… You really won’t want to miss THIS.

Remember back in August when we asked for your help to get our panel ideas accepted to South by Southwest Interactive? Well, this last week we have been dying to share really exciting news with you, but have been sworn to secrecy .. til NOW!

Thanks to the hard work, brilliance and tenacity of own Shiloh Stark, Jo Miles and Michael Cervino, “Will Kiva Kill Your Non Profit: Donations 2.0″ has been chosen, featuring Skylar Woodward from Kiva.

From sxsw head honcho’s email:
“We received more than than 2300 outstanding proposals via the SXSW PanelPicker — so being selected for the event means that your idea represents the best of the best of the best. Congrats!! And, thanks again for putting together such a great proposal.”

Does it get any better than that? See you all in Austin!

Today, I had the honor of speaking on a great panel sponsored by Google and the Ad Council along with Jane Kirchner from American Farmland Trust, Andrew Marshall fromthe Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research (AHRQ) and Carley Graham Garcia from Google.

Huge props to Kate Emanuel of the ad council for pulling it all together and inviting me to join the assembled rockstars. For anyone playing the home game who would like to see my part of the presentation, enjoy!

Odds are, you have heard about all the amazing Non Profit panels being proposed for South by Southwest interactive 2010, and your vote has been courted over and over again. After 2 weeks of this (with one more to go), odds are even higher that Panel-Picker fatigue has hit an all time high and the last thing you want to see are the letters s-x-s-w in that order.

Rather than hear from us about our amazing panels yet again, we thought we would share some comments from the sxsw community. The people are talking, and we invite YOU to join the conversation. Panel picker voting ends on Friday, Sept 4th so don’t delay – time is running out to weigh in on these great panel ideas, like these folks have:

Will Kiva Kill Your Nonprofit? Donations 2.0

Ted Fickes, The Wilderness Society
Definitely an interesting set of questions. Do people need or even want most/many organizations when there are local and/or highly focused or short-term projects out there and ready made ways to raise $ for them?

Sundeep Ahuja, The Extraordinaries
These days I see a lot of non-profits and cause oriented organizations borrowing pages from Kiva.org – from fundraising to marketing, Kiva.org has almost become an example of a “next-generation” non-profit. There’s something about the way Kiva.org embraces transparency, operations, and engagement which has made it a phenomena. WRT fundraising specifically, in a way Kiva is doing what Radiohead did when they launched their album for free and asked fans to pay what they wished; at the point of transaction, Kiva says “hey, we’re offering this service for free, but if you wish to help us do what we do, please pitch in” — and it’s working. I for one am very curious to see if this model (and the associated transparency and required operational efficiency) might work for other organizations as fundraising is one of the biggest challenges non-profits face.

Skylar Woodward, Kiva
I’m really looking forward to this discussion! We spend so much time engrossed in our model we don’t often get to step outside of Kivaland and consider how this is affecting online philanthropy at large. The intimacy and transparency of a Kiva loan certainly comes at a cost. To what extent is it reasonable to expect other organizations to correlate every dollar to good done in the world? Are we setting donor expectations too high or is this the reality of technology-enabled world driven by postmodern values? If this is the future, how do we scale operations, especially on a non-profit budget, to keep accurate data flowing between donors and recipients?!? At Kiva we’ve certainly had to find the balance between perceived impact and explaining what’s actually going on under the code and on the ground.

Cynthia Greenwood
This is a great idea for a panel. One of my concerns about these new online giving models is whether big donors will now choose to go online to fund loans to entrepreneurs of their choosing versus giving donations that can be used at the organization’s discretion to support the most needed programs and operations. Perhaps this could be addressed by the panel.

Milo Sybrant, Amnesty International
This discussion proves to be an interesting one because it raises important questions about the ethics of direct-to-beneficiary fundraising when the human lives are involved. It’s one thing to make a gift to cover the costs of snacks for children in a New York City school (as is possible through orgs like DonorsChoose). But it’s a different proposition to ask someone to make a contribution in order to get a specific political prisoner released from detention in Iran.

Joe Baker, Care2
This should be an interesting panel. It is fairly straightforward to see how the Kiva/DonorsChoose models of micro loans and direct donations can apply to/possibly supplant organizations that primarily serve as bundlers, vetters, and conduits for individual projects and direct assistance. I’m curious to see how the panelists feel the model can apply to other spheres such as advocacy groups.

