Empower Yourself

Feb
17

Can you have a real relationship online?

Increasingly, we’re seeing the well-articulated fear that a consequence of our digital age is the loss of meaningful interactions, which are being replaced by “likes” and superficial conversations. As a community manager, I look at things a little differently. By the nature of my role, I spend a lot of time conversing with people online. I always […]

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Feb
14

Your extracurriculars could help shape your career

I keep hearing about all these reasons why people shouldn’t work too much — health, wellness, sanity — but nobody has time for that. Don’t get me wrong: Of course you should take care of yourself, but don’t fool yourself into thinking you don’t have the time or the energy to contribute to your profession […]

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Feb
13

Can science fiction help you see the future?

We spend a lot of time thinking about what the future is going to look like. And that makes sense, right? We plan out our careers. We write five-year plans. We put together strategies to move the needle forward in our organizations. And then comes disruption. The linear paths we’ve crafted for ourselves are completely […]

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Jan
19

This lifehack will make you more efficient

The concept of lean has been met with major enthusiasm in the business world. I go into more detail in this article, but it’s about creating more value with fewer resources. So you can see why it’s so popular, right? That’s quite the win/win if it works. My introduction into this world came from reading Paul Akers’ book […]

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Jan
12

How to adopt a Lean mindset

The term lean in an organizational context means, “creating more value with fewer resources.” Let that sink in for a second. More value with fewer resources? How does that work? Paul Akers, author of the book “2 Second Lean,” owns a business called Fastcap, which is in the wood-working industry. Several years ago, he brought in a consultant to solve a very […]

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Dec
28

The top articles of 2016

As 2016 comes to a close, we’ve taken the time at AssociationSuccess.org to reflect on how far we’ve come, and where we want to be as an organization a year from now. As we have not even hit the one-year mark of our existence, our New Year’s resolutions are all about growth in major ways. […]

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Nov
09

Technology will displace your members’ jobs

Technology is never going to stop. Technology is going to continue to make human jobs obsolete. Now we can say, of course, technology would displace human jobs on an assembly line. Thank goodness that so many difficult and dangerous manual labor jobs have been taken over by automation. No longer do we shovel coal into […]

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Nov
08

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 […]

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Oct
31

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 […]

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Oct
18

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 […]

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