Category Archives: Weblogs

Association Glogging

Posted on by David
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I am participating in two group blogs (glogging?) at the moment.

One is the Great Ideas Conference Blog, developed in conjunction with ASAE’s Great Ideas conference. It is being written by several folks who will be presenting at the conference in Orlando starting this Sunday.

The other blog is one that I am writing with several association consultant colleagues that we hope to eventually publish as a short book. We’ve Always Done It That Way: 101 Things That Associations Must Change. Our premise is that doing things the same way as you’ve always done it probably isn’t working out too well these days. We are helpfully providing a few changes (101) you might want to consider. Jamie speaks for me in his post about the group of folks we are working with on this.

E-mail Woes

Posted on by David
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This week I’ve had reports from clients and colleagues that messages they sent to me were not making it and that my web host (which had been handling my e-mail as well) had been placed on a blacklist for suspected spam activity. I know they work hard on dealing with those issues, but I’d had enough and my e-mail is worth an extra investment to keep up and running. So, I signed up with an e-mail hosting service where that is all they do: webmail.us.

I came across this company a few months back when I had first researched the issue. I also found a blog by their CEO, Pat Mathews, which I subscribed to. In the intervening time, Pat came across as level headed and very passionate about his company via his blog posts, so I decided to give them a shot. Good example of blog marketing at work.

So far, their IMAP service is BLAZING fast compared to what I had before. Their tech support was also very responsive when I sent in a couple suggestions on the registration process. I’m very hopeful this will be a good investment for me ($120/year for five 1GB mailboxes).

Update: I won’t bore you with details but I inadvertently blew away my MX records at my DNS host, which means the Internet doesn’t know where to send my mail. I have reset it so hopefully it will be back in order soon. If you sent something to me today and have not received a response, please resend in the morning (Friday 12/2) or e-mail me at davgam at mindspring dot com.

Thank You Phil Murray!

Posted on by David
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Kevin just thanked his first blog commenter since he started writing as part of Thanksgiving. Great idea!

So, without further ado, thank you Phil Murray for posting the first comment to my blog on August 2nd, 2002! The post Phil commented on was one I wrote questioning whether a KM system had to be deployed enterprise wide in order to be considered a success. Why not just do something locally within a group using free tools for their own benefit? I still think that makes as much sense now as it did to me over 3 years ago. And Phil agreed with me and expanded upon the idea substantively, which is a nice bonus for a first comment. 🙂

I have truly learned so much from writing this blog and connecting with others who read and write on the same topics. Thanks to all of you for participating in this public conversation.

Update: To continue being a bit meta, this turns out to be my 500th post on this blog. Only took 3 years! 🙂

On Marketing and New Conference Models

Posted on by David
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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!

Presentation Zen and eHub

Posted on by David
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Here are two new blogs I started reading recently that I would recommend adding to your subscription lists:

eHub

eHub is a constantly updated list of web applications, services, resources, blogs or sites with a focus on next generation web (web 2.0), social software, blogging, Ajax, Ruby on Rails, location mapping, open source, folksonomy, design and digital media sharing.

Presentation Zen

Garr Reynolds blog on issues related to professional presentation design.

eHub is great for keeping tabs on the latest web applications and services that are fully 2005 buzzword compliant. Presentation Zen is wonderful source of ideas on how to create presentations that won’t put people to sleep.

Paging Robert Scoble: Tell msnbot to Calm Down

Posted on by David
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I’m posting this note with Robert Scoble‘s name in it in order to get some attention from Microsoft about the behavior of their RSS bot, msnbot.

Over the past week, the bot has hit my site over 27k times for about 38mb of bandwidth. The bot is almost exclusively hitting RSS feeds. However, most of the feeds it is getting on my site are for individual entries, which allow people to track comments. Each feed is getting hit about 100x a week. I would think that is a big waste of effort for older entries that get few comments. Once a day should be plenty.

So, Robert, when you see this in one of your ego notifications, please pass the word to whoever manages msnbot to chill out a bit on the hits. I love to be indexed but not at such a heavy load which is wasting my bandwidth and MS’s. If the load goes much higher I might ban the bot for poor manners.

Associations Blogging Katrina

Posted on by David
3

There are a few association blogs (as in formally affiliated with an organization, as opposed to the rabble of association staffers/consultants/writers who blog, me included) who are writing substantially about their members’ experience with and reaction to the Katrina disaster. Here are the ones I have spotted so far:

IABC Cafe from the International Association of Business Communicators. From Warren Bickford, the Chairman of the Board:

I spent much of today watching events unfold in New Orleans and along the Gulf coast. What looked bad last night, looks bloody awful in the light of day. The destruction is unbelievable. Millions of lives affected. It’s almost too much to even process in any meaningful way. Thinking that I and other members of the Executive Committee came close to experiencing it first hand is frightening at best.

Thank goodness Charles was so insistent that we leave town. Thank goodness we did. That we made the right decision was brought home to me over and over as I watched events unfold today. We could be there with no potable water, no food, no electricity – and no way out of town short of being evacuated by the military or the National Guard. It was brought home to me again earlier this evening when I saw video of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway with entire sections missing. The causeway was our escape route on Sunday morning.

The Executive Committee were fortunate to get safely back to their homes. Yes, we have homes, unlike the hundreds of thousands of people that don’t have homes any more or won’t have for some time. All members in the area have been affected in some way by this tragedy. If you have information about members, please use the Cafe to pass on what you know. We are concerned and hope to hear they are safe.

BoardBuzz from the National School Boards Association. They have been covering the impact of the disaster on schools in the area and how neighboring states are rushing to enroll refugee students into their schools. The leaders of Texas offering their schools to refugee children was one of the very first acts of genuine leadership and compassion that I saw in this whole mess.

Manufacturers Blog by Pat Cleary of the National Association of Manufacturers. A post from today discusses how their members are offering assistance:

Well today, Katrina’s torrent was matched by a torrent of charity from manufacturers large and small across this great manufacturing nation, some $40 million at last count. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Anheuser-Busch and Crown Cork & Seal all sent truckloads of bottled water. Abbott Labs sent some $2 million in cash and $2 million in nutritional and medical products. Holloway Sportswear re-opened a closed facility to be used as an emergency shelter for the Red Cross. Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble donated cash and personal care products to the effort.

It is just so heartening to watch the tremendous outpouring of charity and products — the best in the world — from America’s manufacturers. These are our members and we are always proud of them, but at times like these, our hearts especially well with pride. This is still day one, folks. We expect the $40 million number to grow enormously.

That is all I have now. If you know of others, please post a link in the comments of this entry and I’ll update the list.

Update: American Association of Law Libraries has started the AALL LawLibAssist blog for sharing news about their members and to offer assistance to those in need.

Update 2: Louisiana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Katrina Relief Blog. The title says it all.

Update 3: Hurricane Katrina Information for Mississippi Hospitals from the Mississippi Hospital Association. Shawn Lea left a pointer to this blog in the comments.

Update 4: ARVO Hurricane Katrina Information Blog by the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. TJ Rainsford, who works at ARVO, added a pointer to this in the comments.