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FEBRUARY 26, 2013

Lots of chatter about strategy and strategic planning on the ASAE Collaborate groups recently, with lots of people throwing around lots of VERY IMPORTANT sounding terms. Me, I like simplicity. To quote the Eaglet from Alice in Wonderland : "I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and, what's more, I don't believe you do either!" What do we mean when we talk about strategy?

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FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Another roundup-style post on cool technology, this time of apps to help you be more creative (courtesy of Innovation Excellence , which you really should check out). The only one I've used personally is E vernote , and I live and die by it, so if the others are of that same quality, you really can't miss.

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FEBRUARY 22, 2013

I was honored to be selected to judge ASAE's Gold Circle awards this year in the website category. After having reviewed all 21 entries twice, I'm entering my actual scores today. And I've learned (or remembered) a few things from the process: Associations are making progress. Every single site has some sort of social technologies connection, and every association was at least on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

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FEBRUARY 21, 2013

Yet another outstanding find on Slideshare, this one on little "i" innovation, from the mind of Guthrie Dolan of Odopod. Little “i” Innovation: Why Small Ideas Matter as much as Big Ones from Guthrie Dolin My favorites? Place little bets and double down on what's working Justin Timberlake as prototypical small "i" innovator (really) Embrace changing (small but critical difference from the usual exhortation to "embrace change") Ask yourself some simple questions EVERY day.

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FEBRUARY 13, 2013

Content marketing: how often? As usual, ask your audience. Top 10 innovations of all time. Agree? Disagree? Subtext, have we become too dependent on technology? The 2013 Blackbaud Charitable Giving Report is out and John Haydon breaks down the key insights. Associations Now recaps a Pew study that indicates that Facebook may be beginning its inevitable decline.

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FEBRUARY 12, 2013

Have you checked out the Association 101 webinars yet? We've now held two: one on volunteer management (with Peggy Hoffman of Mariner Management ) and one on branding (with Erin Fuller of the Alliance for Women in Media. Just as a refresher, the monthly FREE webinars provide 10 tips in 20 minutes on a variety of topics in association management. They always take place on the second Friday of the month at 1:30 pm ET, and are brought to you be Dave Will ( Peach New Media ), Scott Oser ( Scott Oser

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FEBRUARY 11, 2013

These days, if you're looking for technology to support collaborative work, you have a lot of options. Actually, probably too many. Dropbox. Trello. Yammer. Sharepoint. Central Desktop. Google Apps. Which one should you use? Small Business Computing to the rescue! They've identified the top tools for people-centric collaboration, task-centric collaboration, and file-centric collaboration.

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FEBRUARY 8, 2013

I've always been a big proponent of corporate social responsibility, organizing the teams for the Greater DC Cares big annual days of service or the Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanup or the annual Capital Area Food Bank food drive, and I recently had a realization. Just because I'm a company of one doesn't let me off the hook. So I've committed to a regular monthly volunteer gig that is NOT ASAE committee work.

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FEBRUARY 7, 2013

OUTSTANDING presentation based on REI's experiences on why SEO matters, how you should be tying it to your content strategy, and, along the way, debunking some SEO myths. How to Build SEO into Content Strategy from Jonathon Colman Oh - and here's a direct link to the SEOMOZ Beginner's Guide to SEO that pops up late in the deck.

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FEBRUARY 6, 2013

Jamie Notter asks: will you be ready when the revolution comes ? Not if you've lost touch with those on the outside. GWU and ORI take a fascinating look at social media and the 2012 presidential election. I'm loving the December issue of NTEN: Change. The issue's theme is collaboration , which they examine from all kinds of angles. Be worried: 74% of smartphone users use them while driving.

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FEBRUARY 5, 2013

Volunteerism is changing. I know I'm not the first person to think - or write - about this. Hell, Peggy Hoffman and Cynthia D'Amour have built their businesses on working with new volunteer models. But recent events have conspired to bring it top of mind for me. The thing about standing committees is that they're standing. Think about that for a moment.

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FEBRUARY 4, 2013

A couple of Babson students got really tired of the rat's nest of wires involved in DJing and invented Eartop Flow to unplug heir headsets and untether themselves. Which leads me to wonder: what other applications of this type of technology might there be for associations who often conduct meetings with complex A/V set ups?

