We were lucky enough to see some great Twitter activity during the recent Great Ideas Conference, so we decided to play with it at bit and see if there's a way to boil the information down and present it more simply. Summer Faust, an editor here at ASAE & The Center, went through all of the Tweets marked with the #ideas09 hashtag and tried to organize the "notes" Tweets (as opposed to more social ones) into a format that Great Ideas attendees and those who didn't attend could find useful.

You can see what she came up with on the Great Ideas website. You'll notice that she's separated them into several categories: "Conference Takeaways" is for notes that don't seem to be connected to a specific education session, while "Attendee Feedback" is for comments about the conference itself. The remainder of the Tweets are organized under the name of the education session they're based on.

The whole point of this experiment was to find ways to add value to the great Tweets posted during the conference, so we'd appreciate any feedback you might have. What do you think? Is this reorganized version more useful than the raw Twitterstream? Less useful? Is it worthwhile to provide a boiled-down version of the Twitterstream in this way? Are there ways it could be better--or entirely different approaches that you would suggest? (If there are any other associations doing something similar that have advice to share, that would be great too!)

- The vibrant volunteerism unsession is continuing on Facebook.

- The unsession also continues online: Lynn Morton at the SNAP blog is the latest person to post her thoughts about ad-hoc volunteer opportunities.

- The Hourglass Blog writes about generations at Great Ideas.

- Alli Gerkman at the Next Generation Event blog has some comments on one of the videos shot at Great Ideas and what it says about repurposing education content online.

- Some notes from the wiki session at Great Ideas have been posted in the Associapedia wiki.

- Jamie Notter posted twice about the results of the Idea Lab on leadership lessons from 80s music. Warning: If you remember these songs, reading these posts will get them stuck in your head.

- Our newest Acronym blogger, Art Hsieh, posted on his own blog about what he learned from Patti Digh's general session presentation.

- Elizabeth Weaver Engel posted twice about her Great Ideas experience, once on the Beaconfire Wire blog and once on her own Thanks for Playing blog.

Thinking about it afterwards, I felt both exhilarated and a little overwhelmed about the experience. On one hand, listening to the live discussion and watching it translate into an online event through Twitter was amazing. At times there were discussions happening outside the classroom regarding the topic; then the occasional question came from the online world back into the session itself. Amazing! Here was an ability to engage an audience without significant high tech engagement and still carry the significance. Simultaneously I was following other folks tweeting about the other sessions I couldn’t attend. Wow!

On the other hand, at times I simply couldn’t keep up with the flow. I am a bit older and a bit set in the ways I absorb information; as I clumsily worked my smartphone keyboard I would be distracted and miss part of the live discussion. The twitter stream was hard to grasp too - having to scroll back up to track the online comments, or doing a search for a hashtag were cumbersome tasks. Sometimes I felt that I couldn’t do justice to what the speaker was trying to communicate in 140 characters, resulting in an inadequate comment or not sending one at all. As a regular presenter and educator I wanted to not denigrate the information, even as the topic was ironically about social media.

So, a week after my own internal experiment, where am I? Still interested and intrigued - heck, I’m even willing to embarrass myself through the occasional blog. I’m tweeting less, for which my nonassociation friends are grateful. My posts are more directed, working on content as well as style. I haven’t yet begun to figure out how to integrate/separate pure personal from pure professional. I’m not feeling as unconsciously incompetent (not knowing what I don’t know) as I did two weeks ago; yet I’m not sure if I’ve reached conscious incompetency (knowing what I don’t know). I certainly do thank the ASAE folks who helped me to work and understand this technology, whether in sessions or online. That’s the wonder and power of associations - getting great ideas from folks willing to help out!

That said, I found the content to be insufficiently challenging. Not that the content was of poor quality. It was good content, say on par with Annual. But, I guess I was expecting every session to be really out there in terms of level of innovation or controversy of ideas (like my debate on the death of membership). In short, I was expecting way more heretical content than solid status quo content.

There were a few gems... The Dan Roam visual problem solving keynote was great. The '80s music leadership session was way out there. The volunteering unsession was a cool experiment. And a small few others...

Different definition/expectation of "great", I guess.

David Gammel wants to empower you to make changes to your website! In a recent post on the High Context blog, he shares his Great Ideas slides about how to do just that.

Jeff Cobb of the Mission to Learn blog was inspired by Dan Roam's presentation at Great Ideas (I particularly like the drawing Jeff shares).

At the face2face blog, Sue Pelletier continues the conversation about Twitter at Great Ideas.

More Great Ideas videos are now available online, including Patti Digh's general session presentation, as well as Bob Carr of SHRM talking about meeting strategies in a down economy, Howard Horowitz of the American College of Healthcare Executives on taking education programs online, and Carolyn Fazio of Fazio International on creating contracts with your volunteers.

