This post is going to serve two purposes. The first is to allow ASAE to make sure that their feed aggregator is working for all attendee contributed content at the Annual Conference. Way to go ASAE for taking the initiative to make this happen! I think it’s a great way to capture the real-time user generated content in a way that is beneficial for attendees and non-attendees alike. Technically it’s not that difficult to accomplish, but the value that it adds far outweighs any trouble they may experience along the way. I’m psyched to be part of the conference coverage and will do my best to add my observations, insights and anything else that I find useful or interesting during my time in Toronto.

The second purpose for the post is just to send a shout-out to all of my association colleagues that have been so supportive for the past few months. It’s been a pretty tough period in my life – I have the battle scars and bruises to prove it – but in the end it was well worth the energy and effort to get to where I am today. I couldn’t have made it without you. I think it’s a great example in community and just how powerful having a shared purpose and common interest can be. And while it will be great to meet up with my old friends I am also looking forward to being able to connect with the many virtual friends I have made over the past year.

I already have a pretty busy schedule planned – including a Professional Development Section meet-up followed by our official meeting on Saturday and all of the great keynotes and sessions that are on the schedule during the rest of the conference. That’s the official part. There is also all of the extra-curricular activities many of which are being organized/coordinated by YAP that I am looking forward to. I know this is going to be an event to remember!

Lots to see, lots to do, lots of great people to meet. I can’t wait! I am arriving on Friday and will be in Toronto through Wednesday, so please look for me and say hi! I’m looking forward to meeting you.

Last week I got a Tweet from @lindydreyer asking me what I thought of The Power of A. Prior to that reference, I hadn’t a clue what the Power of A was, but I was surely going to find out. I do my best to stay up to date on everything going on in the Association-world, but regardless of how vigilant I am, things can and do slip under my radar. Thankfully, I have a pretty active group of Association peeps that I follow in the Twitterverse and the Association Blogosphere, so even when I miss something one of them are normally there to clue me in.

I took the tweet from Lindy as a suggestion (normally when Lindy recommends something to me it’s going to be a hot topic so I have learned to listen to her when she does) to take a good look at the Power of A and weigh-in n what I thought. Admittedly, at first I really didn’t get it. Not only didn’t I grasp the purpose but I also didn’t immediately realize who was behind it. It took me some clicking around to realize that (a) it was produced by ASAE and the Center and (b) it was extolling the virtues of Associations. Granted it was a user-friendly interface and I found it aesthetically pleasing but I still didn’t get it. I thought that ASAE already had a website and if anything this type of information should have been housed there. I did privately wish that the ASAE website were as easy on the senses, but that is a different topic for a different day. After my cursory review, I sent a tweet back to Lindy to tell her that I didn’t get it but I did like the presentation and left the topic go…at least for a while.

Over the weekend the topic popped back on my radar screen through a bunch of Tweets and a blog post by @maggiemcg (The Power of…huh) responding with her thoughts on the whole thing. I think that was about the same time that I finally pieced everything together and saw what was going on. I left my own half-baked comment, many others followed more thoughtfully, and a stream of Tweets – #PWRA ensued. Needless to say, I think the whole thing wasn’t being viewed too positively – at least not initially – and the comments seemed to corroborate that fact. A follow-up post by Deirdre Reid seemed to push the paradigm even farther (The Natives Are Restless – How Do You Respond?).

After letting the topic stew for a day I began to better understand what I did and didn’t like about the website/approach and what I thought could have been done to make it better. On the positive side I liked:

1. the fact that ASAE was jumping up and telling the world about the impact that Associations can have for business and society.
2. the use of multimedia: text, audio/video, graphics, etc. to make the site welcoming, easy to use and full of a lot of decent information.
3. how ASAE embraced a myriad of social media tools (tagging, sharing widget, twitter stream, etc.) to not only bring in some of the resources referenced above, but also to encourage sharing and feedback.
4. the use of specific examples to drive home concrete messages about the true power of associations. I think this is a lot more of an effective approach as compared to listing specific benefits without substantiating them.

