Pollen, pollen everywhere!

Happy Friday! I hope everyone has had a good week, and hopefully you guys all have exciting weekend plans! If you live in an area that gets hit with pollen this time of year, I feel you — my car is almost completely yellow! Hope no one has any crazy allergies. No fun. However, there have been some great posts in the association world this week, so let’s get right to ‘em!

1. Shelly Alcorn wrapped up her awesome series with the fifth installment of How the Mighty Fall: Associations at Risk. This thoughtful series on how associations can avoid falling from prominence. This post offers several options (mergers, bankruptcy) and looks at the next step for associations in trouble.

2. Although Amber Naslund’s blog isn’t directed specifically toward associations, it’s worth reading for anyone involved in social media, marketing or communications. One post from this weeks asks if our conference expectations are bent, and reexamines the current conference model. Definitely take the time to read the comments, too.

3. Reporting live from Digital Now, Acronym’s Joe Rominiecki discussed some examples of “free” in action at associations. There are some great ideas for different membership models and webinar pricing – there are some great actionable ideas that could be implemented without too much hassle!

4. Over at Association Zen, Ann Oliveri wrote about responsible advocacy and asks association professionals how they stand up for the members they serve. How does advocacy fit into your organization?

5. David M. Patt discussed governance at the Association Executive Management blog. Governance is a huge part of association management, but it’s often not discussed or written about on blogs. David wrote about the real purpose of a strong governance structure, and will be writing more on governance in the future.

Have a great weekend!

Image credit

I was thumbing through the most recent issue of Associations Now and was incredulous at the article “What a speaker wants.” The publication interviewed some awesome association people, including Joan L. Eisenstodt, Leslie White and Jeffrey Cufaude.

I was blown away that many times, the speakers didn’t know exactly who the audience was going to be! Isn’t that the most important thing when planning a speech or session? Of course, your speaker’s area of expertise doesn’t change, but the people to whom they’re speaking do.

When you’re scheduling speakers for your next conference, meeting or event, here are some things to tell your speakers:

• Audience demographics and professional experience
• Audiovisual and room set-up information
• How flexible is the room set-up?
• Are there opportunities to speak to audience members before the even to learn about their expectations?
• Does the audience have experience with new and social technologies, if applicable?
• If any organizations have difficult names to pronounce, phonetic spellings can be helpful
• Is the audience used to holding Q&A’s at the end of the session, or during it?
• Will there be a Twitter feed for the conference?
• Will there be a Twitter backchannel used during the sessions?
• Give them information on the entire event. Background info is a must.

Some of this information is readily available, and there’s no reason speakers shouldn’t have access to it.

Check one of Jeff Hurt’s archived blog posts: How to help your conference speakers succeed. There are some great links as well as downloadable forms to guide both you and your speaker.

Image credit: Flickr