Happy Friday! How’s everyone adjusting to the time difference? I know I love that it’s still so light outside when I head home for the evening. As usual, there was lots of great content around the association community this week, so let’s get right to it!

1. Does your organization have a morning ritual? Jeffrey Cufaude wrote about one at an association he used to work for and how it positively affected the staff members. Even a seemingly simple meeting or few words of encouragement from the president or CEO can get a day started off right.

2. Jeff De Cagna has been participating in a Webcast discussing “Beyond Relevance,” and his blog post this week captured the spirit of the conversations. He argues that reinvention, rather than relevance, is necessary for associations to move forward and continue to succeed. Definitely a must-read.

3. Over at Midcourse Corrections, Jeff Hurt has been writing a series about how to write better conference session titles and descriptions. Be sure to check out the first installment: How to Write Killer Conference Session Titles That Attract Attendees. There’s ton of useful information and plenty of examples, as well.

Now for a blog post not written by someone named Jeff…

4. Joe Rominiecki sparked a great discussion in the Acronym comments with his post, Isn’t “content curator” just another term for “reporter?”. On the heels of the recent discussion about content curation, Joe pointed out that reporters have been “curating” content for years and years. The journalist in me loved the discussion … check out the comments and see what you think.

5. A few months ago, KiKi L’Italien declared today, March 19, “Love a Lurker Day.” Lindy Dreyer of SocialFish wrote a great letter to all “lurkers” (people who visit blogs and rarely — if ever — comment, join social networks but don’t participate, etc…). If you always read but never comment, I invite you speak up today! Everyone is an important part of the community whether they actively participate or not. Thanks for visiting.

Wherever you are, I hope you have a great sunny weekend!

Happy Friday! And congratulations to the Crimson Tide of Alabama for winning the BCS National Championship Thursday night! MemberClicks President Thomas Howard is a proud ‘Bama alum and since no one in the office is really a Texas fan (sorry to the Longhorns out there), a lot of us were pulling for the Tide in Thursday night’s game. (I do feel awful for poor Colt McCoy, though.)

I hope everyone had a good week, and if it was your first full workweek after a holiday vacation, I hope it didn’t go by too slowly. And there was some great stuff around the association blogging community this week!

1. Following his webinar, Jeff De Cagna wrote about the trends that will affect associations in 2010 and beyond. Organizations should not overlook the importance of Jeff’s “Mobile Everything” bullet. We’re rapidly becoming a mobile society and this can affect how your association communicates and gathers content.

2. Keeping with the “mobile” theme, check out the three iPhone apps every nonprofit needs to know about. There’s some good info here your nonprofit could use for its mobile strategy.

3. Over at Acronym, Joe Rominiecki took a trip down memory lane by digging through the Association Management archives from 2000. From outsourcing to collaboration to knowledge, Joe discussed how each concept was applied in 2000, and how associations have improved since then. Loved this post.

4. Cindy Butts wrote this week about fundraising and staffers missing opportunities. She used a great example of an fundraiser that told a story to relate to the audience, and accepted both credit card and PayPal payments. Takeaways: make (giving) personal and make it easy.

5. This post is technically from last week, but it’s so great that I can’t help but share. Jeffrey Cufaude’s The Many C’s of Community really grabbed my attention when I got back to work Monday morning. He writes, Community is a spirit that resides within every individual, but it is manifested in very personal choices. I’m not even going to try to say it better myself.

Enjoy your weekends, everyone (despite the painful lack of college football!)!

(Image source: Jae C. Hong, AP, via NYT)

Here at MemberClicks, our customers are without a doubt No. 1 – and that’s we love to spotlight some of the newer members of our community on this blog. We work with some great organizations, and it’s always interesting to find out more about each one’s history and mission.

Tempo Madison is an invitation-only network in Madison, Wisc. for women leaders. Formed in 1975, there are about 250 members, and each represents a variety of industries and executive positions. Its mission is to encourage the advancement of women in leadership positions, and it achieves that through mentoring, service and networking opportunities. According to its history, the first meeting was in a living room! We’re proud to work with an organization that has come such a long way in a relatively short time!

The North Carolina American Water Works Association and the North Carolina Water Environment Association is a combined volunteer association. Its mission is to protect public health and the environment through water and wastewater education and service. They offer educational events at schools – including maintenance technologist school and certification – as well as seminars and conferences throughout the year.

