P.I. Blog readers are invited to register at a 10% discount (until December 1, 2009) by using the link above.  This is going to be a great webinar, so I hope you’ll join me on January 6 and help prepare your association for 2010!

EVENT DETAIL FOR JANUARY 6, 2010 P.I. BRIEFING WEBINAR

2009 has been a very tough year for associations and their leaders.
2010 can be better, but only if you’re prepared for what’s next.
Here’s your chance to get ready…

Let’s be honest:  2009 has been a really difficult year for assocations, for reasons we know all too well.  Now, as this terrible year comes to an end, it’s time for association leaders to get ready for 2010 by learning how they can make it a better year for their members and stakeholders, as well as their organizations.

Join Jeff De Cagna–the association community’s leading voice for innovation–for a comprehensive look at the trends that will shape the year 2010, and the strategic questions your association must be able answer if you’re going to capitalize on them.

Now, you’re probably already asking yourself another question:  there are so many no-cost webinar opportunities out there, what will I get for $99 that I can’t get for free?  And here’s the answer:

1.  Access to fresh, up-to-the-moment future-focused content, curated by one of the most provocative thinkers on the future of our community, exclusively for association leaders.

2.  Access to the 2010 Trends Webinar discussion guide for use with your board or staff to build your association’s capacity to think and act strategically in a time of great volatility and uncertainty.

3.  Access to Jeff’s Top Ten 2010 Forecasts for Associations, including function-specific forecasts for key areas of your association’s work so your entire team can prepare effectively for the year ahead.

For only $50 more, your association will receive an audio recording of the webinar and a PDF of the slides so you can share this high-impact learning opportunity with others in your organization!

SPECIAL OFFER

For only $249, you can maximize your association’s access to foresight.  In addition to the January 6, 2010 live webinar, discussion guide, Jeff’s forecasts and post-webinar resources, you will receive the P.I. 2010 Trends Briefing Memo.  This unique memo, created exclusively for association community leaders, will expand on the Top Ten Forecasts with more detailed information and insights, as well as actionable strategic guidance.  In addition, the P.I. 2010 Trends Briefing Memo will include sector-specific forecasts for education, health care and other professions and industries.

The P.I. 2010 Trends Briefing Memo will be sent in early February 2010 to all attendees choosing this registration option.

Don’t miss this powerful opportunity to get your association ready for 2010!

Register for the January 6, 2010 P.I. Briefing on Top 2010 Trends for Associations and receive a 10% discount (until December 1, 2009).

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pinnovation.

“We need new choices.”

I’m thinking this is the perfect mantra for association leaders as we approach 2010.  Associations face complex challenges, and the current options for tackling them don’t really inspire too much confidence in our ultimate success.  Not only do we need to think about our problems in new ways, but we literally need different strategies for solving them.  In other words, we need new choices.

Tim Brown’s excellent new book, Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation, is all about how mindset and approaches of design thinking can help all organizations create new choices.  We had a terrific conversation about the nature of design thinking, the “new social contract,” and what makes IDEO a remarkable company.  Listen to our conversation, then go out and buy this book!

This podcast (22.5 MB download) is just over 24 minutes in length.  Please e-mail me if you have any comments, questions and suggestions for future guests.  And please don’t forget to follow me on Twitter!

Download audio file (timbrown.mp3)

Links mentioned during the podcast

+Stanford d.school

+IDEO’s Human-Centered Design Toolkit

+Relevance isn’t a purpose–How will your association’s pursuit of relevance nurture an authentic connection to purpose among your stakeholders?  The answer is it won’t.  There is nothing compelling or inspirational about being relevant.  The quest for relevance is a quixotic effort that undermines your association’s capacity to deeply engage its most passionate stakeholders in co-creating truly distinctive forms of value, and wastes precious organizational attention, energy and financial resources.

+Relevance isn’t a strategy–Since we’ve been talking about relevance for such a long time, you would think more associations would have cracked the code by now.  So why are so many organizations in our community still doing so much irrelevant stuff?  Why are so many associations still trapped inside their legacy programs, structures and systems?  It’s because relevance isn’t an actual strategy, merely a cognitive device we use to justify the painfully-slow incremental change we prefer over the systemic innovation our organizations require.

+Relevance isn’t a business model–As we enter a “reset economy,” associations are understandably concerned about the sustainability of their existing business models.  Arguably the most significant innovation challenge (and opportunity) associations will have during this still unfolding period of uncertainty is the task of designing and developing generative new business models that are grounded in purpose, and built on meaning, intimacy and support.  The relevance argument does nothing to advance our work in this regard, and associations should abandon any mental model that interferes with their ability to identify ways they can be better than relevant.

Associations face serious and complex problems today and in the years ahead, and relevance-oriented thinking will not help us solve them.  It’s time to start thinking in a brand new way about what will.

