Thanks to Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
Today several charges were brought against the Mayor for lying under oath - in addition to other things.
In the chats that sprang up on the news sites following the announcement of the Wayne County Prosecutor many people applauded her willingness to stand up for justice and hold Kilpatrick to the […]
Cindy is obviously a much nicer and more succinct person than I am.
Twitter asks, “What are you doing?” and Cindy’s one-word response is, “Why?”
My two-word response is, “Who cares?” (And that’s censored down from a three-word response.)
Seriously. I really don’t care what you’re doing right now. I don’t care that you’re stuck in an airport […]
MCI Dubai director Ajay Bhojwani presented at the recent ASAE & Center International Conference held earlier this month in Washington DC. His presentation was so popular I have asked Ajay to share some of his thoughts along with a copy of his slides on his experiences in Dubai of the UAE.
I have been living […]
I feel like such a hypocrite. Just days after saying I’m boarding the social media bus and not looking back, I looked back. I knew I was doing it as I typed that post, I published it anyway, and David Gammel called me on it. I do think it’s important for people to be aware of the Catch 22, but I didn’t provide the proper context. Posts like that one cause people to fear social media, and that’s not what I want.
In his post, David takes up a point I almost blogged about within that post, but decided not to because I couldn’t really back up the assertions. Lisa Junker, in a comment to David’s post, actually drives the point home most effectively by saying…
It seems to me that some of the concern about legal risks involved in social media is like being concerned about your airplane crashing (and I say this as a very nervous flyer). The fear isn’t based on how likely the event is to occur, it’s based on the severity of the consequences if it did happen … so the fact that such a catastrophic event is even slightly possible is enough to create a disproportionate amount of concern.
I almost posted a similar line of logic with my last post, but I decided not to because I didn’t have the facts and figures to back up my position. I regret it now.
Lisa and David are right. So in an effort to save face, here’s my take (REALTOR association execs be advised, you’ll probably see this differently, since REALTOR associations are constantly being sued) (again, I have no facts and figures to base this on, only my observations, whatever their worth):
Lawsuits against associations for anti-competitive practices are pretty rare. I know and frequently talk to a lot of association executives, and (outside of the REALTOR organizations and the required CAE reading) I’ve never, ever heard of an association getting sued for anti-competitive business practices. I suppose there are many reasons for the dearth of cases, but a contributing factor has to be that most associations have learned how to navigate their boats around the anti-trust rocks. My guess is that ASAE has scared the fear of FTC into them through the CAE program (they did it to me!). Anti-trust is the third rail of the association industry and any trained association professional knows how to protect against it, how to identify it, and how to shut it down. My experience is that associations have much greater legal risks in areas like taxation and employment law.
So is there an anti-trust Catch 22 in association social media? Most likely. Is it probable that you’ll find yourself needing to take action in that context? Not in my opinion.
Take this advice at your discretion, but consider the source: A hypocritical, non-lawyer blogger.
Tagged: Association Management; Associations; CAE; Certified Association Executive; social media; antitrust
The Twitter site describes its service this way: “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”
Two words in response: Who cares?
Seriously, is there any reason in the world people need to continuously communicate to anyone (including family, friends and co-workers) exactly what they’re doing at the time? A colleague who suggested Twitter a year ago told me one week after he suggested it he was pulling the plug because people started telling him what they were having for lunch, when they were leaving the office, what their mood is, what the weather is, and any other entirely trivial detail of their lives they wanted to share. With lots of people. On their cell phones. Yuck. Is it the ultimate in ego or ultimate in boredom that anyone even wants to share that much detail about their daily lives? Some even post their “what are you doing” Twitters on their blogs in the event those not in their direct Twitter world want to read what they had for lunch, when they leave the office, etc.
I became interested in Twitter again when I read this (hilarious) article in the NY Times about a middle-aged woman who tries to convince her husband and teenagers to use Twitter. She figured it would cut down on individual text messages among family members. Her social media teenagers had never heard of it and refused to use it. Rationale: seemed like surveillance and a monologue. Told their mother maybe time she “got out more“. Apparently, as the article also indicates, Twitter is used by an older generation, not embraced by the teenage world (which I confirmed with my thousands-of-texts teens too). I just can’t figure out why an older generation finds appeal.
It’s clear Twitter could be used in very specific (isolated) situations with specific topics such as during a conference to share thoughts/locations with others who are there (as we used to/still do with email, text and voice mail messages) or for disaster planning - but WOW - not all the time. I’m an absolute multi-tasker, and can’t fathom what it would do to my productivity if “frequent answers to one simple question - what are you doing?” and other Twitter interruptions. A common Twitter post is “I should be working” …. well, think about that.
As one person quoted in this recent WSJ article about the “mundane updates” of Twitter says, “Like I didn’t have enough information flowing my way every day.”
While nosing around the Brandon Hall Web site for information about their awards (see my previous entry) I was happy to see they have released a report on “Low-Cost Learning Management Systems 2008: 31 Products for Limited Budgets.”
At last! A resource that narrows the field for those of us with limited expense!
Cost of the report? […]
We celebrated our one year birthday this weekend.
On March 22, 2007 I launched my blog.
It was sort of nerve-wrecking.
This was my first attempt at doing a blog.
It took a good month or so to find my voice.
I’m pretty proud of our time together.
Over the past year we’ve shared interesting adventures such as…
My Friday the 13th fall […]
It’s awards season — not just for movies and television, but for e-learning. The deadline for the ASTD Best Awards is coming up on April 4. The deadline for the Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Awards just passed (March 21).
Don’t be disappointed if it’s too late to pull your entry together. If your situation is […]
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