Happy Friday and happy ASAE 2011! The Annual Conference and Expo kicks off today with a golf tournament, which our president, Mark Sedgley, will be attending. Good luck to everyone!

We’ll be out in full force at the conference, although this year will be the first year in the past three that I personally won’t be attending. Don’t worry, though, we’ll still be blogging and tweeting away!

To kick off the conference, I thought I’d do a (mostly) ASAE-focused Friday Top Five!

1. Kathi Edwards shares what she’s looking forward to at this year’s conference, including Ignite sessions and the Innovation Exchange. Also on her list? The opening night concert under the famed St. Louis arch. How fun!

2. Although not specifically geared toward ASAE, Jeffrey Cufaude posted 12 questions association executives should ask to ensure better meetings. My favorite? How do we want to capture the insights and decisions from our discussion?

3. Is your conference truly providing education? Jeff Hurt doesn’t think so, and he gives a good explanation why. Just giving out information is not necessarily education, and Jeff wants to make sure everyone knows the difference.

4. Lindy Dreyer is taking advantage of the ASAE iPad application, and, while useful, she’s got a few suggestions for improvement to go along with her raves. Unsurprisingly, they’re all very constructive.

5. Jamie Notter ran down a full preview of ASAE11, including where he’ll be presenting and which parties are the must-attend. His love for the association community is obvious, and he reminds attendees to introduce themselves to as many people as possible!

Whatever you’re doing this weekend, have fun! And if you’re in St. Louis, be sure to keep an eye out for the MemberClicks crew!

It’s no secret that social media is changing the game when it comes to how people communicate, but what about the future of publishing?

As tablets such as the Kindle, iPad and Nook continue to gain popularity, publishers across the board — whether for newspapers, magazines or journals — will have to adapt to produce electronic versions of their work. It’s crucial to remember that, as a publisher, you’re in the magazine or newspaper business. You’re in the business of publishing content, and the medium shouldn’t matter.

When it comes to your digital strategy, here are a few things to keep in mind:

- Plan for content across multiple channels
- Be flexible. Your strategy will likely have to evolve
- Align with your members’ and advertisers’ resources
- Be realistic
- Remember that you’re competing for attention among readers and advertisers
- Don’t overload members — offer options but don’t overwhelm them. Test, test, test.

“Integrated media” isn’t going away. Whether your members have smartphones, e-readers, an iPad or prefer a hard copy of a magazine, your association should be prepared.

If your audience continues to be devoted to print, I still think it’s important for electronic platforms to be on your radar. Build on the print readership by integrating social media and other electronic forms of media. Create added-value content (video, slideshows, podcasts) on your website. This can be done with a small budget; many tools online are free or low-cost.

The biggest thing to remember? Always be flexible. The media business is rapidly evolving, and your association should remember that one size doesn’t fit all. Be willing to revise, remix and relaunch is necessary.

Photo source

In March, we gave four brand new Apple iPads away to four lucky winners. As the winners, each association agreed to be featured on the blog and check in with us every so often to let us and our readers know how they’re using the iPad in their operations. Today, we’re checking in with the National Urban League Young Professionals and the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association.

NULYP just concluded its National Conference celebrating 100 years of empowering communities and changing lives. Barton J. Taylor, the president of NULYP, said the organization used the iPad in multiple ways throughout the conference, including verifying NULYP memberships, during the NULYP business meeting and during a major plenary session to access data about young professionals.

PCPA also just finished its annual conference and now the staff is “taking a deep breath and relaxing again,” Ashley Crist told me. They incorporated the iPad into conference activities for both learning and pleasure! The organization’s technology coordinator held a conference seminar on both the services MemberClicks offers that attendees should take advantage of, as well as a tutorial on how to sign in, send mass e-mails and other tasks. They plugged the iPad into the projector and used it for the tutorial part of the seminar, which worked quite well.

Ashley also told me PCPA kept it plugged in with their website open after the seminar and anyone who wanted to try signing in using the iPad could do so. “I feel it was a big hit!,” she said.

Additionally, PCPA featured live entertainment and a DJ for much of the after-hours activities, but for those without formal entertainment, they loaded music into iTunes on the iPad to pipe music through the banquet hall and reception areas. This provided entertainment while also keeping costs down. They used the iPad for two different nights of activities and “it worked out perfectly.”

Ashley said it was “extremely convenient having the iPad to use during the conference ” and said she thinks it kept attendees more engaged during tutorials (including the one on MemberClicks!) than a regular laptop would have been. The opportunity to play with a “new toy” kept attendees engaged and eager to learn.

Be sure to check back in soon to see how our other winners are using their iPads!

Images via NULYP.

In March, we gave four brand new Apple iPads away to four lucky winners. As the winners, each association agreed to be featured on the blog and check in with us every so often to let us and our readers know how they’re using the iPad in their operations.

Lauren, from the Association of Test Publishers, is the latest winner to check in. ATP launched its MemberClicks solution and “after many months of preparation, we pointed our old website address to our new MemberClicks website and celebrated liftoff!” (Congrats, ATP!) Lauren said the new site “was met with rave reviews — and lots of questions, which is where the iPad is coming in handy. Now that we’re online 24/7 with MemberClicks, I’ve found the iPad is an extra pair of hands in the office.” (As a small staff association, I bet ATP loves that!)

Lauren said she can keep the iPad open to MemberClicks on her desk and have the entire association at her fingertips. “Whether a member is looking for a document, a link or has any of a myriad of questions, the answers are usually right there on my iPad,” Lauren wrote. “I can pull up their records, find a file for them, or even help them edit their profile or change a permission — and basically give them instant member service on demand.”

Having the association at her fingertips has been immensely useful for Lauren, who can take care of administrative issues and then return to her desktop Mac to work on whatever she was previously doing. In fact, ATP is “about ready to elevate the iPad to the level of ‘additional staff member caliber! (Though I hope it doesn’t start asking for a raise…)”

Does your organization have an iPad? If so, how are you using it? Do you find it cumbersome to have another piece of hardware to use, or has it been beneficial?

In March, we gave four brand new iPads away to four lucky winners. As the winners, each association agreed to be featured on the blog and check in with us every so often to let us and our readers know how they’re using the iPad in their operations.

Lauren at the Association of Test Publishers is loving the ease of viewing documents on the iPad. She took the device to ATP’s 2011 Innovations in Testing Conference in Phoenix, Ariz. and experienced the iPad’s “cool factor” at the airport, where a security guard couldn’t resist taking a little demo.

Once in Arizona, though, Lauren continued to realize the value of the iPad. “An important component of the meeting is reviewing the conference evaluations from the previous conference. This is a voluminous document – 166 pages in length – so you can imagine my joy at being able to upload this document via MobileMe.” Lauren was able to access the document from anywhere, even without Internet access, which greatly improved her productivity during the trip.

“I was also able to carry with me a number of other documents that I like to have at meetings and leave my notebook at home,” Lauren said. MobileMe once again proved extremely useful, as it syncs the iPad’s calendar with her home computer’s automatically. “I keyed events into my iPad and then came home to have them already in place on my main desktop,” she added.

The Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association is still in the midst of planning its conference, and we were glad to hear that one of the planned technology classes includes information on MemberClicks!

“A lot of our members don’t know how to send mass e-mails through the MemberClicks system, so we’re going to use the iPad to do a tutorial over a projector screen during the class,” Ashley said.

“We hope this will get more people signed in and utilizing the information we have on the Web,” she added.

We hope so, too!

Stay tuned to find out how our others winners are using the iPad going forward!