BlogClump - Blogging About Associations From a Gen Xer

I knew that I had to get my thoughts out yesterday as early as possible because a much more eloquent post from Maddie Grant would be on its way. If you haven't read it yet, you should, especially the comments. I wanted to write a bit more regarding some comments left on both posts. Michelle (@ExpoQueenUSA) asked some good questions, which I will answer from my perspective. 1) Did they plan the activities, sessions, and expo according to the needs of those attending? - I would say yes. A few speakers fell flat, but nobody bats 1,000. And it is hard to have one conference covering such a vast array of attendees. I think that is why the MMC and Tech Conference are so popular. They are more laser focused. 2) Did they communicate their travel info, schedule of events, etc. successfully with attendees, exhibitors and speakers, etc before the show? (In print, email, online) - Totally, 100% 3)Did they encourage and enable all parties to communicate, connect, and ENGAGE with each o...

Ok, so I could have spelled out the title, but chose the hashtag - #asae10. Supposedly there were over 8,000 tweets with the hashtag, but probably countless more direct messages of messages that left out the hashtag but were conference related. Two years ago, we were using twitter as a backchannel to talk about speakers. Now, over 800 people sent conference related tweets. If you aren't on Twitter, you are already late to the party. Anyway, on with the post... In no particular order, my thoughts on this years ASAE Annual Conference: 1. LA was a good venue. Lots to do. Hotels close by. Only downside was the rooms were a bit of a hike. 2. I missed Sunday because of family obligations. That really put me behind the 8 ball. Since I led a session, that meant I only got to go to 3 true sessions. Sorry, I don't count Joy Behar and the closing session. Although Marshall Goldsmith was good, I probably wouldn't have gone to see that speech as a Learning Lab. 3. Based on #...