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August 2019

There’s no doubt technology has transformed the way associations – and everyone else – conduct business. For the most part, that’s a good thing.

Email allows us to connect instantly with members and supporters while saving postage and trees. Research can be completed with the click of a mouse instead of a trip to the library.

With video and phone conferencing, boards and committees can conduct business without the expense of time and money to meet in person. When face-to-face events do happen, conference apps enable attendees to find one another and organizers to make last-minute program changes.

Connectivity makes it possible for employees to work from anywhere. Social media present a wealth of opportunities for marketing, member engagement, event promotion and more. Online analytics give us feedback at our fingertips on how well our messaging is working – or isn’t.

As with all good things, however, too much digital has its downside.

July 2019
Association boards are made up of volunteers who are donating their time to the organization, so dealing with a problematic president, churlish chair or disagreeable director can be tricky. Unlike employees, they can’t just be taken off the payroll – they aren’t on it.

One place to start is by focusing on the positive aspects of our relationship with these disruptive folks – the way they have forced us to develop the skills that make us more effective association executives. Here are a few disruptors you’ve most certainly met. We’ve assigned each prototype a gender, but they come in all sizes, shapes and sexes.

June 2019

Ten years after “There’s an app for that” became a household phrase, there really is an app for just about everything, including things the folks at Apple probably hadn’t thought of when they coined the slogan.

Not only are apps everywhere, they’ve become more versatile – and so have their users.

This is especially true of event and conference apps. Once considered an expensive extra, they’ve become as essential to many associations’ event plans as name badges and sponsorship packages.

If you’ve used a conference app, you know what’s in them: the schedule, presenter bios, venue map, attendee list, sponsor and exhibitor information, and the all-important post-conference survey. Depending on the event and the budget, the app might also have functions for rating presenters, voting on “people’s choice” awards, and earning points in a scavenger hunt or similar game.

May 2019

The rules of member engagement are changing. “Everybody does it” is no longer a strong enough reason to compel people to join your association. That’s why membership incentives are more popular than ever.

In today’s world of social media and the tools that surround it, anyone can form a group or a following. If so, should people have to pay to belong?

A recent, bold incentive that some professional and trade associations have tried is free membership – who doesn’t love a freebie? While it sounds cutting edge, ADG went on a mission to find out who is doing it and how they make it work.

The end result of our search? We have yet to find an association that charges no dues at all. Even those with mostly free memberships have one or more premium options.

April 2019

Even if you’ve never heard one, you probably know about podcasts – downloadable audio files on a variety of topics, from crime to comedy, politics to pop culture. A recent New York magazine cover story on the podcast phenomenon estimated there are now about 660,000 podcasts in production, reaching more than 60 million listeners.

Podcasting was born in the mid-2000s, shortly after the first portable mp3 players hit the market. The word “podcast” is a portmanteau of “broadcast” and “iPod,” making it a somewhat archaic term, as nowadays most of us listen to them on smartphones, not iPods.

Associations have begun discovering the power of podcasts as a tool to reach members, other stakeholders and the public. We don’t expect them to replace other communications media, but they can go places where others can’t – literally.

Unlike videos and webinars that are best watched, and newsletters that must be read, podcasts don’t require eyeballs – just ears. They can be consumed in the car, on the job, at the gym and anywhere else a smartphone can go.

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Literary Life Hacks

- Literary Life Hack #15: Quotations and Punctuation, Part 2: The When and Why
  
  Use double quotation marks — singles are only for “quotes within quotes”:
  
  “I can sing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ all by myself,” the little girl said.
  
  What quote marks are for:
  - Quotations (duh)
  - Titles of movies, plays, songs, TV shows, books (but not magazines, newspapers or reference works)
  - Nicknames (e.g., Thomas “Tip” O’Neill)
  - Irony/sarcasm/playfulness (My friend’s “party” was nothing but a sales pitch for those “miracle creams” she sells. My son made a “spaceship” out of a cardboard box.)
  What quote marks are not for:
  - Emphasis. If you want a word or phrase to stand out, put it in bold, all caps, a larger font, a contrasting color or all of the above – NOT in quotes. (See what we did there?) There is a special place in Copy Crank Hell for those who misuse both quote marks and apostrophes as attention getters (“New Car’s” for sale! Don’t miss out on our “Big Deal’s”!).
- Literary Life Hack #14: Quotations and Punctuation, Part 1: The Ins and Outs
  
  Do punctuation marks go inside or outside quotation marks? It depends.
  
