This morning Jeff De Cagna posted great reaction/reflection to Seth Godin’s post on associations, change and protecting the status quo (Seth Godin calls associations out). Jeff illustrated his point quite vividly through the use of a very recent case of American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) making the decision to cancel their annual conference due to “the challenging times faced by its members”. I think it served to really emphasize the point Jeff was trying to make in his post but it also brought to light a myriad of opportunities that I believe ASNE missed out on by framing the decision as an all or nothing proposition.

I have always thought that one of the most important responsibilities that an association has, especially in tough times, was that of as a place of refuge and inspiration for their members. I personally refer to it as the “lighthouse effect” – or the idea that the association is the beacon of light helping their members stay safe and on course in rough weather and turbulent sea’s. While the decision to cancel their event was obviously a last resort and in recognition of the economic realities facing the news industry – and our nation as a whole – I think it indirectly sent the message that the members are on their own. If I put myself in the position of one of their members, especially with everything else that is happening to the industry, I would interpret the decision as a final acknowledgment that the news industry is in the final throes of death.

I’ll be the first to admit that I am among those that think the news industry reacted far too slowly to industry movement and consumer preference for news when and how they wanted it. This situation seems to add insult to injury especially when they had a number of key business, (dropping the word “paper” from their title and finally admitting web editors to their membership), key business that could reshape the mission, vision and purpose of the association and help the association and industry as a whole regain relevance at such an important time.

In examining the press release more closely, I would have also been a lot more descriptive about how they were going to bridge the gap that canceling the conference created.

“In the meantime, Hall said the organization will increase reliance on the Web to help editors share what they are learning as they reinvent their news organizations for multiple platforms.”

What does this mean? They should have been leveraging the web already so this tells me nothing to give me hope or some sense that the captain isn’t asleep at the wheel. To be honest, I do think the cancellation was a very sound business decision, but I would have reinvented the event as an online conference of some sort or another instead of canceling it outright. Definitely a missed opportunity.

They already had a good deal of time and planning put into making the event happen. Having been involved with the planning and implementation of a number of large-scale events I know that most of the big ticket items were probably already ready to go – key note speaker, general sessions, etc. Much of that planning could have been re-purposed for an online format that they could have come together to create an inspiring and interactive event to re-engage and inspire the current membership and also demonstrate the associations willingness to take a leadership role and re-invent itself in a very disruptive point in time.

What if the association put together a live webcast where the President of ANSE, Charlotte Hall, could address the membership, talk about the state of the industry, the challenges and opportunities, and the key initiatives on the table? They could create more of a two-way conversation by allowing members to send in questions and Ms. Hall could address some of the common themes that appear. They could also create a special forum or discussion area where members and staff can interact, discuss the situation in a structured and moderated fashion and maybe even come up with some proposed answers or approaches to the challenges. They could also take some of the general or educational sessions and provide a platform/location/forum where they could still be presented and members could attend regardless of where they are. It doesn’t have to be a multi-day affair, it really doesn’t have to be an all day affair, but by doing something it not only sends the message that the association is still there for the membership and wants to create/provide as much value as possible – even in tough times – it also provides the staff and membership a forum for future discussion.

I think the point I am trying to make is the fact that even in times of total change and uncertainty there are options and alternatives but status quo is not one of them. The key is not overlooking any potential option fearing that it is too little. What the members of ASNE probably want and need is some sort of grounding force to bring some clarity and uncertainty to rather uncertain times. They need to be inspired and kept hopeful. The news industry itself is definitely not in the position to do it but it would have been a great opportunity for one of the industry associations to step up and assume a leadership role.

One final note. While I may have been strong in my choice of words and how I used the example of ASNE as the source of inspiration for this post, I don’t want it to be misinterpreted as an attack on the association itself. ASNE did, and will continue to do, what is in the best interest of their membership and the association as a whole based on good stewardship and a intimate knowledge of the realities of their situation. I simply meant this post to point out additional opportunities, that may or may not be viable or visible, from the perspective of an outsider and as someone who realizes the potential and power of change. Even in times of disruption and change, there are always alternatives and opportunities…seeing them however is and will continue to be the challenge.

Note: I made an edit to this post to correct an egregious spelling error. My apologies to Jeff De Cagna for the mistake due to fat fingers and a small keyboard.