Can Double-Clicking Change The World? Slacktivism 101

Robert Rosenthal,Volunteer match
Have to say, there’s a delicious irony to a bunch of people in a room watching other people talk about other people slacking. Causes in Facebook ($10 million from 240,000 causes, or $41 per cause) has been a convenient target for slacktivism charges because it’s big and they’ve been open about their numbers, but I think it’s clear our communities need a better model than “click for change”. At some point, individuals need to donate either real time or real money in order to make a difference. Should be a good panel.

Jean Russell, Nuture.biz
Really great issue to debate. i hope we can talk about what has traction without a lot of action and what looks sexy, but doesn’t get much traction – from both an activist org view as well as a contributor/slacker view.

Kiva Wilson, Kaboom.org
I’m stoked to see that SXSW has finally decided to take on this most worthy of topics. Slacktivism opens SO many doors for causes and volunteer/service opportunities. I’m eager to hear what the panelists have to say on the matter.

Michael Cooper
This is a great topic. Non-profits are doing some of the best work in the social media sphere – experimenting where others fear to tread. Big projects have big barriers to entry. If non-profits are to generate mass action, they must use these forms of media to have low barriers of entry to start and encourage folks to take the next step. Should be a great discussion.

Kathryn Lusk
I love this topic – it’s exciting to think about the potential for “slacktivism” to inspire real live activism!

Data, Data, Everywhere: Drowning in a Sea of Analytics

Danielle Brigida, National Wildlife Federation
I think it’s really important to pick the data you track carefully! There is so much to choose from. I hope this panel gets picked!

Jason Cooper, Kaboom.org
As someone who used to compile monthly reports in excess of 50 pages on everything you could imagine related to analytics, I’m very interested in hearing about Question #9. (“What stats can I ignore? “)

Joseph Kelly, Infochimps
Beaconfire does great work. Learning about actionable metrics is a metalesson that can be applied in all sorts of other fields. It will be interesting to see what you guys come up with.

Yoga For Social Networkers: Striking The Right Pose

Renee Hamilton, Operation Smile
I love this idea and the yoga tie in–it seems like it will benefit both newbies and experienced social media geeks who are always look for ways to stretch our time and talents and new positions for us to get into!

Ed Schipul, Schipul: the Web Marketing Company
Great to see Beaconfire, a strong supporter of the non-profit community and a firm that walks-the-talk, representing at SXSW. Not sure I can do the interactive portion of the presentation…. oooooh shiny! … oh wait, what was I writing about? Oh ya, I am in favor of any panel that helps us naturally limit our ADD tendencies and gain focus. This is timely for non profits, for businesses and for ourselves during the Great Recession!

It’s Not All About You: Respecting Your Users

Raffi Darrow, Rdesign inc
I wish everyone knew this: your site isn’t there for you, it’s there for your users!

Thank you for your support! Panel selection decisions will be made in October so watch this space – hopefully we will have some good news to report.

If you’re an avid follower of this blog, you may have noticed that the people at Beaconfire are full of great ideas, and not shy about lettin’ em loose on the world. From social media to design to web metrics to just general non profit tech guru-ness, we leave no stone unturned. But there is one thing we have not yet accomplished – and for that we need your help, dear readers.

Driven by our desire to share what we are most passionate about on a larger stage, we have submitted five innovative, thought provoking and exciting panel ideas for consideration at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, TX this coming March. Among the overwhelming landscape of 2210 other great ideas in the sxsw panel picker (a crowdsourcing approach to selecting conference content, which counts for 30% of the overall decision-making) we bravely stand toe to toe, competing with the rockstars, the uber geeks and other movers and shakers in the tech world. South By, we are Beaconfire! Hear us ROAR!

Helen Reddy-inspired bravado aside, in order to be able to present these great ideas anywhere outside of our own conference room, we desperately need you, our dedicated community, to help us. So now we humbly ask that you not only cast a “thumbs up” vote for our panels, but also post your insightful comments on each entry to let the sxsw “deciders” see how timely, thrilling, brilliant and ya know, really cool , our ideas are. You will have to make an account first, but we know that won’t hold you intrepid souls back. Forge onwards, brave readers, and let your voice be heard! Without further ado (or any additional hyperbole) – our panels:

Yoga for Social Networkers: Striking the Right Pose
Organizer & Speaker: Amadie Hart
There are hundreds of social networks, but only one you. Instead of overextending yourself, you need to bring focus on the important things and let go of the rest. Learn how to center your social media practice and balance your online activities. Bring your yoga mat! (don’t miss the video preview!)

