The 2007 Technology Conference marked my first real introduction to ASAE. It also served as my introduction to the Jeff and Ben, which led to me introduction to the Blogoclump as a whole, which in turn jump started my blogging and involvement in the association community. That chain of events made the event more than worth the price for admission and a great reason to attend it again this year. I just made the trip from PA to DC this afternoon and am happily settled into my hotel room at the Embassy Suites.

From the look at the agenda, the educational sessions look pretty solid and definitely relevant to me, especially as I make some changes at work.

I am currently in the process of shifting my focus from the leadership online learning area to leading a very large project that will impact our component organizations and is looking at literally transforming our online components into true communities of practice. I’ve been working on this project for over a year already in a stretch assignment that I did in conjunction with my other position, but it’s become apparent that due to the complexity, critical importance and my own bandwidth that a choice had to be made. I chose to go this route because of the challenge and the fact that the project involves people, technology, processes, complex systems, and a lot of change management. I also think that the project is going to really set the help establish a new baseline for our communities for quite some time to come.

I’m going to do my best to post regularly from the event and share some of the insights, conversations, lessons learned from not only the formal event but also the informal learning that takes place. It should be great and I look forward to the days ahead.

As I begin my annual end of year reflection process on where I have been, what I have done and how much I have learned a number of experiences stand out in my mind as formative, influential, or just plain fun. One in particular, the ASAE Annual Conference in Chicago demonstrated just how powerful technology can be to connect multiple people in multiple locations all at the same time. This experience came to be known as the Association Backchannel and by using our mobile phones those that participated were able to share our learning experiences, find out where everybody was and make arrangements to meet up on the fly.

The platform chosen to facilitate the exchange was appropriately enough TXTmob. TXTmob was developed by the Institute for Applied Autonomy for protesters at the in Boston and the Republican National Convention in New York and was a huge success. It continues to be offered by Tad Hirsch, a researcher at MIT’s Smart Cities Group as a free service. Tad is also coordinating a long overdue upgrade (hopefully to address some of the inconsistencies that me and others in the group experienced as well as to add some new features and refresh the web UI).

A few really cool things about txtMob was that the group administrator could create groups and control who could/couldn’t participate (not that we had restrictive policies, but it is a great feature) in the Mob. An added benefit was the ability to participate in the mob from the web and the fact that the transcript was archived for later reference.

My only complaint about the whole experience using txtMob was the fact that as a Verizon Wireless customer using a MotorolaQ SmartPhone I was unable to participate because for one reason or another either due to my phone, Verizon or the software itself using SMS. I could use the browser on the phone in a pinch if I wanted to send a message and I was able to receive messages flawlessly, but being unable to use it the way it was designed to be used defeated the purpose and took a lot of the fun out of the experience.

The vexing aspect of my problem was a colleague: BMart, had the same phone on the same provider and had no problems whatsoever. However, I also heard complaints from folks that had Blackberry’s experienced similar challenges, so I promised myself that the next time we gathered en enmasse I would help find a few other viable solutions that worked for all people, or at least as many people as possible. I guess the experiment was getting a bit more formal. Accessibility, security and ease of use all became essential requirements.

One solution that I recently stumbled upon was a service called Mozeo. Mozeo leapt on to the scene in 2005 in the hopes of capitalizing on the mobile phone craze by converging the worlds of chat, blogs and text messaging in the mobile environment. Their flagship product Mozeo Go Groups, essentially a mobile chatroom, is mobile group text messaging made easy. The basic premise is that you sign-up, create a group and start sending messages. You send a message and everybody receives it, someone responds and you and everybody else receives it. It’s that simple and it allows you to communicate with your entire circle of friends from your mobile phone.

For comparison sake there are a few other players in this space that are also worth looking at including: Swarm-it, Zemble, Kiboze, 3jam, and Dodgeball. Even one of my favorite persistent presence applications Twitter has similar functionality but, at least in my opinion, Twitter excels in one-to-many messaging as opposed to the more specialized one to few offered by applications like Mozeo. It’s not a matter of it being good or bad, rather just knowing what tool is most appropriate for what you want to accomplish.

If you are looking for group text messaging that is simple and effective Mozeo may be exactly what you are looking for. Mozeo: http://www.mozeo.com.