So what do the three topics listed in the title have in common? In a nutshell: there is a whole lot going on with each. Beijing appears to be prepared to host the Games of the 29th Olympiad. For a great slideshow on Beijing and China in general, take a look at this:

The Olympic opening ceremonies have already begun and here in the states we will get a chance to see them tonight at 7:30 PM (EDT). For a sneak peek take a look at the photo gallery on NBC. I’m not normally a huge Olympics fan, but I do enjoy watching the events and hearing about the competitors and what they had to do to reach this elite position in the sporting world. Of particular note I am keeping a very close watch on Dara Torres, the 41 year old swimmer (50m free, 4×100m free relay) who is making a comeback after shoulder surgery. Torres is already the oldest swimming gold medalist, and she could raise that record from 33 to 41 by winning gold again in Beijing. She is also the oldest American swimmer to qualify for the Olympics and the first to make five teams. Pretty amazing story.

For those of you who are really “into” the Olympics, here are a few video sites worth keeping an eye on:

• The Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games – Videos
• CCTV.com – Official Internet/mobile phone broadcaster of the Beijing Olympic Games
• NBCOlympics – Official US online broadcaster of the Beijing Olympics
• International Olympic Committee’s cahnnel on YouTube™
• Universal Sports YouTube™ Channel

I will also be watching cycling a bit more closely than usual – road, track, mountain, and BMX – and pulling for some hometown favorites: Bobby Lea of Topton, PA and Giddeon Massie of Bethlehem, PA, both of whom are track cyclists. I wish the two of them and all of Team USA the best of success in bringing home the gold for the US.

Internet

A rather obscure fact but nonetheless worth mentioning, the idea of networking computers is 40 years old this week, marking the delivery of the technical paper which coined the phrase “packet switching”.

Donald Davies was working at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Middlesex when he delivered a paper in August 1968 which detailed how distinct packets of data could be sent over public telephone and later dedicated networks. Davies then set about actually building what is claimed to be the world’s first local area network (LAN) at the NPL, which consisted of approximately half a dozen nodes each with three or four machines attached.

Additionally, 17 years ago, on this week (August 6) in 1991, Englishman Tim Berners-Lee, an independent researcher at the CERN institute in Switzerland, published a summary of the World Wide Web project and this date was taken as the day when commercial Internet (WWW) became available to the public. The project started out as a philosophy stating that scientific information should be available to everyone. The goal was “to enable the exchange of information between internationally dissipated groups and spread information among support groups”, Berners-Lee wrote in his summary.

Pretty exciting stuff, especially considering how entrenched the Internet has become in our daily lives.

Me

Finally, with regard to where I have been and what I have been doing, all I can say is that I have been exceptionally busy and in the midst of some significant changes. Many of you saw my tweet stating that I had left PMI and begun a new gig this week. That’s part of the story and I will dedicate a full post to where I have moved to and what I am doing. As for the rest of my activity, most of it is related to Jeff DeCagna’s recent blog post. If you haven’t see it, you can read it here: Ready or not….

More to come soon. I promise. Until then. Happy Friday!

A thought provoking article written by the venerable Nicholas Carr in July/August 2008 Atlantic Monthly explores how the Internet and by connection Google is changing human cognition:

The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV.

When the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is re-created in the Net’s image. It injects the medium’s content with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the content of all the other media it has absorbed. A new e-mail message, for instance, may announce its arrival as we’re glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper’s site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.

The Net’s influence doesn’t end at the edges of a computer screen, either. As people’s minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media have to adapt to the audience’s new expectations. Television programs add text crawls and pop-up ads, and magazines and newspapers shorten their articles, introduce capsule summaries, and crowd their pages with easy-to-browse info-snippets. When, in March of this year, TheNew York Times decided to devote the second and third pages of every edition to article abstracts, its design director, Tom Bodkin, explained that the “shortcuts” would give harried readers a quick “taste” of the day’s news, sparing them the “less efficient” method of actually turning the pages and reading the articles. Old media have little choice but to play by the new-media rules.

Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives—or exerted such broad influence over our thoughts—as the Internet does today. Yet, for all that’s been written about the Net, there’s been little consideration of how, exactly, it’s reprogramming us. The Net’s intellectual ethic remains obscure.

After reading the article I know exactly what he is talking about. While I consider myself a true netizen and advocate for all of the positive aspects of the net, I am also an scholar, educator and parent and can’t help but wonder what the long term implications of the cognitive rewiring that’s going on. It seems innocent enough; it begins with adapting the way we read which in turn impacts the way we think. Over a long enough period of time this could have pretty significant consequences. I’m not about to give up the medium that I have grown so dependent on and proficient with, but it really makes you wonder if we are really programming the Internet or if it actually programming us. Something to think about.

Read the whole article here: Is Google Making Us Stupid?