Ann Oliveri has some thoughts about being human at the Zen of Associations blog, inspired by Patti Digh’s talk and other conversations she had at Great Ideas.

And last but not least, a bunch of new photos were added to the Great Ideas Flickr pool since we all returned from Miami.

When someone asks you to volunteer, "what's the politically correct way to say 'no'?"

Pause.

"I don't have time."

Love that line, by far my favorite of the conference.

And there was an idea attached to it—a really good one. You're getting the politically correct version of "no" because the ask isn't right. You need to engage the prospective volunteer in conversation, ascertain if they are most likely to volunteer because they want:

-to make a difference
-personal or professional development
-social opportunities

From there, tailor the ask to the desire.

See the handouts from the presentation for the next month.

MariAnne Woehrle (@agnewfarms) created this Wordle based on the Great Ideas Twitter stream, and kindly gave me permission to post it here. Click on it to see it in better detail.

It's an interesting way of zeroing in on the central issues discussed over Twitter during the conference. I really like that "members" jumps clearly to the forefront ... what do you think?

- Ann Oliveri looks at Great Ideas as an ideas ecosystem.

- The Great Ideas Twitter stream hosted a lot of interesting feedback and discussion around various conference sessions; new ideas have been posted since the conference ended, so it's worth checking out again if you haven't visited recently.

- Speaking of Twitter, Cynthia D'Amour wonders what future impact Twittering will have on conferences like Great Ideas, while Ben Martin shares some tips for speakers on how to handle an audience of Twitterers. (I've also heard them called Tweeple, but that makes me imagine an audience full of Weeble people for some reason ...) And Julie Hewett shares some thoughts on her experience following the conference via Twitter.

- Maddie Grant at the Socialfishing blog saw some themes emerging over the course of the conference.

- Peggy Hoffman has an update on the volunteerism unsession at Great Ideas.

- On a related note, Dave Sabol's post for the unsession attracted some great discussion in comments, which lead Dave to post a follow-up with his thoughts on what it means to volunteer.

- Tony Rossell has some analysis of the ASAE & The Center economic impact study that was presented at Great Ideas.

- For anyone who was interested in the "Success From Failure" session at the conference, some good thoughts on how to learn from organizational failures (and successes) are available in this article on the Army's After Action Reports (via The Bamboo Project).

I am really grateful to have had the opportunity to blog for Acronym throughout the conference. Not only was it nice to be able to add to Lisa and the other conference bloggers’ perspectives, knowing I had to blog about my impressions really enhanced the value of the meeting for me. As I sat in sessions, I had to do more than just listen and take notes; I had to be thinking of how I could weave the information presented into blog posts that were (hopefully) worth reading and would add value to both attendees and people who weren’t able to attend in person.

If my task had been just to take notes and write a report about the information presented, it would have been all about summing up the facts logically and in a set format—the equivalent of a book report. I would have been focused on making sure I got every word down correctly and not missing any detail. But blogging is about more than just presenting facts; it’s about taking information or experiences and looking at them from a different angle. It’s about weaving facts and personal opinions into something (hopefully) worth a person’s reading time. After all, the handouts and session recordings are already available; the posts on Acronym need to offer something more than just a recap of what’s already available.

I have to say one of my biggest takeaways from the conference was realizing that if you experience things as if you have to blog about them, it’s a lot more interesting and enriching than just listening, taking notes as if for a test, and, as also with tests, probably forgetting most of it as soon as you close your notebook.

One of my favorite sessions was “What Do You Think? Are You a Genius?” Not only was Nancy Reisz a captivating presenter, but the ideas she presented relate directly to what I’m trying to say here. She talked about avoiding “I have to…” “I can’t….” and “I shouldn’t….” thinking. She said, memorably, “Stop shoulding all over yourself.” (sound that out loud to understand the humor). Totally true with regard to not only blogging but social media as a whole.

With so many sessions about social media, one resounding sentiment was the notion of giving up control and not letting the “what it?” component keep your association from embracing new ways of engaging members. As we all hopefully learned, the reality is that, like it or not, we don’t have control so there’s no sense in worrying about it. Just as “should” and “can’t” limit your effectiveness, productivity and success, not embracing social technologies will yield the same results: stale thinking and, ultimately, member offerings that don’t meet their evolving needs and expectations.

Even if your association isn’t quite ready to embrace social technologies, how about starting to delve into them yourself if you already haven’t? If you’re not on Facebook, sign up and check it out. If you didn’t follow the #ideas09 twitterstream, take a look at it now and see how it worked and why it was valuable. Do a blog or twitter search for keywords that relate to your association and see what your members may or may not already be saying about you. And, if you don’t already have a personal blog, how about starting one? Even if nobody reads it, it will help you explore and flesh out your own great ideas.