I’d like to share some of the experience, so here is my quick top ten list of favorite things from BIF-5 (#BIF5) Day One, with some help from my fellow Twitterers. (FYI, I’m @pinnovation) Thank you all for being so terrific.

10.  We talked openly about breasts and testicles, and everyone made it through any embarrassment they were feeling around those conversations, especially me.  (The common denominator:  take the early detection of cancer very seriously.)

9.  17 presentations. Not a single bullet point. Not a podium in sight. (via @tjsondermann)

When you’re right, you’re right.

8.  Roger Martin quotes The Economist: “MBA programs churn out jargon-spewing economic vandals” (via @chimoose)

Ditto.

7.  I am honored to be in presence of so many smart, accomplished people at BIF Summit. Wow. Brain spinning. Looking forward to tomorrow. (via @ericadriver)

The level of the intellects in the room, both on stage and in the seats, is quite staggering and quite humbling.  I was especially excited to meet Alex Osterwalder (@business_design), the lead author of the new book, Business Model Innovation, an extraordinary work in the creation of which I was privileged to participate along with 400+ community members around the world.  If you’re planning to be here tomorrow, try to meet Alex.  Great guy, great book.

6. Although we talk about velocity, sometimes an entrepreneur’s story is about way-finding, a journey over time, like @sweetriot (via @aptuscollab)

The notion of discovery or “finding” was present throughout the day, and it raises what I think is an important question about innovation we need to be able to answer:  if innovation truly is about discovery, i.e., finding, tinkering, experimenting/learning over time, how do we build organizational patience for discovery as an element of innovation capacity building?

5. Neri Oxman: manmade designs: model/simulate/fabricate=different systems. Biosystems simultaneously model/simulate/fabricate (via @kippworks) 

Neri Oxman totally blew me away with her talk.  It was incredibly thought-provoking, complex and nuanced.  Without trying to trivialize Neri’s work by extrapolating in a different direction, I believe the notion of design as “form-finding” rather than “form-making” has important implications for our organizations, especially as we think about business model innovation. 

4.  I heard more people use the word “generative” here today than I usually do in a month outside of this community.  We’re so caught up in being effective and productive, especially right now, I’m concerned that our organizations have forgotten what it means to originate, i.e., to be generative.  It really doesn’t have to be an either/or choice.

3.  Innovation requires a level of vulnerability that most are not comfortable with - Saul Kaplan (@skap5) (via @aphaneuf)

I think this is observation is spot on, and for me it is the flip side of the passion that innovators feel for their work.  Passionate people naturally want to share that passion with others, which creates vulnerability.  Saul has written eloquently on the subject of passion and innovation.

2.  Michael Samuelson: as an innovator, let the hubris go. Ask the stupid questiions don’t be practical. (via @jpamental)

Permission to defy conventional wisdom and standard expectations…exactly what we needed to set the tone for the two days.

1. Common theme at BIF:  you never know what creativity might come from disparate groups of people (via @rcorke)

I was especially excited at the diversity of disciplines represented by today’s storytellers…a very powerful mix of personal and professional reflections.

If you’re here at BIF-5, I hope you’ll share your top five or ten things from the first day.  If you don’t have your own blog where you can post them, you can always add your list as a comment below.  Can’t wait for tomorrow!

Download audio file (krminterviewonmobile.mp3)

As I’m sure you will gather by listening to either version of this interview, I’m very excited about the disruptive potential of mobile for associations.  If you share my excitement and want to learn more about what is possible in the mobile space, I hope you’ll join me this Friday, October 9 for my webinar, “Building Distributed Engagement: What Associations Can Learn from the iPhone and The Mobile Web.”

Many thanks to Mary for a great conversation and to KRM for inviting me to share my thoughts!

I apologize to everyone for the last minute change in plans, especially to the organizers of the Reston Idea Swap.  Thank you for your understanding.

Jim Leach, a former Member of Congress and the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, reminds of this essential fact in a short speech delivered earlier this month at the University of Virginia.  In his remarks, Leach reflects on whether there is an “inalienable right” to curiosity.  He argues:

Many might find the importance I give the concept of curiosity itself a curious thought. But curiosity is imaginative thinking. And imagination fortified by knowledge is a powerful force. It is exactly what oppressive states fear. That is why oppressors are invariably censors. They attempt to close the ears of their people and cloak them with orthodoxy of one kind or another. But the human soul is by nature curious and responds to imaginative thought. It is no accident that it was a playwright in Czechoslovakia, a humanist labor leader in Poland, and a Pope in Rome who established that the human spirit is more powerful than a tank commander reporting to an ideologue in the Kremlin. Ideas matter. And when ideas are amplified by recognition that alternative models of governance exist, whether they be in far-away or adjacent places, people-centric approaches become more easily imagined and demanded.