  Commas and periods go inside the quotes, whether they are part of the quoted material or not:
  
  Franklin Roosevelt said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
  
  “I’m looking forward to the conference,” she said.
  
  The best picture Oscar went to “The Shape of Water.”
  
  (Side note: In the second example, note that the quotation ends in a comma, not a period. That’s because the quoted matter is not at the end of the sentence.)
  
  Question marks and exclamation points go inside the quotes if they are part of the quoted material – outside if they aren’t.
  
  “Look out!” cried Chicken Little. “Can’t you see the sky is falling?”
  
  Have you read “How to Win Friends and Influence People”?
  
  Colons and semicolons go outside.
  
  The following actors appear in “Mary Poppins Returns”: Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw and Emily Mortimer.
  
  My favorite TV show is “Seinfeld”; unfortunately, it ended 20 years ago.
- Literary Life Hack #13: The Comma Conundrum Part 2: Compound Interest
  
  In a compound sentence (one with two or more verbs, each with its own subject), the sentences-within-the-sentence should be separated by commas.
  
  The meeting runs from 9 am to 5 pm, and lunch is included.
  
  I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and people like me!
  
  Commas are not necessary if it isn’t a true compound sentence:
  
  The meeting runs from 9 am to 5 pm and includes lunch.
  
  There is no rule against using commas in a non-compound sentence, however. Especially if the sentence is long, it might call for a comma or two as a “breather” for the reader.
- Literary Life Hack #12: The Comma Conundrum Part 1: Super Serial
  
  The serial comma, aka Oxford comma, comes before the conjunction in a series. In “red, white, and blue,” it’s the comma after “white.” Whether to use it is one of the most hotly debated issues among editors and writers.
  
  Associated Press style (used by most U.S. newspapers) advises against using it unless it’s needed for clarity – generally because one of the items in the series has a conjunction of its own:
  
  His favorite bands are the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Journey.
  
  His favorite bands are the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Sonny and Cher, and Journey.
  
  We’re pro-AP style – therefore, anti-Oxford comma unless it’s absolutely necessary – but you may run into someone who insists on them. Give them what they want; it’s the proper, right, and correct thing to do. (See what we did there?)
- Literary Life Hack #11: Squirrelly Plurals, Part 2: Nothin’ but Nouns
  
  English is easy when it comes to plurals. Only the noun changes when we form the plural – adjectives and other modifiers stay the same: Red rose, red roses. Stone house, stone houses.
  
  That rule doesn’t change when the modifier comes after the noun – as in court-martial, notary public, attorney general or mother-in-law. Pluralize only the noun: courts-martial, notaries public, attorneys general, mothers-in-law.
  
  When in doubt, ask yourself which word in the phrase does not make sense as a noun, and pluralize the other one. (Yes, “general” can be a noun, but an attorney general is not an officer in the Army. “In-law” can be a noun, but it’s usually plural when used alone – “I love my in-laws.”)
- Literary Life Hack #10: Squirrelly Plurals, Part 1: Names
  
  Most of us have mastered the rules for making common nouns plural (books, foxes, babies, valleys) and the many exceptions to those rules (men, women, children, people). Names, however, trip a lot of people up, despite having a simpler set of rules with no exceptions.
  
  Most names can be made plural simply by adding an S:
  The Smiths live next door. Their son, John, is one of three Johns in his class.
  
  For names ending in CH, SH, S, X or Z, use “-es,” same as with common nouns:
  The Bushes and the Cruzes are trying to keep up with the Joneses.
  There are three Maxes and two Riches in our office.
  
  Names ending in Y get an S, never an “-ies”:
  The Kirbys, the Murphys and the Dickeys all named their daughters Becky. That’s a lot of Beckys!
  
  Never, ever use an apostrophe – alone or with an S – to pluralize any noun that is more than one letter long.

More Literary Life Hacks