What film school taught me about technology
In my last post, I talked about how “Star Trek” has shaped technology in many ways. I guess it makes sense that my metaphor came from an industry that I went to school for: Film. I love movies; I thought it would be cool to make them. That said, I didn’t go into film expecting to […]
Why creating an online community is like planning a party
I remember when I first took on the task of managing AssociationSuccess.org. In trying to fathom the role, I concluded – quite simply – that my job was to keep the conversation going. “Easy enough,” I thought to myself. After all, if anyone has ever sat next to me at a dinner table, they know […]
Why it’s important your association becomes a habit
Engagement is a huge topic within the association industry. And for good reason. Our associations have tremendous value to offer, but we’re having some trouble catching (and keeping!) attention in an environment that is so rapidly transforming. As a behavioral designer, Nir Eyal is an expert on the psychology of habits. We’ve brought him into […]
Tips to make your budget more transparent
Many people often support the idea of transparency in organizations — but not as much when it comes to financial information. We don’t want to share salary levels, or we don’t want to share our budget information with other departments. For some reason, when it comes to money, we tend to get very traditional in […]
When appliances attack! How to secure your Internet-connected devices
The Internet is a constantly changing, living organism. With the tremendous growth of Internet connected devices, we are seeing this living entity enter into a sort of “adolescence” as it struggles through this massive influx of new hosts. Similar to our own bodies, cells of the Internet are attacking other cells (sometimes on an exceedingly […]
3 podcasts to boost your association revenue
These podcasts tie together several innovative strategies toward moving the ball forward, from recruiting your CEO to jumping into the sales game, to landing the “huge” membership accounts, to digging deep to find out what your association sponsors really want and how to give it them. Surefire Sales Strategies for Association CEOs Increasingly, I’m finding […]
How to manage your chapter toolkit team
This excerpt is from chapter 3 of the free eBook: How to Create a Project Toolkit for Your Local Chapters. Once you have determined the subject of the toolkit, you need to gather your stakeholders. In my experience toolkits are most successful when they are developed by a representative group. So for the chapter media toolkit […]
Want a more effective staff meeting? Try this
Most internal staff or team meetings follow a similar pattern that includes one basic element: Each person reports what they’ve been working on to update the rest of the group. We take this for granted as a good thing. After all, what could be wrong with people sharing information with each other? Well, let’s dig […]
3 insights from a behavior designer
I first came across the work of Nir Eyal when his book “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products“ was selected for the AssociationSuccess.org book club. He spent years researching products that form habits and determining the correlation between them. What does he mean by habits? When you’re sitting in a waiting room with nothing to do, […]
Giving advice or giving away the store?
I value the opportunity to give back and pay it forward. Most recently, it has come in the form of giving advice to younger professionals looking to start or develop a career in government relations. Within the last three weeks, I’ve received no less than four different requests to discuss my career and offer any […]