Prior to Laura’s accident I had one primary role that I was concerned with: the working dad. Like many (but not all) families, I am the primary bread-winner who would work long hours and do a lot of travel to provide the income for our family. I played an active, but sometimes aloof role in the family as my commute and daily schedule kept me out of the house for 14+ hours per day. Upon reflection I know this wasn’t the ideal way to be a husband or father and it really wasn’t fair to Laura, Andrew or myself but I was able to rationalize it as being “necessary for the family” and with Laura’s help we made it work.

Fast forward to the present. Obviously the status quo wasn’t going to work while Laura made her recovery and that meant I had to change. It’s really no secret that the past few months have been pretty complicated for me. As the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months, I’ve had to rise to a new set of challenges while trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy in my life. I believe it was Cicero who said:

“It is the character of a brave and resolute man not to be ruffled by adversity and not to desert his post”

I feel like the quote pretty accurately describes what I have experienced and learned over the past two months. It hasn’t been easy wearing all of the hats that I have had to at home and at work. My days begin even earlier than they had prior to the accident and every minute of my day from the time I wake up until the time I go to bed are filled with activity. I no longer have time for the things I used to enjoy (spending time blogging for example) and I have replaced it with responsibilities like cleaning, laundry, cooking, grocery shopping, etc. That’s not to say that I didn’t do any of these things previously, but with Laura and I taking care of them together we could divide and conquer and the burden seemed like it was so much less. I have also found myself being the primary caregiver for Laura, Andrew (our son) and Mackenzie (our border collie). This was yet something else that I wasn’t ready for.

Yet despite all of the stress and challenges somehow I managed to make it through. Quite honestly, I have to give most of the credit to our family and friends who have gone above and beyond to help in so many different ways. So today I am truly “Thankful” to all of you and the myriad of others who have called, visited, emailed, dropped off meals, sent gifts, cooked, cleaned and stayed with Laura while I have been away and generally made our life a lot easier. If not for the people that we have surrounded our lives with and have the honor to call our friends and family.

Laura still has a pretty long road to recovery ahead of her but she is making a lot of positive progress. She is going to therapy a few times a week and her left ankle is healing very nicely and her doctor released her for full weight bearing on it. Her right ankle, which was the more severely injured, still has a lot of healing to go. She is still not weight bearing on it and her therapists think that it will be a few more months before she can support herself with it. Progress isn’t always made in leaps and bounds; sometimes it is made in measured steps. However, considering how bad the accident was things could have been much worse. Yet another reason to be “Thankful”. I am thankful that my loving wife is alive and well. I am also thankful to the first responders, doctors, nurses, and therapists who have made her recovery possible. Unbelievably, I am also thankful for our insurance company who has stepped up and made most of the administrative side of this whole situation pretty easy to navigate. You don’t realize how simple your life really is until something comes along and knocks you off your axis, even still I know things could have been much more complicated.

As for me, I am learning my way through all of this. I have had to learned to be the type of husband Laura deserves and father that Andrew deserves. Unbelievably I just returned from two trips during the months of October (Atlanta, GA) and this month (Cancun, Mexico). Each trip was 10 days in duration and being away was extremely tough. I have also had to learn how to balance work and family a lot more effectively. Fortunately, my employer has made that very easy as well. I am “Thankful” to have a manager and employer who understand that sometimes life happens and are able to accomodate you when it does.

This entire experience has also made me extremely reflective and I have begun to rethink my career goals and where I’d like to go next. The one certainty is that I will be staying with my present employer because it is really a great place to work, but I am contemplating moving from my current role as a Learning Developer for our Volunteer Leadership program to a role within our Information Technology group. I am really longing to get back to a full-time involvement in technology and hopefully make my informal role as an emerging technology / social media expert (at least within my organization) something more formal.

Needless to say my life is constantly evolving and I really do miss my days of being able to blog and socialize with all of my association colleagues. But while I do long for the days of old, I know that soon enough I’ll be able to find my balance and return to a new sense of normal. I’m “Thankful” that I will have the opportunity to do that.

Thanks again to all of you for your support and kind words during the past few months. I wish you and your families a Happy Thanksgiving.