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.

Normally I’m not one to call people/companies/organizations out for things that they do to me. I generally handle things behind the scenes if I think I’ve been wronged and move on with my life but in this specific instance I decided that it was worth posting about because it could potentially happen to any of us.

Here is the situation. For the past few years I have been an outspoken fan of Fusion Productions DigitalNow conference. In my humble opinion it’s one of the best organized and programmed conferences that I have had the opportunity and privilege to attend in my career and I always walked away energized, inspired and full of new ideas and flush with new contacts. I started off as a simple participant in 2007, but was among the very few who was tweeting the event live – long before Twitter was the in thing. Last year, I had the opportunity to sit on a panel led by Ben Martin and had a lot of fun doing so. To me going to a conference pales in comparison to being a real part of the conference.

2009 marked the first time in three years that I wasn’t able to attend/participate due to financial constraints but I still kept track of what was going on through the vibrant Twitterstream. It wasn’t as good as being there but thanks to my association friends I was able to glean some pretty useful and interesting nuggets of wisdom and I even got to see Ben do a live demo of Mogulus. I wasn’t there physically but I was definitely there in spirit.

At some point as I observed the festivities I was alerted to the DigitalNow LinkedIn group and decided that it was a good group to join on with because (a) it’s an a group that I share an affinity with and (b) I like keeping as many contact points as possible between my association colleagues and myself. The DN group was a bit different than many I have joined (and am actively participating in) on LinkedIn in that it was by approval only. A hurdle no doubt, but one that I felt was worth dealing with in order to gain access to what I perceived to be a great community of folks. In the rare instances where I have joined “by approval” groups on LinkedIn, I have normally been approved within a few hours.

Aside: I only join groups where I either have a specific tie or think I can add value – groups to me are to be treated seriously and I don’t join them just to have a pretty badge associated with my name. That is pretty much my entire approach to social networking.

Well in this unique experience I didn’t get an immediate response. In fact my request to join went unanswered for quite a while. Finally this morning I did receive a response and here is what it said:

Julie McKown has sent you a message.
Date: 4/22/2009
Subject: [DigitalNow Community] Your DigitalNow Community request
Group: DigitalNow Community

Dear David:

Thank you for your interest in joining the DigitalNow Community group on LinkedIn.

DigitalNow is the name of an annual conference produced by Fusion Productions and Disney Institute. It was started as a way to provide Association Executives and Senior leaders with a forum for private conversations about issues of import. The expectation of our audience – and of our LinkedIn group members – is that we provide a place for them to have those conversations in a non-sales environment.

Therefore, we are only able to extend invitations to participate to members of our audience, past and present speakers and presenters, and a small group of Resource Center partners who participate in our conference. (For information on how you can become a DigitalNow Resource Center partner, please contact us at digitalnow@fusionproductions.com

We can offer you other ways to take part in our community. We invite you to follow us on Twitter.com (our user name is DigitalNow), and you may also submit articles of interest to our blog at DigitalNowblog.com.

Again, we thank you for your interest in the DigitalNow Community group.

Sincerely,
The DigitalNow Team

Imagine my surprise in reading this response this morning. What I had expected was a warm welcome from Julie. And while she may not remember we interacted pretty regularly in advance of last years conference and I even went out of my way to track her down in person to say thank you for her help. However, what I received instead was pretty disappointing. Here is how I interpreted it. I really don’t know who you are and instead of checking my past records to see if you have a legitimate reason for trying to join our group I am going to say no. However, because I am opportunistic I am going to see if I can increase our Twitter follower count by one and see if you are naive enough to give us some of your valuable content as great search engine fodder for our blog.

Had Julie done even a basic Google search (dave sabol digital now – check for yourself) she would have seen the first 6 or so entries related to me and my past participation in the conference. I literally went from a raving fan to a skeptical observer in the matter of the time that it took me to read the email.

Now this isn’t an attack on Julie per se. In my past interactions with her she was warm, kind and wonderful, but this experience left me doubting whether DigitalNow is an event I want to continue to support as an outspoken advocate. I personally know that I convinced a number of friends and colleagues to attend this years event and years past as well. Maybe they don’t want my support and involvement. That’s ok though because I am sure that there are many others who are willing to pay the $600 or $700 registration plus what ever it costs for transportation and accommodations for the privilege of attending such an event.

