In 48 hours, I will be a half-marathoner.

I’ve been running for a little more than a year, and I’ve grown to love the local racing community in my area. There are races almost every weekend, and knowing I have to run a certain distance (such as 6.2 or 9.3 miles) by a certain date helps keep me motivated to run — especially during these cold winter months. My last long training run was last Saturday, and I completed just over 11 miles.

If you had told me 18 months ago that I’d soon be running my first half-marathon, I would have laughed at you. I was the girl who hated the mile run in elementary and middle school P.E. classes. Despite my parents both being former runners, I was decidedly against running for most of my life and instead focused on swimming, bicycling and yoga.

But sometime after college, that changed. I started running — on the treadmill — and slowly building up mileage. At this point, I’ve never run more than 11.2 miles at a time, but I trust the training plan I’ve built for myself and I’m confident that I’ll be crossing the finish line after 13.1 miles on Saturday morning.

What does this have to do with association management?, you might be asking.

I’m sure you often face obstacles in your positions. Maybe they don’t occur every day, maybe they’re not all huge problems, but they’re there — milestones you have to overcome. When you’re facing a huge obstacle that’s uncharted territory for you, do you put enough trust in your training — your years of experience — to know that you’ll succeed? Maybe you won’t achieve quite the result you were hoping for, but every new obstacle you face is another stepping stone in your training.

It doesn’t matter if the problem has to do with governance, marketing, human resources, leadership, member retention or member relations — every day on the job is another part of your training. Trust in your training and you’ll succeed.

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Happy Friday! I can hardly believe Christmas is next week … but somehow it is. Have you finished your holiday shopping yet?

It’s not only the holiday season, but also Technology Conference Season! Several of the posts in today’s Friday Top Five are reflecting on lessons learned at ASAE’s Technology Conference. (We’ll have our own posts here in the next few days.)

1. Jamie Notter discussed four tips for building trust. They may seem a bit obvious (be consistent and transparent), but I really do think they’re easier said than done. It’s easy to “talk to the talk,” to speak, but quite another thing to actually be consistent, all the time.

2. A question I think a lot of association professionals struggle with regarding online community is, if you build it will they come? Scott Briscoe at the Acronym blog had a great post with a few takeaways from the Technology Conference, and it’s crucial to be persistent and know your members’ favored communication channels.

3. I really enjoyed Lynn Morton’s post, Associations on the Go, about mobile. Mobile is something I think many association professionals struggle with – is it necessary? how much will it cost? will my members care? Her post is a great summary of one of the sessions at the Technology Conference.

4. David M. Patt also wrestled with the “if you build it, will they come” question this week at the Association Executive Management blog. He discusses the print vs. digital dilemma and why it’s so important to have a digital strategy if you’re going to explore that area.

5. Another post from the Acronym blog, this time from Joe Rominiecki – he writes about the necessity to create an emotional connection when using videos. I’ve discussed this a bit before, but if you want your videos to resonate with your members (and potential members!) you don’t want them to be bored while watching – you want them to be enthralled.

I’ll be back soon with some photos from our in-office festivities today. We’re hosting our annual gift exchange, and things could get interesting!

Does your association have any special holiday traditions?

It’s pretty common for organizations to have holiday parties or luncheons of some sort, but does your small staff do a gift exchange? For example, those of us at MemberClicks participated in a “white elephant” gift exchange last year, in which gifts could be “stolen” up to three times. Some gifts were serious, but most were humorous in some way and we had a lot of laughs.

Our office pup Huck examining the requisite rubber chicken.

If a gift exchange isn’t your association’s style, here are a few other ideas for fostering community during the holidays:

- Volunteer at a soup kitchen. You’ll be giving back to your community together.
- Host a viewing of a traditional holiday movie, such as “Miracle on 34th Street” or “A Christmas Story.”
- Have a bake-off with holiday treats, such as snickerdoodles or gingerbread.
- Play carols in your office (if everyone agrees, that is)
- Host a potluck dinner for all staffers and their families. Ask everyone to bring a dish or two that’s a specialty in their family.
- Ask staffers to decorate their workspace with fun holiday trimmings.

No matter what holiday everyone celebrates, how can you make this time of year festive in your office?

As frequent readers probably know, I love to share other resources I’ve come across on the Web if they pertain to small staff associations. There’s so much information out there that it can be difficult to boil it all down and figure out what’s important. Today, though, I’ve got three useful slideshows that I think small staff associations can benefit from.

What’s a good resource you’ve found recently? Feel free to share them in the comments!

I may be piggybacking a bit on a prior conversation, but I wanted to get your thoughts about mobile applications for small staff associations. Lindy Dreyer at SocialFish weighed in with a post last week titled, Mobile apps are a waste of time for associations. She wrote, among other things:

Popular app types don’t favor association apps
App users heavily favor games, followed by news/weather, maps, social networking (inflated by successful Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter apps), and music. To me, these are lifestyle apps, and each of these categories will be dominated by the big players in those spaces. I could never advise an association to try to compete for mobile app users in any of these niches.

However, Jeff De Cagna of Principled Innovation responded with a thoughtful post that pushed back against many of Lindy’s points.

There is a long tail marketplace for mobile apps, and associations don’t really need to be concerned about competing with “lifestyle” or gaming app developers who want to be at the head of the tail. The goal of mobile app development for associations is to create a meaningful mobile presence that delivers unique and enduring value to its stakeholders. Association apps will always be niche offerings, and that’s not a problem as long as they are well done, useful and serve a strategic purpose.

Personally, I wrote about mobile for associations back in August and said that mobile is important for associations. Although I didn’t really discuss applications vs. mobile sites, I do think it’s more important for associations to be sure the mobile version of their website is presentable and easy to read on smaller screens. However, apps can certainly be useful and sleek when designed appropriately.

What do you think? For small staff associations, do mobile applications make sense? Do your members want to be able to connect with the association on their phones?

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