Ever given a presentation to an audience that was tuned out of your presentation and tuned into their mobile device? That audience could be participating in a discussion about your presentation on social media. A distracted speaker may have a rough time getting the attention of a distracted audience, but that audience could be sharing your presentation’s content with an online audience.

How you can get their attention, and more, in today’s Social Media Roundup:

Let Them Tweet

How to Present to Audiences Distracted by Mobile Devices buff.ly/14trCPz #eventprofs #eventtech

— Qrious App (@qriousapp) May 21, 2013

A tech-savvy audience can work to your advantage. Sure, it’s not as easy to engage with people who aren’t looking at you. But if your audience members won’t put their devices away, this could be a good thing. During your presentation, encourage them to plug in and update others on what you’re talking about. “If more event organizers, and their resources, accept the new norm, conferences will become more valuable, and more people around the globe will be able to share in the content,” Marc Brownstein, president and CEO of The Brownstein Group, writes for Ad Age. (ht @qriousapp)

Primp Your Presentation

10 Apps and Products to Help You Give a Killer Presentation #technology #eventprofs #app # presentation bizbash.com/10-apps-and-pr…

— Olga Latysh (@l0lga) May 21, 2013

Speaking of distractions… how do you design the visual context for your presentation? BizBash compiled a list of the 10 most efficient apps and sites to help you design your presentation. Presentation building tools like Prezi, a cloud based presentation software, or Electric Slide, which wireless transmits presentations to mobile devices, can give your conference an extra “wow” factor. What tools do you use to improve the look of your presentation? Share your tricks in the comment section below! (ht @l0lga)

What links have you been sharing today? Let us know in the comments.

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Two members of the House of Representatives are asking Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to provide more information on what role “navigators” will play in helping consumers shop for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

Two Republican congressmen sent a letter last week to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius seeking answers to several questions about the “navigators” provision in the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Charles Boustany (R-LA) said they have concerns related to the federal government’s ability to protect private taxpayer and health information during the enrollment process for the health insurance exchanges that will be created under the act. There also continues to be ambiguity surrounding the “navigators” program and what role they will play in providing information and guidance to consumers shopping for insurance, the lawmakers said.

“The White House itself has identified the ‘navigator’ program as critical to the success of the enrollment in Obamacare, and yet the White House still has not provided basic information about who these ‘navigators’ will be, how they will be trained, and what privacy safeguards will be put in place,” Brady said in a statement. “It is well past time to provide this critical information.”

Under the ACA, groups eligible to be navigators include trade and professional associations, unions, chambers of commerce, and consumer-based nonprofit groups. Roll Call reported last week that there will be navigators in the 34 states in which the federal government is running the exchanges but that navigators may not be fully operational at first in the 17 jurisdictions, including the District of Columbia, that are setting up their own exchanges. Those states receive federal exchange establishment grants, and that money can’t be used to pay for navigator programs, Roll Call reported.

Boustany said taxpayers need assurance that navigators will be able to protect their personal information.

“‘Navigators’ are going to have access to sensitive taxpayer information, increasing the risks of identity theft for millions of Americans,” Boustany said. “With senior Democrats already predicting Obamacare will be a ‘train wreck,’ this is yet another area requiring vigorous oversight to protect Americans from the endless costs of this law.”

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Apple’s Chinese suppliers still have progress to make on work hours and other issues, but the company’s latest set of audits—overseen by the Fair Labor Association—shows significant improvements.

The company that manufactures many of the Apple devices you use on a daily basis has made a lot of progress in addressing criticism of how it treats its workforce, but it still has more to do.

And with the help of the Fair Labor Association, Foxconn and other Apple suppliers know where to focus their energies next.

More details:

The back story: In recent years, Foxconn in particular has received a lot of negative press over the treatment of the workers who make many of the devices consumers use every day. Apple has worked to address this situation, offering up yearly reports on Foxconn’s progress toward improving the work environment. The reports, based on annual audits, are monitored by the officials of the Fair Labor Association, which has worked closely with Apple and its suppliers to help raise the quality of the work environment for employees. But FLA is not without its critics, who argue the association faces an inherent conflict of interest because it receives funding from the companies it monitors.

