for meetings that are currently evolving: they don’t use traditional marketing. They can’t afford it. These new meeting models focus on word of mouth, attracting opinion setters as early registrants and using lots of social tech (blogs, wikis, etc.). I doubt that the BlogHer conference has done or ever will use a mass paper mailing to attract participants.
You can’t just blow-up one aspect of a meeting and expect to have the rest of it be business as usual. The entire enterprise has to be re-concieved.
Doc Searls has a good article on unconferences, which is a new way of holding meetings and letting the participants drive the content of the event.
I just did a presentation for the KCSAE yesterday and unconferencing was one of the topics I covered. I think there is a lot of potential in this model for associations and I’ll be writing more about it in the near future.
I’m not trying to pick on Rich with this post, he is a constant source of new ideas for meeting marketing. His post just triggered something for me that I wanted to write about. Thanks, Rich!
Boxwood Technology is pretty much on top of the heap for hosted job board services for associations. (Disclaimer: I was a client of theirs when I worked at ASHA and I serve with Boxwood Chairman John Bell on the ASAE Tech Council.) They have just added RSS feeds to their service, which is a fantastic extension. Now job seekers can subscribe to all new jobs or to the results of a specific search. After they subscribe, any newly posted jobs will appear in their newsreader of choice. Nice! They should mention this service on their web site.
For an example, see ASAE’s job center. There is an orange RSS button at the bottom of the screen.
A couple of improvements I think they could make include:
I had a call this morning with someone who runs a summer camp talking about how their web site can help their organization. It was a pro bono thing I did for a friend (I have a soft-spot for camps, being a former camp counselor myself). Here is my 15 minute method for developing a plan of action for your web site:
Simple but it lets you quickly identify actions you can take that will make a difference. Your planning can get more complex and comprehensive down the road if you feel the need for that but the important thing is to begin doing something, see how it works, and adjust going forward. It also lets you act even if your organization has little in the way of strategic direction at the moment.
I have been looking into Yahoo!’s mapping service API this week (Google offers one as well). What they have done is opened up their mapping services so that you can display your data on their maps. I have created a example on Yahoo! that displays my upcoming speaking gigs. Kind of silly but it took me all of 15 minutes to put this together which is quite amazing. It is all driven by this little xml file.
I think this kind of thing could be quite useful for association meetings where you could develop your own custom map of the meeting and lodging facilities related to your event. You could even create a special map for VIPs with all the locations of special dinners and other invitation-only events.
Jamie Notter has a great line on strategic planning in his blog today:
Talk about planning. Talk about strategy. Do NOT talk about strategic planning.
Beautiful summation. I’ve always had some discomfort with the declaration that strategic planning is dead, in that it was never clear what exactly you’re supposed to do instead. The answer that feels best to me so far is that you divorce the two, as Jamie so clearly put it.
Jeff De Cagna and I are partnering up on a presentation for ASAE’s Great Ideas conferences where we will introduce podcasting and discuss its possible use by associations. The fun part is that we will actually record and assemble a podcast during the session by recording interviews with some of the attendees.
The Distance Learning Coalition was kind enough to invite Jeff and I to present to their group on Thursday, which was a wonderful opportunity for us to make a dry run through our material and the process of recording with a live group. Here is the podcast if you would like to listen to it. Two of the attendees decided to hijack our podcast and record their own mini show within ours, which was a lot of fun.
Jeff and I pre-recorded some sections of the podcast via a Skype call. As you can tell, I need to get a much better microphone for these things.
Derek Powazek had a nice post a while ago on how to reward visitors who read an entire page:
When you’re designing pages – specifically content pages – what is the best possible thing that could happen? I mean after the user has bought a computer, gotten internet connectivity, figured out how to use a browser, and somehow found their way to your site … what is the single best thing that they could do?
Read. That’s right, read. And read all the way to the bottom of the page. In this business, a user that actually reads all the way to the bottom of a page is like gold. They’re your best, most engaged, happiest users. You know, because they haven’t clicked away. They did the best possible thing they could do, and now they’re at the bottom of the page. And how do you reward them?
With a copyright statement. Maybe, if they’re lucky, some bland footer navigation.
If you ask me, that’s just rude.
Read the rest of the post for the ideas on to provide value at the bottom of your pages.
Oracle just bought a company that provides a key piece of technology for the MySQL database. Here is Jeremy Zawodny’s summary of the situation.
MySQL is now faced with the prospect of licensing technology they cannot ship without from their biggest rival. Interestingly, there’s always been once piece of the InnoDB puzzle that’s not available under the GPL: the InnoDB Hot Backup Tool. Without it, database administrators cannot backup their InnoDB tables without shutting down MySQL or at least locking out all transactions.
Oracle just bought themselves a whole lot of leverage with MySQL AB and a talented team of database engineers to boot.
Keep an eye on this if you use MySQL within your organization.
Kevin Holland shares his best tips in 5 Things I’ve Learned About Email Marketing for Associations:
This week, the 100th issue of our organization’s free e-newsletter will hit the streets. It’s very different from when it started because we didn’t know anything 100 issues ago! I probably still don’t, but having now generated hundreds of new members through email newsletters and sold tens of thousands of books, I think I’ve picked up a few things. (And yes, to the blog-faithful out there, I still am a huge proponent of email marketing, even over blogs.)
Great tips in that post, check it out! Pretty consistent with the article I posted last week.
C. David Gammel, CAE 