Monthly Archives: April 2011

Why Your Conference Is Stuck In A Rut

Tweet The greatest wonder in the world lies in a three-pound mass of cells, with 1,000 trillion connections and the consistency of oatmeal, located in our skulls. The human brain. It controls your annual meeting. It controls your planning. It controls your attendees’ onsite actions. It has more impact on your planning and onsite implementation…

You Don’t Know Jack About Working With Volunteers

Tweet (Here are some of my notes from Cynthia D’Amour’s Lazy Leader Road Show “Creating A Surplus Of Volunteers” which recently stopped in Dallas.) Martyr leader volunteers! Our organizations are rife with them. They are the survival strategy for many nonprofits. Yet, focusing on them can actually kill an organization. The Awful Truth About Our Current…

Where Are We And Where We Are Going?

Tweet The Pew Internet & American Life Project provides great data on Americans and the Internet. The Project produces reports exploring the impact of the Internet on families, communities, work and home, daily life, education, health care, and civic and political life. They are a great resource of data for any conference organizer or assocation…

Enough Of Slow Death Conferences!

Tweet “It’s like attending a slow death. Once you’ve been to one conference, you’ve been to them all. They are boring!” Those words echoed in my ears like a YouTube video continuing to loop. They stung. Resonated. Pricked my brain. They sat on my heart like concrete blocks tied to my feet and sunk in…

An Association Leader Should…

Tweet All living systems, including associations, go through five predictable life cycles:  Birth Growth (formation, adolescence) Maturity Decline Death  Healthy systems work to avoid decline and eventual death by using the wisdom and calm of maturity to plan a rebirth. Unhealthy systems avoid change as long as possible, often to their own demise. Leadership often…