But that really isn’t the point. I think it’s the underlying message that I was provided with – that I wasn’t worthy and they had to monitor their membership closely to keep out the undesirable elements – is what really bothered me. I have a little more than a little knowledge on building effective and sustainable online communities, in fact that was my primary area of responsibility prior to leaving PMI. So I understand establishing criteria for membership in a specific group, but as a past participant, contributor and advocate who wasn’t allowed in I have to wonder how high that bar is set.

When creating an online community ask yourself a few questions prior to doing so: are you trying to create a community or a country club? More importantly how willing are you to alienate specific member groups to preserve the sanctity of others? If an online community can be found, chances are people, especially those who are enthusiastic about the topic, subject, company, etc., will want to join it. How do you act in a similar situation?

Definitely an interesting situation, one full of learning opportunities for everyone, and something that I will likely never forget…unfortunately.

I can’t believe a little over a week has passed since I was at the digitalNow conference in Orlando. Part of me feels like I just left, part of me feels like it was forever ago. I guess all good things have to come to an end. The true mark of a great conference experience can be assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively.

At the end of each conference that I attend I ask myself the following questions: How were the individual sessions? How were the keynote speakers? How was the space and time managed? What was the quality of the interactions? Did I leave the conference knowing just a bit more about topics that I am extremely passionate about as well as topics I had never contemplated?

Similarly I also find myself evaluating the qualitative aspects of the conference as well. How many of the sessions were thought provoking or really worth attending? How many of the key note speakers would I want to see again? How many new people did I meet? Of those people that I met how many do I plan on staying in contact with? How many old friends was I able to catch up with? How many new ideas did I leave with? Of those how many are immediately actionable? How many can I act on in the future? If I had a choice of paying any amount of money for the privilege of attending the conference how much would I be willing to pay?

From both a qualitative and quantitative perspective I have to say that the conference was a great success. Very rarely do I attend a conference that I am conflicted between session times and across the whole agenda regarding which sessions to attend. This is one of the few exceptions in recent memory. I actually had to plan out my time really effectively and on a few occasions had to chose between two concurrent sessions that I wanted to attend. Needless to say the conference was programmed very well. I have to say the same for each of the keynote speakers. Of the four speakers, three of them (Chris Anderson, Jeremy Gutsche, and Dan Heath) left an immediate impacts on me, and only one left me questioning the relevance of her presentation (I later realized a lot of value from the presentation but will share that in a future post). Even so it was a good hit rate for the keynotes.

As far as the time and space goes, I have no complaints about either. There was a generous amount of time in between sessions to check voice mail, get a beverage or snack and network. The space was well used with a phenomenal ratio of space per attendee. The fact that the conference center was attached to the hotel made running back and forth between my room and the conference quite easily too. Add to all of those facts that we were within an earshot of Disney World and easily accessible transportation made the location pretty magical (pardon the pun) even for those who aren’t huge Disney fans.

The quality of the interactions perhaps one of the most important litmus tests of any conference was excellent. There was a great mix of attendees from senior executives to more junior staff members but all had interesting perspectives and plenty to share. The presenters, panelists and facilitators also represented a broad array of skills and experiences. When mixed together there was the right amount of people with the right kinds of experience so there was never a shortage of people to talk to, things to consider and ideas to glean. I walked out of the conference with a number of great ideas largely related to online communities and because that is my primary focus now, it was just in time. Some of the ideas were simply a result of synthesizing the knowledge that I absorbed by attending the sessions. However, many others were simply reactions (some positive, some not so positive) to something I saw or heard from other participants. There is no one source for ideas so I am happy to take them from where I can find them.

And as far as meeting up with new acquaintances as well as catching up with old friends the event was pretty good for that as well. Granted it wasn’t as well attended as some of the ASAE events where many of the folks that I am closest to (whats up Jamie, Jeff D., Maddie, Zach, Lindy, David, Andy and Jeff C. and a whole bunch more) but there was no shortage of great people here (whats up Greg, Ben, Rob, Andrew and Becky). Suffice it to say, a lively conversation was never far away. I was challenged as much by the conversations that I had after hours as the one’s that I had at the conference but the sum total of all of them contributed to the same end result. I learned a lot about a number of topics, learned some things about a number of great people and learned even more about myself. Without getting into the specifics (perhaps I will save this for another post) it was well worth the price of admission and then some. In fact I’d go so far as to say that any interaction that can return similar thoughts and idea generation guarantees an immediate ROI.

It goes to show that in the right environment with the right people and a common theme pretty incredible things can happen. So how do define a good conference experience? What qualitative and quantitative metrics do you use to measure personal and professional return on your conference investment? Drop your comments below. I am listening!