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JANUARY 31, 2013

Hubspot recently posted a hilarious and very helpful SlideShare on what NOT to do with your marketing. How To Suck at Marketing from HubSpot All-in-one Marketing Software My favorites? Cold calls and unsolicited emails are, of course, THE BOMB. The "Pro Tips." "Greetings Earthling" Yay, jargon! What would you add to their list?

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JANUARY 30, 2013

Big list this week. Hey, lots of people have been writing interesting stuff! Marketing Profs picked up Maddie Grant and Jamie Notter's survey on new leadership skills for the social media age (and wrote a really nice article about it). Speaking of Jamie, he just released a new white paper, in which he applies the Humanize principles to the real-world problem of performance reviews (spoiler alert: it's the first in a series that's going to do this).

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JANUARY 29, 2013

Invest five minutes in this outstanding IGNITE presentation from Jason Lauritsen on how hacking leads to innovation, and why, as a result, we shouldn't fear the concept. I particularly love his "is it hackable?" matrix, which comes down to the simple question: "Is it awesome?" If the answer is yes, you're done. If the answer is no, you have work to do.

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JANUARY 28, 2013

"Big data" is not just about the software that manages it and runs queries against it, it's also about your methodology for analyzing that data. Enter Ayasdi , a data analysis firm built on " topological data analysis ," which physically maps complex data, allowing various types of patterns to emerge. The goal is to quickly reach insights from the data without the intermediary step of complex queries.

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JANUARY 25, 2013

Quiet week here in Spark-land (guessing everyone is still recovering from Inaugural Ball hangovers and/or hunkering down because of the cold weather and threat of snow), so I had some downtime. My Top 5 Favorite Uses of Unexpected Space: Get organized! (This really is my favorite.) I've organized my paper and electronic files and updated my professional development tracking information (gotta keep track of those credits for CAE renewals).

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JANUARY 24, 2013

There was a lot of talk about measuring and scoring member engagement at December's ASAE Technology Conference. People talked about scoring systems. People talked about tech platforms to track and report on the scores. People talked about engagement as the key to recruitment, retention, and upselling, whether that means getting members to invest money by buying stuff or invest time by taking volunteer positions.

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JANUARY 23, 2013

Everyone's all excited about Facebook's new Graph Search, aka Facebook takes on Google, including Social Media Examiner , ASAE , and SocialFish. Personal branding trends for 2013 (I'm not so sure these are new this year, but they are good remidners). An interesting look at why innovation is so hard. My favorite? Innovation is a product of CONSTRUCTIVE conflict.

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JANUARY 22, 2013

I recently had the opportunity to sit down (well, virtually, anyway) with Bryan Kelly of Association Mavens to talk about content curation and associations. Our conversation was based on the FREE white paper I released recently, Attention Doesn't Scale. The video is about 20 minutes long, during which Bryan and I touched on the problem of information overload and how associations are making it worse for our members, content curation as a concept and possible solution, the most common types and m

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JANUARY 18, 2013

For the self-employed, the end of January means time to pay quarterly and annual estimated business taxes. It's a lot of somewhat confusing forms (thank goodness I followed the advice to hire an accountant, because trying to do this myself would, no doubt, have driven me around the bend). And it's easy to be grouchy about writing the checks and scheduling the electronic payments.

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JANUARY 17, 2013

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to participate in the weekly Association Forecast broadcast on the topic of Education to Employment. What is the Association Forecast ? It's a weekly show, hosted by Shelly Alcorn , where a panel of three guests and Shelly discuss issues of importance and interest to associations, usually based on a report, TEDtalk, current event, etc.

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JANUARY 16, 2013

Jeffrey Cufaude urges us to choose to be happy. If you're following his advice, there are some habits that will help you. I particularly like "assume people have good intentions." CEOs think social is important, just not for them. Jamie Notter points out that being clear is better than being right. KiKi L'Italien encourages us to live dangerously in 2013.

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JANUARY 15, 2013

January means resolution time, and whether you go the traditional self improvement route or follow my advice and take the " fun resolutions only " path, there's a good chance you've set yourself some big goals for 2013. Which is awesome. And really daunting. Where do you start? At this time of year, I'm always reminded of my good friend Vinay Kumar 's advice: "Just do the next right thing.

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JANUARY 14, 2013

So if you've read my recent FREE white paper on content curation , hopefully you're all jazzed to start doing it for your members. But how? One way is to use Curata , a tool that helps you easily find, organize, and share content on topics of your choice. (Shout out to Ray VanHilst for the link.).

