For the past few days I have been in Detroit, Michigan with my son as we tagged along with my wife who was attending an Association Conference (American String Teachers Association - ASTA) of her own. It was a great experience for me as I got to spend some time exploring Detroit with my son and I also had the opportunity to attend a conference from the perspective of a visitor / outsider and view the experience from a different lense.

While I wish I could have come up with a myriad of paradigm shifting thoughts that I could share with everyone that I learned through the experience, the only thing I can offer is based on a simple observation. My wife was so excited about the conference and really took so much away from it that she seemed to be floating on air at the end of each day. She came away with ideas and strategies completely unknown to her and it seemed to have a profound impact on how she viewed a number of challenges that she was facing as a teacher.

Seeing her reaction made me realize just how fortunate that I am to be working for an association, gave me yet another reason to wake up in the morning, and reminded me of how much impact we can have on a daily basis. As association executives and employee’s, face our fair share of struggles in providing member value, being good stewards of the association and keeping our members happy. Sometimes these objectives come at odds with each other and it doesn’t always feel like what we are doing is making the type of impact we had hoped. However, I think we need to stay focused on the fact that what we do is extremely valuable and a lot of people are really excited to be part of it.

For those of you who haven’t done it, I think it’s a worthwhile activity to be able to attend an association meeting or conference when you don’t have a vested interest in the content, outcome or planning and execution. While conferences and meetings are only a small part of what many associations do, it is definitely a very visible activity and a great example of how associations provide additional member value through networking and professional development. For many, conferences are the only way they come into contact with your association on a personal level but they can serve as continuous reminders to our members why they decided to join in first place. In my wife’s case, I have no doubt that the conference reminded her of the value because she is already talking about attending next years conference. When viewed from that perspective, I think her attendance was very rewarding and a potentially transformational experience that she will carry with her for some time to come.

The moral of the story is that sometimes in order to gain clarity we actually need to move away from, rather than closer to, the situation we are facing, problem we are trying to solve or question we are trying to answer.

While I am on the subject of rewarding and potentially transformational experiences, Jeff De Cagna has proposed pulling together a social media unconference for folks from the association community at large, who are interested in learning more at the role about the possibilities of social media in associations or even contributing what they know and have experienced. I suggest taking a look at the Association Social Media Unconference Wiki and considering getting involved. I know I will be and think it could be a great way to illustrate the power of social media and learn a lot in the process.