Will Kiva Kill your non profit? Donations 2.0
Organized by Shiloh Stark, Jo Miles and Michael Cervino
Speakers: Skylar Woodward, Director of API development at Kiva; Ian Scott Haisley, OptINnow.org, Milo Sybrant, Amnesty International
Connecting donors directly to the beneficiaries of contributions is a game-changing fundraising strategy. Will traditional nonprofits need to adopt new technologies and fundraising models as donors demand greater accountability for their funds? This vibrant, moderated discussion will include representatives from Kiva, OptINnow, and 2 national advocacy organizations.

Can double-clicking change the world? Slacktivism 101
Organized by Eve Simon & Ali Cherry
Speakers: Jacob Colker, CEO of The Extraordinaries; Premal Shah, President of Kiva; and Jason Cooper, Online organizer for Kaboom.org and at least one other rockstar “surprise guest” to be named later.
Sl’ack-Ti-vism. Noun. Taking action for social change without lifting a finger. As the latest technology allows people to “engage” from their computers/phones rather than getting their hands dirty IRL, will this impact the future of volunteerism? A panel of experts will debate the pros & cons of couch potato activism.

Data Data Everywhere: Drowning in a sea of Analytics
Organizer & Speaker: Marissa Goldsmith
A Web site gives a nonprofit access to data that makes old school direct marketers salivate. But many organizations find themselves getting bogged down in producing graphs every month, obsessing over drops in pageviews, throwing their hands up on the air, and deciding they don’t have enough resources to maintain this kind of analytics analysis. Stop obsessing about the small stuff, and start learning about creating a goal-oriented, actionable analytics plan that can help your Web site thrive.

It’s not all about you: respecting your users
Organizer & Speaker: Jo Miles
Google practices it with AdWords. Facebook learned it the hard way. The truth is, your site isn’t there for you or your board; it’s there for your users. All the clever marketing tricks in the world won’t win their loyalty if you don’t give them a little respect.

Of course, not to be all “Me me me” about this, we also kindly ask that you share some panel picker love with these other great sxsw sessions, proposed by non profit tech rockstars, social media visionaries and really, really smart people:

Crowd Sourcing Innovative Social Change
Beth Kanter, Beth’s Blog

Non-Profits and Social Media: Not the Usual Suspects
David Neff, American Heart Association

The Real Housewives of Social Media
Jordan Viator, Convio

Advanced Brand Monitoring: Let the Haters Hate
Carie Lewis, The Humane Society of the United States

Competition > Innovation > Change: Examining Competitions For Social Change
Amy Sample Ward, NetSquared

Can Social Media Change Global Consciousness?
Panelists include: Amy Sample Ward, Danielle Brigida and Stacey Monk

Evolution, Creation and Extinction (of the organization)
Ted Fickes, The Wilderness Society

Handheld Awesome Detectors: Sustainable Apps
Rachel Weidinger, Rachel Weidinger Consulting

Building an Employee Platform for Social Change
Patrice Thramer, Nike, Inc

Doing More With Less: How Not-For-Profits Leverage Technology for Change
Nancy Lublin, DoSomething.org

Digital Marketing for Non-Profits
Amy Seidenwurm, LA Phil

A Different Documentary: Online Storytelling & Social Change
Boyd Neil, Hill & Knowlton Canada

The Socially Conscious Geek: Makin’ Money While Doin’ Good
Leif Utne, Zanby

SMS And Social Change: Lessons From Senegal
Terra Weikel, UNICEF

We all look forward to representin’ the non profit sector in Austin this spring, and can’t wait to see everyone in The Beacon: Lounge with a Conscience again. (details to come – watch this space!)

SXSW Panel Picker Page: “Will Kiva Kill Your Nonprofit? Donations 2.0“

Kiva has been connecting donors with low income entrepreneurs since 2005. Their model of microlending has proven meaningful, effective (they have a current repayment rate of 98.7%), and popular (over $80 million in loans have been made so far). They’ve been such a game-changer in the nonprofit fundraising space that we want to bring Kiva together with other national nonprofits at SXSW Interactive 2010 to talk about the future of online fundraising.