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JANUARY 11, 2013

Just a shout-out to five awesome things that happened this week: The #10in20 Associations 101 webinar series kicked off with Peggy Hoffman doing an amazing job laying down 10 things you need to know about volunteer management in associations. Next one is Erin Fuller on branding on February 8. Find and more and register for the FREE series at the Peach New Media site.

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JANUARY 10, 2013

You're going to need to set aside some time to go through this slide deck, because it is truly 100 things. But it is definitely worth the investment. JWT: 100 Things to Watch in 2013 from JWTIntelligence My favorites? Alternative currencies/revival of the barter economy Detoxing (in the sense of cutting down on the chemicals in the products we use every day) Flexible screens (think of the possibilities!

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JANUARY 9, 2013

It's focus on the new year week! Jeff De Cagna's six ideas for 2013. My favorite? SED: Serendipity, Empathy, Discovery. Shelly Alcorn's five terms for 2013. My favorite? Workforce development. Social media predictions for 2013 from the pros. My favorite? Marketers use fewer social sites. Digital trends for 2013 that are not the same old same old. My favorite?

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JANUARY 8, 2013

This past fall, I had the opportunity to participate in a multi-day retreat with a bunch of smart people where we focused on the future of work. Talking about the future of work led us naturally into talking about the future of getting ready to work, aka our education system. One of the concepts that came up, tying both work and education together, was apprenticeship.

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JANUARY 7, 2013

Need to manage a project? Looking for something a little more flexible and visual than MS Project and Gantt charts? Check out Trello , a now and forever completely free (according to them) visual project management platform. It's laid out a bit like a card-sorting interface, but it allows you to do all kinds of cool things , like collaborate in real time with your team, share files and images, vote, track tasks and deadlines, assign tasks.

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JANUARY 4, 2013

My 2013 resolution is to learn to play poker. And I'm off to a good start, as dear friends hosted a poker party for me on New Year's Day. Seven of us played a full round of everyone getting shot at dealer for 7 card stud, and then two full rounds of Texas Hold 'Em. And Tim did an AMAZING job of putting together cheat sheets about the hands, the rules, the types of games, betting.basically everything you need to know to get started.

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JANUARY 3, 2013

My resolution in 2012 was to do Photo365 , which I documented on a Tumblr. I started a little before January 1, 2012 and took at least one photo nearly every day for the entire year. I know I did miss a handful of days (likely about 5, without going back to confirm), but many days I took more than one photo, resulting in 688 posts to the blog Most of the photos were taken in and around DC, although there are also photos from New Orleans, rural Virginia, the Philadelphia area, the Jersey shore, r

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JANUARY 2, 2013

Short list this week - lots of writers were off for the holiday. Tips for networking in the real world (these work, trust). Five important fixes for your 2013 content marketing efforts. Does "Big Data" just equal " data models behaving badly "? Five trends to IGNORE in 2013. What do you think? Agree? Disagree? Want to be more productive? FOCUS.

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JANUARY 1, 2013

It's easy to forget this simple truth: enriching other people's lives enriches your own life. So what's the secret? Stop focusing on being successful, and start focusing on being helpful. I can scarcely imagine better advice for us as individuals and for membership associations for 2013. Happy New Year.

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DECEMBER 31, 2012

Geek heaven! Just in time for the end of the year, it's Mashable's annual innovation index winners ! Some of my personal favorites include: Flipboard The Kitchen Aid Mixer Crowd funding Quirky What do you love in this list? (I know I'm going to get shout-outs for Fitocracy.).

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DECEMBER 28, 2012

It's a little self-referential, but it *is* the last Friday of the year. My Top 5 blog posts of 2012 (measured by number of clicks): Is Membership Really Dying? , in which I took on the concept of members versus subscribers. "My Members Don't Read!" , in which I posit some possible solutions to that all-too-common complaint. Sections Instead of Breakouts , or how can we bring conference education sessions up to the quality level of the networking events?

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DECEMBER 27, 2012

Dave Will ( Peach New Media ), Scott Oser ( Scott Oser Associates ), and I are pleased to bring you a new webinar series, Associations 101. Designed for people who are new to the profession of association management, new to particular topic in association management, or who just need a brush up on some concepts, Associations 101 will feature experienced association executives sharing 10 tips in 20 minutes on a variety of topics in association management.

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