The latest: In the latest report [PDF], the result of 393 audits representing 1.5 million workers at different levels of the supply chain, both Apple and FLA say that working conditions have improved significantly. The audits found that 96 percent of the suppliers’ employment practices were compliant with Apple’s standards for fair treatment of workers; on the other hand, only 62 percent complied with standards for protecting juvenile workers. On the issue of working hours, Apple said the suppliers were 92 percent compliant with its standard of no more than 60 hours per week, but Foxconn is still working to keep employees below the maximum of 49 hours allowed by Chinese law, according to The New York Times.

Foxconn is also making changes regarding unions, according to the association.

“The increase of worker representatives in Foxconn’s union committees is encouraging,” FLA President and CEO Auret van Heerden said in a statement. “When FLA first visited Foxconn last year, the union committees—like those at most other factories in China—were dominated by management. By this time next year, we expect worker participation to be even higher.”

The post Fair Labor Association Says Apple’s Suppliers Improving appeared first on Associations Now.

IT departments don’t believe Windows 8 is an improvement or will save companies enough money to merit implementing it, according to a Forrester Research survey.

Windows 8 isn’t making any converts in information technology departments.

IT departments don’t see Microsoft’s new all-in-one operating system as an improvement, according to a Forrester Research survey.

The survey found that IT departments may skip Windows 8 altogether because they think that switching to the new operating system wouldn’t offer  enough savings in operations and that iOS is the preferred operating system for tablets. Forrester doesn’t predict Windows 8 making the leap to becoming the next standard, noting that “early enterprise interest in Windows 8 is half that of Windows 7 prior to its release.”

According to Fierce Enterprise Communications, IT is more focused on migrating workers’ computers to Windows 7 before Windows XP expires next April.

However, despite the low interest from IT, the Forrester survey found that 38 percent of employees would prefer to use Windows 8, compared with 35 percent who’d rather use Windows 7. Employee support for using the new operating system on work tablets isn’t that far behind Apple’s iOS: 20 percent would prefer Windows 8, while 26 percent prefer iOS.

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Several incredible careers came to an end in the last week in pop culture and in sports, and they can serve as examples for association leaders pondering their own exit strategy.

Going out on a high note is something every professional dreams about doing: retiring a champion, walking off a winner.

In the last week, it happened several times: NBC’s “The Office” closed its doors after nine stellar seasons; soccer superstar David Beckham announced his retirement after a successful 21-year career; and Manchester United’s long-standing manager, Sir Alex Ferguson—one of the world’s most decorated soccer coaches—announced he will step down after 27 seasons.

But for an association leader, how do you know when the time is right to make that next career move, whether that means moving on to another association or hanging up the uniform and calling it a career?

“There are two messengers on this question: the internal voice and the external signals,” said Pegotty Cooper, IOM, FASAE, leadership and career strategy coach with Career Strategy Roadmap. “Sometimes they can feed one another, and sometimes they are independent.”

The internal voice asks that nagging question that keeps sneaking into your head, asking if you still find value in your current position or if the job still stimulates you. “It is important to explore your platform of values and get back in touch with what is most important to you instead of trying to silence that voice,” Cooper said.

Leaders who ignore this voice run the risk of becoming ineffective and harming the organization’s work, she said. “Losing the juice sometimes doesn’t reach the conscious part of the brain, and the executive keeps playing the role—convincingly, he or she believes—but the audience can see right through the guise.”

This leads to the external signs, which can be red flags (warning signs within the organization) or green flags (opportunities elsewhere), both of which are hard to ignore, Cooper said: “Many times it is mixed signals from the board that it’s time for change, or the board can see that the executive has lost energy in their position, biding time as they decide to either move on or retire.”

No matter the reason for the decision, acting on it often requires a leap of faith.

“One of the things it takes in that situation is courage that there will be another chapter that opens,” said Cooper. “For executives that have a large national or international reputation it’s not so hard because they know that they’re in demand. But for somebody that comes from a smaller organization, it’s having the confidence that you’re going to be able to go out there and create the next opportunity for yourself.”

How would you know when it was time to move on? Share your thoughts in the comments.

The post Career Planning: How to Know When It’s Time to Go appeared first on Associations Now.

How can a name badge change the outcome of your event? Some meeting planners weigh in on how they affect attendees’ interaction. Also: a marketer’s theory that learning through analogies can train you to think.

When you meet someone new at a conference, where do your eyes go to first? Some event planners believe that if your attempt to find the person’s name badge fails within the first 10 seconds, it could have negative impact on your connection.

