Despite the poor weather forecast, I have made the trip to Washington DC to attend the ASAE Technology Conference along with a few colleagues. I have been involved in learning and technology for most of my career but I am a relative newbie in the association world so my manager thought that this conference would be a good developmental experience for me. Based on the information I was able to review prior to arriving, I am pretty sure that the conference is a great use of my time so I am pretty excited to be attending.

I have two primary areas that I am interested in learning more about during my time here. The first obviously revolves around the online learning area and what other member associations are doing as composed to what we are doing. I have been told that what I am doing is on the leading edge and pretty new to the association world, but I can’t help but believe that there is still a lot to learn and many ideas to capture and try to incorporate. So I will be attending a few educational sessions around this area and hopefully networking with folks who are willing to share their thoughts.

I also hope to be able to connect face-to-face with a few vendors that I have been talking with. Like it or not, connecting over the phone, via the internet and through email is extremely efficient and convenient, but sometimes you need to meet the people you are working with to really make a connection. Technology can help facilitate relationship building, but it can also complicate and hinder it. I think we often forget that even with the evolution of modern and social technologies relationship building is still a one-to-one activity.

My second reason revolves around a new project I have been asked to lead. We are getting ready to re-examine the way we create and manage virtual communities and because of my past experience in the area it was an obvious match. However, I am in now way an expert on the topic so I am really looking to learn about some of the challenges and opportunities others have experienced and any best practices that may exist. There are a few sessions that look pretty interesting that deal with both the technology and the human-side of virtual community building including managing the change, so I will likely be attending those sessions.

There is no doubt that the combination of these two areas will keep me quite busy and hopefully very engaged. Admittedly, the weather is on my mind because it is supposed to get pretty bad which will make our return trip treacherous at the very least. That said, I am going to try to focus on the immediate and maximize my time here. Regardless of what is going on in the periphery or what I end up doing during the conference I am pretty certain that I am going to learn a lot if I stay focused. I can’t wait to capture, synthesize and share what I learn over the course of the next few days.