To combat the problem, as Matt DeMarco and Margaret Wolff from the federation explained in their Great Ideas learning lab, they developed a series of training sessions, with a board game (Make It Magnetic: How to Attract and Keep Unbeatable Volunteers) as both ice breaker and educational development. The board game is rigged, of course, and has cards with scenarios, but all the scenarios are bad and no one can make any progress. Here a few of my favorite scenario cards from the game:

When you show up to volunteer at the annual meeting, someone hands you a stack of envelopes to stuff and says, “You should be able to handle this. It’s a real no-brainer.” Go back to start.

Your shoes get ruined because at the last minute you are asked to give tours of the dairy barn instead of working in the refreshment stand. Lose a turn.

At your first meeting, one of the board members leans over to you and says, “Being a Farm Bureau volunteer is easy work. All you have to do is show up and sit through the meeting. Then you get free cookies and coffee.” Go back 1 space.

What a joke! Every year we talk about new ideas for the annual meeting. But when it comes time to plan, we do the same thing, right down to the green beans and chocolate cake. Go back 2 spaces.

No one talks during the board meetings. They wait until they get to the parking lot, then trash the president behind his back. Go back 2 spaces.

(Don't worry there's a different set of cards to play with for the end of the training. A sample: "Your child comes home from school with a Farm Facts booklet donated by the county Farm Bureau.")

A snapshot of the game:

Getting started in the morning takes fuel.

General session speaker Patti Digh.

Attendees at the general session.

Patti Digh's presentation notes, back-of-the-napkin style.

One of the many panels of experts who presented at Great Ideas.

Attendees at an Idea Lab.

Attendees at a CEO Bootcamp session.

The group's last lunch together.

A final look at Miami.

We learned ways our unconscious mind is our most important ally in communication. In doing an exercise where we tried to mirror a partner when speaking with them it came incredibly more naturally than you would think. It seems our mind takes control and attempts to make communication situations even easier for us.

Then of course “ran” to the session called “The Value of Associations in Challenging Economic Times” led by Monica Dignam, anxious to study the results of ASAE’s survey of 97 associations and how they are dealing with the difficult economic times. Now there was some bad news as well as some good news. It seems a number of organizations membership is doing ok during the time, despite everyone’s initial thought that it would be hurting. Doing a quick survey of the room you could tell the main concern with everyone is conference attendance with travel budgets being slashed or frozen. However, another fact that rose to the forefront was that one of the most valuable things members feel the organizations provide is networking and the one place we should all try to market are the networking opportunities our meetings provide. This year might require a different approach to our marketing campaigns in the past; it’s now time for us to put in black and white the “take aways” from the conference and not so much the social events. It looks as though ASAE will be doing the study again in June, so it will be interesting to see how the results differ.

The session took an interesting turn once the results were reviewed the audience began bring forth their own ideas. We learned ways groups are attacking marketing pushing education and not the parties, how they are working with hotels to avoid attrition offering scholarships for registration getting them into the contracted hotels to take up those rooms. This was truly an exchange of ideas session and looking around the room hearing the concerns of fellow association execs it’s obvious we can all learn A LOT from each other and these sessions have provided a great face-to-face "share point".

If you were unable to attend the meeting and are looking for a great takeaway, I do suggest looking at a copy of her book Life is a Verb. If anything, the pictures that are included will have a small impact on you and your great perspective.

Reading over the flipcharts, there's some interesting thoughts being shared. (For those of you who aren't here, leave a comment with answers of your own to these questions!)

In one word, list your favorite volunteer management tool.

- Telephone
- Email
- Twitter
- Conversation
- Trust/truth
- Listen
- Authentic appreciation and a hug [hey, that's not one word!]

Why do you volunteer?

- Fun
- Love
- Purpose
- Loyalty
- Improving my personal brand
- Network
- Give back

What's the most difficult volunteer skill to teach?

- Set priorities
- Delegation
- Group play
- Letting go
- Time management
- Conflict resoltion
- Culture of inquiry
- Innovation
- Doing rather than thinking
- Giving up ownership

One comment of Patti's that really spoke to me personally was this: "We complain about the culture we're in as if we're only visitors here--but we create the culture!" It's easy to complain to colleagues about things you can't do because "our culture," "the board," or "the higher-ups" won't allow it. But, Patti argued, your choices are part of what keeps that culture stuck in that same mode.

Can you go to work tomorrow morning and announce to everyone that "We're going to be completely different from now on!" and have it magically happen? Probably not. But you can make choices that lead to the culture you want rather than the culture you have. If you make those choices consistently and are committed to the change you want to make, you'll inspire others. And once others are making choices that reinforce yours ... powerful change can happen.

Admittedly, that sounds easier than it really is; making choices that go against your organization's existing culture, and making those choices consistently over time, is hard. But it can be done. It's been done. You could do it too.