However, what I really didn’t like was:

1. the fact that the audience that this was directed at wasn’t really apparent. I came to find out that this site was specifically designed for our friends on Capitol Hill. While I know there is a pretty active campaign to gain additional support from our lawmakers during our country’s economic malaise, I think this site could have served many masters, not just one, equally as well.
2. the fact that ASAE and the Center engaged a PR Firm, actually not just any PR firm but one of the best and likely most expensive, to assist with the creation of this campaign. Now I happen to be a big fan of PR done right and also think highly of Ogilvy, but for the purposes of this campaign, I think it sends the wrong message. It looks like it is saying that the power of associations lies in the ability to use it’s funds to engage high dollar PR firms, not that it is part of the solution to some of woes that are ailing our nation as a whole.
3. while I do like the specific examples, I would have preferred to see the site go live with a lot more info than what it currently has. Sure, this is a superficial comment, but the examples while detailed only go so far in detailing all of the great things that associations do for their members, business and society.

What would have I done differently? Quite a bit actually.

1. First, I probably would have created the site as a sub-domain of the main ASAE site. You could have still had the vanity URL and accomplished all of the same things but visitors would have been all that much closer to the ASAE site. I would have also played up who was responsible for the site, not downplayed it. The first visual cue that you get that the Power of A site is part of ASAE is if you scroll to the bottom of the page. Why hide it?
2. Second, I would have definitely made the site serve different purposes depending on who the visitor was. Capitol Hill lawmaker? Go here. Association Executive or staffer? Go here. Association member or member of the general public? Go here. Employer? Go here. Associations have multiple stakeholder groups and ASAE is no different. As a former association staffer and current association (actually multiple association) member I would have liked to have seen the benefits of belonging spelled out clearly. After all, being currently out of work – which many are these days – I need to be reminded why an association membership is a great investment and ultimately an investment in my future. Likewise for employers. Why, when they are in the midst of slashing budgets and cutting back on professional development, should they continue to invest in association memberships for their employees?
3. Third, I think that a lot of this could have been done in-house. Again, no offense to the work and/or talent of Ogilvy, but who better to demonstrate the power of associations than associations themselves? A general call could have been put out or a tiger-team/task force could have been assembled and a myriad of social media tools could have been employed to create the same type of resource probably as quickly and a lot more cost-effectively. When your members are the exact people you want to hear from why go to a third party to solicit their feedback?
4. Fourth, I would have made the site a lot more dynamic (e.g. living and breathing) than it is now. I would have made it almost all user generated (with some oversight of course) and allowed to be something that was continuously changing and being updated with compelling stories from associations, from members and from businesses. My guess is that by really opening the site up it would have a much longer shelf-life and much more compelling content that would have mass appeal.

Surely these aren’t the only ideas that could have made the site much more reflective of the true power of associations, but it would have been a good start. If you were to ask me, I would say that the true power of associations lie in the membership so who better to tell the world about it?

What did I miss, what other ideas are there? How could we take this from a target for criticism to a true reflection of the power of associations? Share your thoughts, ideas, feedback and criticism below!

It was obvious from some of the feedback that I received on my post yesterday about my problems with ASAE’s listserv that I am not the only person who has had the experience of getting spammed by the application and I am also not the first to bring this up in a blog post. While I may not be the first, I certainly hope I can be the last by continuing to drive this issue until some sort of workable solution is found. Granted some things can’t be changed and those that do get changed often do so only because of patience and persistence. Fortunately I have a lot of both. I also have a good amount of resourcefulness and willingness to seek out potential answers to the problem and share them in the hopes of being part of the solution instead of just part of the problem.

Both Fred Simmons and Elizabeth Weaver Engel got me thinking about what could be done to remedy the situation and I have to agree that other organizations are using Lyris ListServ without generating an undue amount of redundant or unnecessary email to the list members, the question is how. I did a good deal of self-educating since I posted yesterday and I think the answer is actually pretty simple and fortunately does not put the burden of responsibility on individual ASAE members. In fact a pretty simple Google search yielded a number of solutions in the first page of results.

For example Dgroups, an online home for groups and communities interested in international development, has a wiki dedicated to the Lyris ListServ product which they use for their own groups and had a great entry on preventing “out of office” messages from being sent to list members. I have included it below:

How do I prevent “out of office” messages from arriving to the list?

A filter on the global server level is applied to all messages of all lists containing typical “out of office” message keywords. This filter prevents these messages from being sent to Dgroups lists. The keywords in the global filter are the following:

• AutoReply
• Autoreply
• autoreply

If you have any suggestions to add to this list, please send them to zqu AT bellanet.org.

