Category Archives: Associations

Third Party Comments

Posted on by David
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I’ve talked to many people at organizations where they are interested in blogging but are concerned about liability from comments posted by third parties. Here is a bit of good news on that front: Court says blogs can’t be sued for postings – USATODAY.com

Bloggers and website owners cannot be sued for posting libelous or defamatory comments written by third parties, the California Supreme Court has ruled. The court said only the original authors of comments published online can be sued.Legal analysts say the 34-page decision, issued Monday, is significant because it brings California in line with other court rulings across the nation that have upheld the 1996 federal Communications Decency Act, which protects website owners from legal liability in libel or defamation lawsuits.

“Bloggers and website owners can all breathe a very big sigh of relief,” says Gregory Herbert, an Orlando lawyer who specializes in First Amendment issues. “This decision adds more uniformity to the law and reduces the risk for liability for even individuals who are posting things onto website message boards and chat rooms.”

Associations are often concerned about anti-trust issues as well. I’m not a lawyer and do not know if this ruling would cover that kind of activity as well but it is at least a step in the right direction.

Spotted over on Gadgetopia.

Hello! My Name is Big Association!

Posted on by David
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Listen to Ben’s gut: Who are you in cyberspace?

Given my propensity for transparency in social media, and what I perceive to be a backlash against marketing in the social networking arena, I think I would advise that individuals who want to involve their organizations in social networking view their participation as something they do as an individual on behalf of their organization.

When representing your association at a conference, you dont introduce yourself as your association. Why would you do this in a social networking setting?

In other words, if you want to represent your association in MySpace or Second Life, sign up as yourself with your own name, age, sex, marital status and weave information on your association throughout your profile. Be an agent of the association, not the association itself.

I have absolutely nothing to base this on except gut instinct.

My gut agrees with Ben’s. Social networking online is about individuals interacting. Therefore, you or your advocates must interact with others as individuals by being genuine and reasonably articulate about why your organization matters and why others should care.

You should only talk about the organization a little bit as well (this applies more so to avatar-based simulations). You don’t want to be the life insurance sales person at a cocktail party who refuses  to talk about anything other than securing your family’s future.

Coding Like 1995

Posted on by David
1

From Gary LaBranche at Association Forum: 100 Million Served

There were less than 20,000 Web sites in the world in 1995, all with limited usability [Gary probably means functionality here. -dg]. In the spring of that year, I served on a team charged with developing a Web site for an association, and recall the debate about including a membership application. Half of the team argued that it was a waste of time and no one would ever apply for membership online. The other half argued, “What the heck, it can’t hurt.”

The joke was on us. Just five years later, online applications were the leading source of new members.

Everything looks pretty obvious in retrospect, doesn’t it? What bothers me today is not that people don’t recognize the potential of the Web (they do to a large extent) but that poor knowledge of usability and design impedes their ability to really take advantage of it. Given that it is feasible for almost any group to enable online payment for transactions, the competitive differentiator online now often comes down to how easy it is to complete the transaction (assuming roughly equal value of product, of course).

Resource for ACCE Dialogue Participants

Posted on by David
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I gave an online presentation today to over 50 ACCE members on how web site usability impacts membership recruitment and retention. There were many great questions from the paricipants which added a lot to the program. Thanks to you all!

One person asked for the source of a stat I cited on generational differences in using e-mail, IM and the Web. It was from a survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in late 2005. Here is the report: Generations Online.

When a Lawyer Designs Your Web Page

Posted on by David
3

ASAE just posted the sign-up form for using their networking application for the Annual meeting in Boston this summer. This is a pretty cool little application from IntroNetworks that maps the social network of attendees, attempting to facilitate more contacts.

However. There is a rather unfriendly disclaimer posted above the join button, which includes this paragraph (emphasis added):

Attendee acknowledges through use of the System that ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership are not in the business of creating or managing online communities and it is the sole responsibility of the attendee to adhere to recommended terms of use provided by ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership.

Really? ASAE isn’t in the online community business? I don’t agree with that statement, so I guess I shouldn’t enter the network.

This is what happens when a lawyer, who is paid to play defense, is given too much sway over what goes onto your site. What a horrible message for any association to put in front their most committed and active members.

I would delete the entire statement and replace it with this: We are in the business of facilitating your member community. We welcome you to our network and encourage you to use it to maximize the value of your Annual meeting experience!

Update: Peter Hutchins from ASAE posted in the comments that they are working on updating the page and have removed the paragraph I mentioned as a first step. Thanks for listening and acting, Peter!

Member ROI for Sharing Via the Association

Posted on by David
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John Robb posted last week about how he thought that a lot of these Web 2.0 companies are taking advantage of their most active users by not providing the ability to invest beyond their participation in the social services. My guess is that John feels they are not compensated with enough value from the services themselves compared to the value they are contributing to these companies.

This made me think that associations are uniquely positioned to address this issue. They don’t have shareholders, so value created for the organization can be channeled into creating more value for the members. This is something we should explore and talk about with our members. Sharing via your association can return more value to you and your field than it will via commercial services.

