The Blogoclump

Read & discuss at Margaret Core's blog.

Read & discuss at Jeffrey Cufaude's blog.

Each session at the conference has a “5 minutes” and “10 minutes” sign so the course monitor can alert the speaker/panelists of remaining time. Seems much more effective to me than holding up fingers. And, if show to them in advance, lets speakers know you are serious about ending on time.

Read & discuss at CindyAE's blog.

Gary LaBranche, CAE, in his weekly RiverView column for Association Forum of Chicagoland, reminds us that ?people support what they help to create.? A strong association, he implies, will be even stronger when its members play a part in creating association activities.

Association business decisions, however, should not be thrown open to a town hall meeting format. There are plenty of opportunities for member empowerment without bypassing the Board of Directors.

When M&Ms conducted a public competition for a new color candy, it pledged to adopt the color chosen by consumers. The policy decision was selection of a new color. The actual color didn?t matter, so stimulating consumer involvement was a good marketing decision and did not undermine the corporation?s decision-making process.

Coca-Cola?s decision to resurrect its Coke Classic was a response to widespread consumer opinion. The decision, though, was still made by the corporate board. (Some people think the whole process was manipulated by Coke to attract consumer attention. Who knows?).

The Schaumburg Flyers allowing fans to determine the starting lineup of baseball games was driven by the desire to involve fans so they would have a greater stake in the team ? and would buy more tickets, merchandise, and other stuff. Fielding a winning team was obviously not a goal.

Associations may benefit from clever devices designed to empower members. Remember, though, that associations are not communal organizations. Members expect to be able to offer proposals and suggestions but it?s the job of the Board of Directors (chosen by the members) to make the final decision.

In a viable association, Board members will respect member opinion, and members will respect Board authority.

Read & discuss at AEM's blog.

On the April Fools’ Day front, www.gotomypc.com sent me the funniest so far with its new feature announcement of teleporting. But, it warns, “Now, as with any new ground-breaking technology, there are a few kinks to work out. You can only teleport to computers that have GoToMyPC installed, so if you’re teleporting from a public computer, you can’t get back. Early teleport tests are working successfully, but we’re having difficulty teleporting certain kinds of fabric…

Read & discuss at Mickie Rops's blog.

So far, the best April fools have been hanging out at Google, which today brings us things like gDay (”Using a mashup of numerous factors such as recurrence plots, fuzzy measure analysis, online betting odds and the weather forecast from the iGoogle weather gadget, we can create a sophisticated model of what the internet will […]

Read & discuss at Sue Pelletier's blog.

If so, check out the (relatively) new job board over at Confabb. It looks like it has quite a few meeting planner jobs posted–one of which just may be the perfect match for you or someone you know.
There’s also a place for vendors to display their wares on the site, though it looks like […]

Read & discuss at Sue Pelletier's blog.

Read & discuss at Tony Rossell's blog.

No, you don’t have to know what a Squidoo is. All you have to know is that Marlys K. Arnold put together a great resource for her session, “Podcasts, Wikis & Blogs … Oh My!” recently at a KCMPI Professional Education Conference, then posted it on Squidoo so we all can use it.
Here’s the link–enjoy!

Read & discuss at Sue Pelletier's blog.

When I work with my clients on system selection, one thing I strongly advise them to do is limit the number of systems they actually consider. While more choices sounds better than fewer, the reality is that too many choices creates more confusion. I've written about this here.
But as I discussed this issue with a […]

Read & discuss at Wes Trochlil's blog.