Why a well-designed name tag facilitates networking, and more, in today’s Lunchtime Links:

Hello, my name is…: Too small, too big, too low-hanging, too hidden: These are possible reasons for an ineffective conference badge. A poorly designed name tag can color the interaction between two people meeting for the first time. Easier-to-read badges lead to easier interactions between attendees. “Nobody wants to have to squint. It makes a bad first impression.… Low-hanging badges can lead to awkward situations, because they tend to attract attention to body parts one probably ought not to be staring at,” Leslie Kwoh writes in the Wall Street Journal. According to Bill Host, a hospitality and tourism management professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago, exemplary badges are 3 inches high, 4 inches wide, inside a plastic sleeve, and show the attendee’s first name at 36-point type, with the full name, title, company, city and state in 24-point type below.

Connect the thoughts: Conventional learning works up to a certain level, but thinking outside the box (making connections between art and science, for instance) can set you apart from others. Seth Godin believes learning through analogies, in a conceptual sense, can train marketers to think beyond the manual. “We over-rely on things where the specifics seem to match, but the lesson is obscured by the trivial,” Godin writes. “Sometimes when we see something happen that we can learn a conceptual lesson from, we instead jump to conclusions that the specifics are the important part.” It’s a lesson that isn’t just for marketers. How do you make sure you see the forest, and not just the trees?

New beginnings: Commencement addresses can be particularly inspiring. The speeches set the tone for new beginnings as new college graduates head off into “the real world.” They don’t really know what to expect, especially in the current job market. Over the last eight years, Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, and award-winning novelist David Foster Wallace have given what some consider three of the most inspiring commencement speeches about decision-making, kindness, and wisdom. Everyone from new grads to CEOs can draw some inspiration and motivation from their words.

What’s on your reading list today? Let us know in your comments below.

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For the first time in nearly two decades, the American Psychiatric Association has updated its manual used to classify and treat mental disorders–and the effort wasn’t without controversy. APA says the problem is not with the book itself but with its impact on the broader medical community.

It’s a manual two decades in the making, and it was already sparking controversy months before its release.

It’s no longer the best guide for research. We’re at a point now we’re ready to go to the next step.

On Saturday, the American Psychiatric Association released the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), a guidebook of diagnostic information for people with mental disorders that’s considered the “bible” of the mental health field.

APA, holding its annual meeting this week, has faced criticism about updates to the manual that reclassify a number of  ailments in significantly different ways. Critics say the manual has classified many normal emotional reactions, such as grief and anxiety, as “disorders” that require treatment, often with medication.

More details on how the association is handling the situation:

About the manual: In announcing DSM-5′s launch, APA noted that the manual had largely been restructured based on new information about the root causes of certain illnesses and that it would provide a better tool for mental health professionals. “The changes to the manual will help clinicians more precisely identify mental disorders and improve diagnosis while maintaining the continuity of care,” Dr. David J. Kupfer, who chaired the DSM-5 Task Force, said in a statement. [PDF] “We expect these changes to help clinicians better serve patients and to deepen our understanding of these disorders based on new research.”

The controversy: Some of the changes have raised red flags for doctors and the general public. In February, early information from the book reached the press. One change that drew attention was APA’s decision to drop Asperger’s syndrome and child disintegrative disorder as classifications, instead including them under the broader label of “autism spectrum disorder.” That revision, along with others, prompted a number of medical groups, led by the APA’s Society for Humanistic Psychology, to sponsor a petition asking the association to reconsider the approach to the manual “not only as select individuals on a committee, but as a professional community.” The petition, backed by  numerous association members as well as other divisions of APA, has nearly 15,000 signatures.

The response: Kupfer explains that the DSM, long considered a key guidebook to psychiatric research, has evolved into a tool best used for clinical care. Thomas Insel, the head of the National Institute of Mental Health, notes that the goal of the manual appears to have changed. “The DSM is the best we’ve got for clinical care,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s no longer the best guide for research. We’re at a point now [where] we’re ready to go to the next step.” Insel’s statement is notable because most NIMH research has previously required diagnostic criteria from DSM, and the way it classifies information has a major effect on grant funding, drug approvals, and medical billing.

While other classification options exist in the field, such as the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases, the DSM has remained at the forefront of mental health research for decades.

APA President-elect Jeffrey Lieberman, who chairs the psychiatry department at Columbia University, says the issue is not the content of the manual but the way it is used by psychologists, psychiatrists, and other clinicians.