Attention Economy for Associations Podcast

Posted on by David
3

As promised, here is the podcast that Ben and I recorded this morning. It runs just shy of 17 minutes.

http://www.audioblog.com/playweb?audioid=Peed57df179c60c99ccedd3f0f3cd0a6bYF97SlREYmNx&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21

MP3 File

One note: In the recording we mention that the Attention Trust sells attention data. I believe this is incorrect in that they offer a service for storing your own attention data online but do not sell that data. What benefit this offers to the individual is unclear to me. Maybe Ed Batista can chime in here on the comments on what benefit you would receive from loading your data into one of their providers.

Investing in the Attention Economy

Posted on by David
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Ben Martin and I will be facilitating a session at the upcoming ASAE & the Center Membership and Marketing Conference. We had a short article in an ASAE newsletter recently on this very topic as a lead-in to the session. You can read the full text of it below. Ben and I will also be recording a short podcast on this topic early next week. Check back here on Tuesday to listen in.

Hope to see you at the session!

Investing in the Attention Economy
By C. David Gammel, CAE, and Ben Martin, CAE

The amount of available information is growing exponentially, but human attention seems to be a limited resource. We each only have a finite number of hours in the day with which to live our personal and professional lives. The same is true for our members.

In fact, associations compete with each other and thousands of other organizations for the attention of their members. People are distracted by millions of inconsequential information sources and must filter them out in order to recognize the things that are most important to them.

To cope, many of our members work in a state of continuous partial attention. Often they divide their attention among several things at once, such as scanning e-mail or news headlines while talking on a conference call. Your latest carefully crafted newsletter might only receive a cursory glance before hitting the electronic version of the circular file. The implication: Your members must be able to quickly scan and discern the value of your communications if you want them to invest a higher level of attention.

This has significant implications for membership recruitment and retention. Members, for instance, base their decision to renew their memberships on the basis of their feelings of connection and engagement. That’s why it’s crucial that you get an appropriate amount of your members’ attention. Generally speaking, a prospect’s attention must be 100 percent captured for at least a few moments in order to complete any financial transaction.

The study of attention is called attention economics–a combination of economic analysis and data about the things to which people give their attention. Steve Gillmor, a popular writer and podcaster on Web technology, turned this research into a trend by gathering data on what people are paying attention to on the Internet and leveraging that data to provide better service and content.

Attention economics raises many questions for associations. How much of your members’ attention do you receive? How much do you want? What will you need to give to your members in exchange for their attention? Does an increase in attention per member mean that your revenue per member will increase as well?

To help answer these questions and further explore this topic, be sure to come to “The Unsession: How to Invest in the Attention Economyâ€? at ASAE & the Center for Association Leadership’s 2006 Marketing & Membership Conference. This “unsessionâ€? will be highly interactive and driven by the participants. We’re limiting attendance to the first 40 participants, so be sure to arrive early!

Update: Ed Batista, Executive Director of the Attention Trust, posted some more details about Steve Gillmor’s role in developing the idea of the attention economy. Thanks, Ed! (Ed’s personal blog was just added to Tom Peters’ blogroll. Nice!)

Why Virtual Community Failed

Posted on by David
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I was thinking today about how so much of the Web 2.0 hype centers around baking customer communities right into the product. Given that, why did all the virtual community services and consulting firms implode as the bubble burst on the dot com boom? Those companies were some of the first to go.

My guess is that most of those services were positioned as add-ons to existing endeavors. Sell widgets? You need a widget discussion board on your web site! Peripheral stuff was the first to be cut as budgets tightened and these slapped on communities were easy targets for cutting.

What seems different now is that it is about building customer/member participation right in from the start and making the communities that form an integral part of the whole system. With that approach, I think online community should be a more enduring feature even if the web takes another hit.

(Be sure to check out Ben Martin’s comments about forming vs. finding communities. I think he is right on the mark.)

It's 10 a.m., Do You Know Where Your Data Is?

Posted on by David
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Looks like an association just got hit by losing a hard drive containing sensitive member data:

A restored AICPA computer hard drive containing some member information (names, addresses, and Social Security numbers) was being transported to the Institute and cannot presently be located. The hard drive was damaged and had been sent out for repair by an employee in direct violation of the Institute’s internal control policies and procedures.

Despite the exhaustive investigations both within the Institute and FedEx Express, the hard drive has not yet been located. There is no evidence that the drive or its contents have been inappropriately accessed. Based on our investigation to date, we believe this is a case of a misplaced package. Nevertheless, we are pursuing a number of actions to protect our members.

Letters have been sent to some former and current AICPA members informing them of this incident and offering free credit monitoring services.

As noted above in the quote, the problem wasn’t a lack of policies. It was a lack of understanding of them by staff. All association leaders need to discuss with their staff the trust their members give to them to protect their information. Once your members feel that you have violated that trust, you may never get it back.

This also raises a question about storing SSNs. Do you really need them? If not, or you can develop a less sensitive alternative, purge them. It’s not worth the risk.