Dedicated to protecting and enhancing the Pilates method created by Joseph Pilates and his wife Clara, the Pilates Method Alliance guides the practice of all PMA certified and non-certified instructors. In order to help prevent confusion and controversy over the method (which can lead to severe injuries), PMA has developed a standard set of industry performance parameters. As you may know, Pilates has become more popular throughout the last 15 years (I used to practice!), and it’s so important to prevent careless injuries.

We’re excited to work each of these groups. Welcome to the MemberClicks community!

If you work with MemberClicks and would like your organization spotlighted on Splash, please e-mail me at shannon@memberclicks.com.

Continuing with Acronym’s “Big Ideas” theme…

Would you still think members complain too much or would their complaints seem more valid if you had to walk in their shoes?

This question stuck out to me for a few reasons. When I first began learning about associations, I — for some reason — thought association staffers had previously worked in their memberships’ fields, or had some sort of interest in the industry. I didn’t realize there was an industry comprised of “association staffers.”

It makes sense, though. Someone has to plan the events, do the administrative work and take care of all the behind-the-scenes things required to make an association run smoothly.

So what if you had to work as an engineer, or a photographer, or an accountant? What if you belonged to your association and you just wanted to be able to take advantage of the great things it had to offer and meet other professionals in your field? Wouldn’t members’ “complaints” (requests) seem a little more valid?

Let’s even take it a step further and imagine if members had to work in their association for a few weeks, too. I think everyone would appreciate his or her own job, and also gain a lot of perspective.

Imagine how improved communication and understanding between staffers and members could be. (Sure, communication still might be not be perfect, but it would improve a little at least. Right?)

I think this idea is a great one, despite how unfeasible it is. It reminds me a bit of Maggie McGary’s post on association staffers working at another association. It just makes sense that staffers who support their members’ common interests should be aware of their perspectives. I’m sure some association staffers belong to other organizations, but I think to truly understand where their members are coming from, staffers should walk a mile in their shoes (so to speak).

This also goes along a little bit with Elizabeth Engel’s post about staffers cold-calling members just to connect and listen. She wrote about connection, community and a new source of ideas — and I think her idea is great, and obviously a lot more feasible than actually swapping lives.

Maybe this is all a little idealistic of me (improved communication! more perspective!), but in all seriousness, I think we too often get caught up in how our own jobs are so difficult, not thinking how our roles play into the big picture.

Do you think your members would appreciate the hard work staffers do if they had to do it themselves? Would you have a better understanding of your members’ wants and needs if you had to work in their industries?

This is the fifth in an ongoing series called “Beyond The Big Three,” which highlights social networking sites other than Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. There are tons of other social media outposts on the Web, and they’re great places for associations to curate content. The first installments on Flickr, Delicious, Tumblr/Posterous and YouTube can be found here. Stay tuned.

So none of the other social networks available work for your organization? But you still want to find a cool place for your members to hang out at online? No problem! Ning is a service that allows your create your own branded social network. As of November of this year, Ning boosts 37 million users – pretty nifty!

In addition to member profiles, Ning features sections for videos, photos, chat, music, groups, events, forums and blogs. The basic service is free, but there is also a paid premium service, which allows for a custom URL, more customer support, ad space and more storage space.

Ning can be a great outlet for niche organizations. Its purpose is to create community – but unlike Facebook and Twitter, it’s completely customizable.

Some of the great features include:

- RSS feeds in and out: Stream information from your outside blog, a news Web site or another source.

- Chat: Much like Facebook’s chat, members can chat in real-time when they’re logged on.

- A variety of other apps, as well as search engine optimization

If your members aren’t active on another social network, consider how Ning could benefit your organization. It’s more inclusive than Facebook and still allows your members to maintain their privacy while interacting with one another. Ning is all about building a targeted community for your members. As it says on the home page, “Ning lets you create and join new social networks for your interests and passions.”

The International Society for Technology in Education has set up a fantastic Ning network for its 2010 conference. The conference isn’t until June, but the network already has 553 members, 23 groups and a good sampling of photos and videos. ISTE is building hype and anticipation for the main event, and there’s even a great countdown in the right column!

Take a look around, get some inspiration and see if Ning is right for your organization or event.