“We’re trying to establish accurate and reliable guidelines, and you can’t completely control how they’re applied,” he told Reuters. “The problem is not with the instrument but with the way it’s used.”

The post Association Reacts to Controversy Over Psychiatric “Bible” appeared first on Associations Now.

Tech giant Yahoo is tempting fate by acquiring the social network Tumblr, a community that could, well, tumble, if handled the wrong way. Your own online community could learn something from this episode.

You could hear the cries of disappointment from miles away over the weekend.

The truth is, you can’t make “Fetch” happen. But you can find underserved communities, offer them a space to grow, be proactive with community interaction, and ensure your staff is willing to both interact and listen to user concerns.

They were coming from one of the more prominent social communities on the internet, Tumblr—an image-heavy blogging platform that’s home to audiences as diverse as news junkies, art addicts, Dr. Who-heads, fashionistas and Knicks fans.

One audience that isn’t catered to so heavily? Business professionals. But there’s a reason for that: Tumblr, like many budding social networks, skews young.

That’s exactly why Yahoo, an early online portal that’s struggled to keep its mojo into its second decade, agreed to buy the service this week. Tumblr users, who are known to voice frustration about even small changes to the site’s interface, reacted accordingly—just check out this raw tag feed of posts labeled “Yahoo!”, which I’ll warn you right now may contain profanity.

(Speaking of profanities, Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp’s message on the acquisition includes one, along with this statement on the product’s future: “So what’s new? Simply, Tumblr gets better faster. The work ahead of us remains the same—and we still have a long way to go!—but with more resources to draw from.”)

The thing is, as much as these people may or may not have anything to worry about regarding Yahoo’s Tumblr buyout in the long run, they have a good reason to be concerned now. Community is difficult to build, especially from scratch, as any association can tell you. And if people start leaving Tumblr, that community will lose its glue.

Yahoo, being a large company, needs that glue. It has created and owned platforms very similar to Tumblr in the past—including Yahoo Meme, back in 2009—only to see these platforms fade. That’s because building a community is far harder than building a product. And that’s why Yahoo was willing to pay $1.1 billion for Tumblr, promising in a  press release “not to screw it up.”

But this whole situation has me thinking about the structural integrity of online communities. What makes one shrivel and another blossom, like Tumblr has?

Bells and Whistles ≠ Community

The secret here is that you can’t build a social community on good intentions. Google is evidence of this.

Last week at the Google I/O conference, the company launched some products that look extremely impressive, most notably the Google+ redesign. But even with all of the design perks of the new site (seriously, check it out), the real eye-opener was the one element of the social network that’s an unqualified success: the video-chat platform Hangouts, which has found an audience in the education community in particular and has tapped into the strength of Google’s other popular social network, YouTube.

And while freemium Twitter competitor App.net offers many things its much larger competitor does not, including a developer-friendly environment, one thing it does not have is a large number of users outside of the tech sector. It has potential, and it has community. But the hard part is expanding reach while keeping its insular appeal.

The truth is, you can’t make “Fetch” happen. But you can find underserved communities, offer them a space to grow, be proactive with community interaction, and ensure your staff is willing to both interact and listen to user concerns.

Even the best communities wobble after a while, though.

One Community’s Fade

Back in 2004, when I first got into the newspaper industry, my approach to raising my voice in the field was through a forum I found called Visual Editors, a site that offered something the industry group for my section of the newsroom, the Society for News Design (SND), did not at the time.

And it had one killer feature that gave the industry something it had never had before—a way to instantly communicate.

See, many newspaper designers work the same kind of schedule: At the end of the night, designers generally had a one-hour gap where they waited for the copy desk to go through their pages—and this forum had the perfect outlet for those designers to talk shop via web chat while they were waiting. Many friendships were made through this site, and when SND’s annual meetings came up, the relationships were already solid long before anyone met in person.

But when the site eventually moved to the social-network-in-a-box Ning platform, something changed about the dynamic. The bells and whistles got in the way of the real reason everyone showed up—to talk about newspaper design. (And worse, the web chat was de-emphasized, removing one of the main reasons many people used the site.) And slowly, the original community dispersed, eventually moving to other platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter.

The community is still online (and it produced one bona fide industry star in American Copy Editors Society blogger Charles Apple), but it’s not nearly as influential as it was.

Shaken, Not Stirred

In its own way, that’s what Tumblr users are freaking out about.