Without trying to diminish the deeper meaning and broader implications of Leach’s powerful words, we should acknowledge that in the midst of our current crisis, associations must confront their own “oppressors.”  The tyranny of past orthodoxies–who we’ve always been, what we’ve always known, what we’ve always done–too often closes present-day minds to the possibilities of a still unfolding and uncertain future.  As we continue to move toward a reset economy based on rethought assumptions, however, our capacity to nurture and support human curiosity and imagination will be integral to any success our associations may achieve.

Far from being a luxury, Leach concludes that “…the future is now the province of the curious.” When it comes to the future of the association community and its stakeholders everywhere, I certainly hope he is right.

Learn about my upcoming webinar series at bit.ly/KcsTQ.
Please follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pinnovation.

Announcements

On Friday, September 25, I am launching my three-part webinar series, The New Look of Associating: Innovation Strategies from the Social Web.  There is still time to register for the entire series, or for any of the individual webinars.  This is a unique and exciting learning opportunity for association leaders, and I hope you’ll consider being a part of it.

If you’re planning to be in the Reston-Herndon area this Thursday afternoon (9/24), please join me for the September Reston Idea Swap, sponsored by ASAE & The Center.  I will be speaking on the topic, “Leading in Turbulent Times: Hard Choices, Huge Opportunities,” and it promises to be a lively conversation.

Registration for in-person attendance is required, but if you’re not able to be there F2F, you can watch the livestream beginning around 3 pm EDT.  The Twitter hashtag is #pisessions.

In the next day or so, look for another announcement here about two other sessions I hope to be livestreaming early next week.

Resources

You can download the PDF of my article, “Association Success in the Era of Social Business,” in the current issue of FORUM, the truly superb magazine of the Association Forum of Chicagoland. (It is a 280 KB download.)

Please listen to the interview I gave to my friend and fellow blogger, Sue Pelletier, on whether social technologies are making us antisocial.  My conclusion: I don’t think so, they are simply challenging us to rethink what it means to be social.

A recent interview I gave about the mobile opportunity for associations should be posted this week, so stay tuned for an announcement about that resource as well.

If you have an opportunity to share your feedback on anything included in this post, it would be great to hear from you.  I hope everyone has a terrific week!

Please follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pinnovation.

+Interaction is cheap and plentiful, but trust is not.

+Contributing is more useful than joining.

+Purpose and meaning are more valuable than products.

There is more to come on each of these points, and others as well…stay tuned.

The timing of this dialogue is interesting because it is taking place just as I am about to begin a three-part webinar series called The New Look of Associating: Innovation Strategies from the Social Web.  During the series, I plan to explore the membership question in the context of the broader shift emerging around the concept of associating in a Web-enabled world.  Here is additional information on the three sessions of the webinar series:

September 25, 2009

Building Social Platforms: What Associations Can Learn from Facebook and Twitter

Public social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have made it possible for us to see and manage valuable relationships that were previously invisible to us, as well as create new virtual connections that can be sustained with less effort than face-to-face. This session will challenge participants to question long-standing assumptions about membership, and re-imagine traditional association approaches to building and coordinating member relationships.

October 2, 2009

Building Collaborative Communities: What Associations Can Learn from Wikipedia and Firefox

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia and the social browser Firefox are more than just powerful Web properties. Both are dynamic knowledge-based resources created by global collaborative communities in which all contributors are involved on a voluntary basis. This session will challenge participants to think differently about how communities can drive innovation, and devise new strategies for organizing association stakeholders for value creation.

October 9, 2009

Building Distributed Engagement: What Associations Can Learn from the iPhone and The Mobile Web

The worldwide adoption of Web-enabled smartphones continues to grow unabated. In less than two years, the iPhone has become the market standard for mobile devices, and the mobile web is already emerging as a promising platform for distributed engagement. This session will challenge participants to explore new forms of stakeholder participation, and embrace the design of simple and lightweight opportunities for meaningful engagement.

There is still time to register for the entire series (the better deal), but you also have the option of registering for any of the three webinars on an individual basis as well.  (The titles above are linked to registration pages for each webinar.)  I hope you will consider joining me for this unique learning opportunity.

IMPORTANT NOTE:  I am pleased to announce three associations that have already decided to join me for all three sessions are the recipients of a BONUS webinar with me at the conclusion of the series, during which we will consider the specific implications of the series content for those organizations:

Canadian Society of Hospital Pharmacists
Cascade Employers Association (Oregon)
Pennsylvania Association of Homes and Services for the Aging

Your association still has an opportunity to win a BONUS webinar as well, but only if you register for the three-part series by this Friday, September 18.  Three more associations will be chosen at random and announced early next week. I hope your organization will be one of them!

Learn about my upcoming webinar series at bit.ly/KcsTQ.
Please follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pinnovation.