Kiva creates a one-to-one relationship between donor and recipient. Donors know exactly where their money is at all times and can see the tangible effects of their dollars – if desired, they can completely avoid a general fund, symbolic gift, or representative success story. It’s also a gift that keeps on giving – as recipients pay back their loans, donors can reinvest in new ones.

One question that both traditional nonprofits and startups are facing is whether this model poses a threat to the status quo of fundraising appeals. Will donors demand more accountability for each dollar? Will they expect a personal relationship with the end beneficiaries? How do the principles of Kiva apply to advocacy-based organizations?

If “Will Kiva Kill Your Nonprofit” is chosen for SXSW’s program, Skylar Woodward of Kiva, Ian Haisley of OptINnow, and others will tackle these questions in a vibrant conversation moderated by Beaconfire’s own Michael Cervino.

SXSW wants to know what you think about the panel idea before setting the program.
Does this topic sound intriguing? If so, drop a comment and place your vote on the panel picker page: “Will Kiva Kill Your Nonprofit? Donations 2.0.“

If you’re like me, you just can’t hear enough about using multivariate testing to optimize nonprofit web pages. If you’re in DC on Wednesday morning, don’t miss the Bridge Conference’s early bird session on MVT (that’s 8:30 AM – don’t forget to set your alarm clock!).

I’ll be giving an overview of MVT, and Feeding America’s webmaster, Dan Michel, will give us the skinny on their latest testing. We’ll talk together about the characteristics of a successful test and how to know if MVT is a good fit for your organization.

If you’ve been thinking about setting up a testing program or are just interested in recent case studies, this session won’t disappoint.

What’s that? 8:30 AM is too early, you say? In that case, check out Beaconfire’s white paper on multivariate testing.

PS – If you’re going to be at Bridge Thursday, don’t miss Iron Chef: Battle Nonprofit

After our well-flavored and succulent presentation at NTC in April, The Iron Chefs are on the road again, this time at the Bridge Conference in the DC area. You now have NO reason to miss it!

To refresh your memory: Using just one secret ingredient (a small nonprofit), three web teams will compete in the heat of battle, offering up exceptional tasting ‘menus’, each featuring a delicious new homepage design, a well-seasoned fundraising campaign and a perfectly balanced social networking plan. Only one team can prevail – who will it be? Come see how this unique project brought together a dozen web pros from competing firms, created amazing work for a very special organization, and taught us all the true power of our industry. We promise you won’t leave hungry.

Beaconfire’s own Ali Cherry and yours truly will be moderating this unique session at 3:30 on July 23rd and Susan Finkelpearl of Free Range Studios, Andrew Cohen of Forum One Communications, and Maureen Wallbeoff of Firefly Partners will round out the panel’s incredible talent.

Don’t miss it!

Confession time. When I started designing for the web nearly 14 years ago, I pretty much made it all up as I went along. Brave souls all, we ventured out bravely into the wilderness, hoped for the best and called our mistakes “lessons learned”. Most of us survived to tell the tale, emerging stronger, smarter and a little more acclimated to this brave new world. Others just grew gills, but that’s a story for another time.

As the web industry has matured, it fascinates me that processes and best practices have developed to the degree that all of us are singing a similar song, even though we may not have all gotten the same memo. Working in the web these days feels like spending time on the Galapagos Islands. Evolving to fit our environment, we have somehow still retained the elements that make us all unique without sacrificing forward progress and growth. I always knew Darwin was a designer at heart.

So combining the passion I have for design with my desire to share what I have learned the hard way about the ways of the web, on occasion I stick my hand in the lion’s mouth and go talk to people about it.

Sharing the stage at OneWorld.net’s Web Design for Non Profits workshop with Mckenzine Lock (Senior Communications Manager, Communications and Outreach at Women Thrive Worldwide) and Shirley Sexton (Director of Interactive Marketing & Fundraising at See3 Communications) was further proof that we have learned how to speak the same language without sacrificing our own point of view. Exploring the challenges facing non profits on the web these days, we tackled the same subject from 3 different angles: as a designer who creates visual environments to support an organization’s complex ecosystem, a client who just survived a redesign rooted in best practices, and a marketing evangelist who lives and breathes this stuff every day.

And wouldn’t you know, without comparing notes or peeking at the other’s presentation ahead of time, we shared a cohesive message with our audience. Amazingly, we empowered these non profit professionals in their pursuit of a great new website for their organization, transformed their ability to achieve their goals, and left them excited to take their mission to a larger audience online.