If you would like to create a filter which will apply to only your list, then follow the steps below. Note that by creating a new filter, it will be applied in addition to the filter on the global server level. Before creating your own filter, it is important to be cautious when choosing words/phrases which will prevent a message from being delivered to a list, in order to reduce the possibility of legitimate messages not arriving to the list.

Follow these steps to create your own filter:
1. Login to the Lyris interface.
2. Click on ‘List Admin’.
3. Click on ‘Action Phrases’.
4. Click on ‘Create Phrase’.
5. Supply the information:

• Phrase: These are the word(s)/phrase(s) which will prevent the message containing them to be sent to your list. For this field, follow the directions given. Note that there should only be one word/phrase per line. No additional syntax should be included for phrases, such as surrounding the phrase by quotations.
• Response: nothing.
• Rule: phrase appears in the message body or subject (normally, this is the best choice)

You do not need to change any other values, but if you would like to be notified of when the filter is triggered, then supply your email address in the Notify field.

6. Click ‘Save’.

Source: Dgroups – Administrator FAQ

To be honest, that is about as easy as it gets. I would estimate creating these rules would take someone at ASAE under a half hour of effort to implement and based on the OOO responses that I received would have eliminated 30 of 31 (96.77%) of messages that I received. That’s a pretty significant reduction in unnecessary responses and likely a pretty significant reduction in the amount of emails that server that Lyris is installed on would have to process. Everybody wins.

Similarly, ASAE goes out of their way to help educate users in how to respond to both the list and individual users, but again they place the onus on the user instead of configuring the system to work with them. For example the ASAE Listserv instructions specifically tell users that if they want to reply directly to another user they should:

• Avoid resending the entire message to which you are replying by cutting and pasting the relevant parts into your response. And, please do not resend a digest back to the e-mail list.
• Using the reply button in your e-mail application will automatically send your response to the entire list. To reply directly to a member of the list, forward the e-mail and copy and paste his or her e-mail address into the “To” line.

Source: ASAE and the Center

This too is something they could configure Lyris to handle for maximum member benefit. Again borrowing from the Dgroups:

Can I change my list settings so that when participants “Reply” to a message, the reply only goes to the sender of the message and not the list?

Yes, by default message replies go to the list address. To change this to the sender of the message:

1. Login to the Lyris interface.
2. Click on ‘List Admin’.
3. Click on ‘List Info’.
4. In the section ‘Email Headers’, change the value in the ‘Reply To’ field to ‘author’ (by default, it is blank).
5. Click ‘Save Mailing List’.

Source: Dgroups – Administrator FAQ

Again, another really simple fix that could have a major impact. The question that I have is whether this is something that resulted as a lack of knowledge and/or attention or a lack of willingness to make the change. I have to assume it is the former as opposed to the later as ASAE does appear (at least to me) to be highly tuned into it’s members needs and responds when and where it can.

Admittedly I am a bit concerned about the feasibility of this solution to work for ASAE only because they are running a version of Lyris that appears to be a number of versions behind the current. Based on an evaluation of the html generated page they are running:

Lyris ListManager WIN32 database MSSQL version 7.0 build 1442 - Mar 17 2003

A quick view of the Lyris Listserv page indicates that they are currently up to Version 10.0. That places ASAE 14 releases out of the most modern release.

And because my familiarity with Lyris is rather limited I can’t say for certain whether this will work or not. And while I am not advocating for implementing a new version of a platform or system simply because it is available, often times new versions are release because they address shortcomings of past versions and also introduce valuable new features and functionality. Based on what I was able to ascertain this is exactly the case.

I will say that it is a great case study in the importance of making sure that your core technology is in order before running down the rabbit hole of new technology adoption. All of the cool new technology adoption in the world is of little value to your members if your core technology doesn’t work the way it should or in a way that inconveniences them.

So ASAE what can you do to fix this. If you aren’t going to listen to your most enthusiastic supporters who are you going listen to? Is there something obvious that I am overlooking? Is there a business reason that you can’t make these changes? I (and apparently many others) are interested in knowing. And for you technology pro’s out there what else can could ASAE do to fix this? There has to be blenty of other ways to make the listserv more useful and user friendly thereby making it stickier and less of an inconvenience for members who really want to get involved but couldn’t be bothered with the some of the problems that I have had.