Many of the older users came from other communities, like LiveJournal and MySpace, where bad corporate decisions and acquisitions undermined the original goals of the community and eventually compelled users to leave.

Should we give Yahoo a chance, however? Yes, because while Yahoo’s track record is spotty, Google (with YouTube) and Facebook (with Instagram) have each bought a product just as it was growing and managed not to lose its community going forward. And with change agent Marissa Mayer at the helm, the chances of Yahoo not screwing things up might be better than ever before.

All of this is to say one thing: Do what you can to protect your community’s integrity, no matter where it is, whether it’s behind closed doors or out in the public space.

It only takes one wrong move to cause all of the Jenga blocks to tumble over, and you could be left picking up the pieces.

The post The Challenge of Keeping Online Communities Standing appeared first on Associations Now.

It can be time-consuming, but working to categorize your notes can ensure what’s in them turns into action. Also: What happens when budgets get involved in strategic planning? An association consultant’s take on budget and decision-making.

Between notes, Post-its, and digital note-taking, you may be losing touch with your ideas and to-do lists. How can you make sure those items don’t just stay on paper?

Ideas to help you categorize your notes, and more, in today’s Social Media Roundup:

Sea Of Paperwork

How to Turn Info Overload into Action by @_chelleshock ow.ly/ldcte via @lorirtaylor #eventprofs #contentchat

— Smarter Shift (@SmarterShft) May 20, 2013

Notes can get lost in a sea of paperwork and documents. Keep all the bits and pieces in one spot to make sure what’s on them turns into something that gets done, recommends organizational guru Michelle Nickolaisen. This initial step makes it easier to sort through them, especially when they’re organized into categories. “Here’s the key to effective sorting—you have to sort it into categories that are useful for you. Not someone else, but you and your habits,” Nickolaisen says. What are some of your organizational techniques for important notes and documents? (ht @SmarterShft)

Money and Strategy

Financial sustainability does not belong in your strategic plan (by @jamienotter) #assnchat buff.ly/10CqKaR

— Votenet Solutions (@votenet) May 20, 2013

Should budget be part of your association’s strategy? According to association consultant Jamie Notter, “financial sustainability is not a choice” and shouldn’t be a part of your strategic plan. Financial sustainability is “not a path to success, it is a metric of success. My fear is that we include it in our plans because historically there were time periods where financial sustainability was ignored, so we add it in to make sure it gets our attention,” he writes. Do you keep budget outside of your strategic choices? (ht @votenet)

What links have you been sharing today? Let us know in the comments.

The post Social Media Roundup: Time to Categorize Your Notes appeared first on Associations Now.

After enduring a wet winter and sequestration delays, U.S. airlines can take heart in an Airlines for America prediction that more passengers will travel by plane this summer than a year ago.

Flyers—including those headed to your annual meeting—should expect plenty of company at the airport this summer.

Customers continue to benefit from the proactive and collaborative approach the airlines are taking to prepare for and minimize travel disruptions.

More people will fly this summer than a year ago, according to a forecast by Airlines for America (A4A), the industry trade organization for the leading U.S. airlines.

The association expects U.S. airlines will carry nearly 209 million passengers globally from June through August, an increase of 1 percent from the same period in 2012. It also predicts a record 27 million international passengers.

“As we enter the peak summer travel season, Airlines for America expects U.S. airlines to see modest year-over-year growth in both domestic and international travel, including an all-time high for passengers traveling internationally,” A4A Vice President and Chief Economist John Heimlich said in a statement. “It’s a great time to fly as airfares remain a bargain and airlines are delivering strong on-time performance.”

If the forecast is accurate, it will mark the largest summer volume for U.S. airlines since 2008, when more than 210 million traveled. The Los Angeles Times reports that the average plane will be roughly 87 percent full throughout the summer. A4A attributes the increase to rising household net worth and corporate profits, strong airline operational performance, and recent relief in energy prices.

“Customers continue to benefit from the proactive and collaborative approach the airlines are taking to prepare for and minimize travel disruptions,” Dan Elwell, A4A’s senior vice president of safety, security, and operations, said in a statement.

A4A also estimates that 600,000 airline customers were disrupted by 7,200 sequestration-related flight delays in April. A USA Today report cites the wet winter as another reason airlines lost an estimated $50 million.

“Moisture in our business translates into delays, ground holds, and ground stops,”  Elwell told USA Today. “Quite frankly, I think the numbers could have been worse.”

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