Category Archives: Associations

New Association for Content Management Professionals

Posted on by David

The formation of CMPros was just announced. It is a professional society for content management professionals. From the home page:

A group of thirty content management experts from around the world has announced the formation of CM Professionals, an international community of content management professionals whose purpose is to further best practices based on shared experiences of experts and peers.

A lot of organizing seems to be going on in the web professions, which is a stage of growth for any new field. If they follow the pattern in other industries, there will be a lot of new organizations over the next few years which will eventually consolidate into just a few dominant associations. It will be interesting to watch from an association management perspective.

Blowback

Posted on by David

The CEO at View from a Corner Office has some disturbing news from a meeting of her association’s international federation organization:

It’s hard to discuss the international dimension of our work as association executives without delving at least to some degree into the effect of the present administration’s foreign relations policy on how those outside the United States perceive us. In this particular federation the animus toward the United States is so pronounced that for the first time in the federation’s history, all U.S. delegates for office toppled in defeat. If it’s possible to be stunned but not surprised, that was our reaction. At the same time the federation issued a ballot asking member nations to support a dues overhaul that would increase the U.S. share by 8,000%. That is not a typo.

It has been a while since I’ve worked the international side of the business but I can’t say that that reaction surprises me. Unilateralism is completely antithetical to the mission and nature of associations. It’s going to take many years to rebuild trust around the world.

Event Blogging, But Not What You Expected

Posted on by David

A Minneapolis blogger got in on the ASAE event blogging, although in a way that I bet the conference organizers didn’t anticipate:

Ooooh, my freakin’ ears. What am I talking about? The American Society of Association Executives (ASAE, I linked their site because that name just sounds too made up), that’s what. They are having a ‘little’ conference outside my apartment. By little I mean they have about four city blocks barricaded and they are all eating, drinking, and networking their heads off. Oh, one other thing. Pretend that you could marry the music of 90’s adult contemporary with smooth jazz; ahh soothing right? Well then imagine a female-male lead singing duo on crack belting out ‘today’s hits and yesterday’s favorites’ (They just did a bone-chilling rendition of Outkast’s Hey Ya). Yeah, and according to the conference itinerary I’ve got a couple more hours to go. Where’s my damn earplugs? Ugh.

That is a pretty accurate description of the party that was thrown Saturday night to open up the meeting. And that easy listening band was truly horrendous.

I came across the post by searching Technorati on Tuesday morning. My plan was to demonstrate the site during a presentation I was doing that afternoon and talk about how associations should start using it to monitor how the blogging world is covering their issues and organizations. What a perfect example! If it’s any consolation, anonymous Minneapolis law student, the attendees in the session seemed to agree that the band was pretty bad.

I also talked about what kind of PR damage that entry could have done if it had been picked up by the local media. Hell, Technorati has a CNN advisory gig so it might go national. OK, that was a pretty low risk, but it could happen. The media seem to love blog-related stories these days.

In the session, I suggested that buying the blogger in question a free dinner or giving him some noise-canceling headphones might be a nice gesture to apologize for interupting his evening and could help turn the story into a postive if it did get picked up. That would have been money well spent to avert a more negative story and at the least would be the right thing to do. Of course, that requires keeping up with what is going on in the blogging world via tools such as Technorati.

In any case, thanks for sharing your neighborhood with us and for giving me a great example for the session I spoke in.

This Turn Down Service Brought to You by Acme!

Posted on by David

Photo of marketing tent card placed on the bed as part of the turn down service.

Can we all agree that this is a bit much? Stuff under the door at night or left with the newspaper in the morning is ok, but I’d like to be able to get in bed without having to remove the marketing material from the covers first.

BTW, I’ve got lots of notes from the conference so far that may take me a day or two to get converted into posts here. Hope to get to it soon….

Last little bit on AMS/CMS deployment timing

Posted on by David

In our session yesterday I had the opportunity to ask Loretta DeLuca of DelCor Technology Solutions what she thought about deploying an AMS and a CMS simultaneously. (Loretta is one of the more experienced AMS selection consultants out there.) She said she wouldn’t recommend it either but for slightly different reasons than I have been yammering on about here. Her main concern was that trying to develop your ‘front-office’ systems (the CMS) while still developing, deploying and configuring your ‘back-office’ system (the AMS) is inviting lots of backtracking and crises you need not have to deal with if you wait for the AMS deployment to be complete before ramping up on the CMS project. Waiting lets the AMS settle down so that it isn’t a moving integration target for the CMS. Makes sense to me.

OK, I think that dead horse is well and truly beaten. I’ll move on to something else soon. 🙂

On the ground

Posted on by David

Made it to Minneapolis with no problems and have settled in at the Double Tree. They give you a warm cookie when you check in. I recommend that all hotels begin doing this. Yummy.

Got our handouts for our pre-con session tomorrow copied at the local Kinkos, since I put the finishing touches on them during the flight. We’re supposed to turn them in weeks before the meeting but that didn’t happen for several very good reasons. Really. Bad speaker! I’ll probably throw a copy of them up on this site next week if my co-presenters are willing.

As I worked on the presentation I read a story about how Hershey Foods tried to implement CRM, ERP and supply chain managements systems simultaneously. This apparently failed in a rather spectacular way: they weren’t able to delivery candy to major customers in time for Halloween in 1999. Ouch. More reason to think twice before implementing a content management system and an association management system (CRM) at the same time.

The CAE Candidate Blog

Posted on by David

When it rains it pours association blogs. Here is a blog by Ben Martin where he is writing about his experience as he prepares for the CAE exam. Good luck Ben! Writing about that in public takes guts since you never know if you’ll pass or not. 🙂 Ben, I hope you’ll keep writing long after you get the CAE.

By the way, my study notes for the CAE are posted on this site. They are a couple years old but should still be useful.

Event Blogging

Posted on by David

Dan Bricklin’s essay on the dynamics of event blogging, based on his experience at the Democratic National Convention, provide some useful thoughts for the bloggers who may cover the ASAE meeting:

What we learn from the Convention blogging:

Event blogging is different than normal, daily blogging. In normal blogging, you watch the world go by and pick and choose things you want to comment upon. There is material online to point to and react to. There are ideas that well up and you take the time to write about, but few people may be waiting for them. There are many, many bloggers. Some read other blogs and choose the posts they think others should read. Through popular gateway blogs like some of the well known political blogs, and tools like Blogdex, Daypop, and more, things bubble to the top.

Events are another thing entirely. The time is very condensed and the amount of information is concentrated. If you are “covering” the event, you have to look at it all and provide perspective to a reader who doesn’t see all of the context that you do. The event marches on and won’t stop for you to take time for thinking and writing. Picking and choosing is harder — if you stop to blog, you might miss the keystone piece of what’s going on.

Good stuff. I know I usually have a hard time just keeping up with voice- and e-mail while at a meeting like this, let alone trying to write something coherent.

ASAE Dips Toe Into Blogging Water

Posted on by David

The American Society of Association Executives is launching an event blog for their annual meeting in Minneapolis next week. (Not much to see yet.) I’ve been asked to make a small contribution to it during the meeting which I’ll post a pointer to when it goes up. I’m excited that ASAE is experimenting with blogs. Given the sub-domain they have setup it looks like they may have several in the works.

I’ll post here a few times from the meeting as well. Jeff De Cagna sounds like he will be blogging the meeting too. Anyone else?

Update: Mickie Rops will also be blogging from Minneapolis. I created an ASAE Minneapolis blogs wiki page to track all these sites with. Feel free to add to it if you know of others who plan to blog from the meeting.