Ain’t evolution fun? Check out my presentation here and tell us what you think!

On June 24th, I will be speaking about a topic that I could wax rhapsodic about for DAYS: Killer design. So sign up now for One World’s “Web design for non-profits” 2 day workshop on June 24-25 and hear what we have to say on the topic. Just don’t heckle me from the peanut gallery. That always throws me. :)

Hope to see you there!

For everyone who attended the HRA-NCA annual conference today, this is where you download the handouts for the above presentation:

• Full presentation (PDF)
• Glossary of Web 2.0 terms (PDF)
• Examples of organizations using social media (PDF)
• Association Global Services – Social Networking & Associations Survey results (PDF)
• Principled Innovation – Association Social Technologies (PDF)
• The Economist – Serious Business: Web 2.0 Goes Corporate (PDF)
• Facetime – Greynets in the Enterptise (PDF)
• Interivew with Dr. Brent Coker, University of Melbourne (mp3)

Bonus link for visiting the BFWire:  Laurel Papworth’s terrific roundup of social media policies available online.

Edited Friday, May 15 to add:

Check out another great list of social media policy resources from Wild Apricot and an interview on this topic with business relationship expert David Nour in the crowdsourced May 2009 issue of Associations Now.

If you happened to be at ASAE’s Great Ideas Conference last week, I’m betting you’ll answer “Miami.”

Highlights included:

• Dan Roam’s opening keynote on visual thinking (watch the video here).
• The Social Media lab sessions.  The association community is finally getting it:  your members are going to flock to social media with or without you.  Get on the train!
• The Twitter back channel, courtesy of the #ideas09 hashtag.  Read the real-time feed to see how Twitter can extend the experience of your conferences to include people who can’t attend in person.
• Jamie Notter and Jeff De Cagna’s Leadership Lessons from 80’s Music session.  Jamie’s blogging in more detail about the lessons.
• The ability for anyone to download any of the session handouts for free.  Be sure to check out the handouts from Jason Della Rocca’s and my session on wikis – everything you ever wanted to know about wiki technology and its uses, plus a series of totally cool visual representations of the social media technology landscape.
• The YAP party at Purdy Lounge.  Not a member yet?  What are you waiting for?  It’s free and fun!  Join at yapstar.org.
• Patti Digh’s closing keynote on Life is a Verb (watch the video here).

For more on Great Ideas, check out the Great Ideas round up on ASAE’s blog, Acronym.

Does your site scream out, “I haven’t changed my image since 1995!” Or maybe, your pages are plagued by lengthy copy that just keeps going and going… Perhaps your web presence just doesn’t really reflect all the great work your organization does.

If you happen to be in Portland, Oregon next Tuesday night, Feb 24th, and have a website in need of some TLC, come to the NTEN 501Tech Club and Net Squared MeetUp to problem-solve cures for the “common” website. Yours truly, Beaconfire Creative Director Eve Simon, will be leading the discussion. See you there!

BF Wire blogger and senior consultant Elizabeth Weaver Engel (aka me) will be heading to ASAE’s Great Ideas Conference in Miami later this month to present with Jason Della Rocca in the Social Media Lab on Wikis:  Collaborative Content at Your Fingertips.

Benefits of coming:

• Miami in February?  Sweet!
• General session speaker Dan Roam speaking on creative problem solving.
• Learning everything you ever wanted to know about wikis and other social media technologies.
• General session speaker Patti Digh speaking on living and working mindfully.
• Hanging with some really smart association types.
• The YAP party.  The parties at ASAE’s annual meeting 2008 and at Tech 2009 were legenedary.  You don’t want to miss another.

It’s not too late to register, and I hope to see you in the Social Media Lab on Sunday, February 22 at 10:45 am for wiki awesomeness.

Want to meet the best & brightest non-profit Geekeratti in Austin this March? Between mind-bending panel sessions, do you need a place to hang with your world-saving entourage, collaborate with colleagues, pull up some WiFi or just get your blog on? You’re in luck – Beaconfire is sponsoring the hottest ticket in town.

Introducing The Beacon, Lounge with a Conscience.

Watch this space over the next few months for updates, great event info and a few surprises thrown in just ‘cuz we’re cool like that. Now, since our momma’s raised us right, we’d like to share the bounty with our friends in the non profit community by offering this unique stage as a blank canvas for your own event during SXSW week.

Interested? Contact me for details.

A group of association executives from a variety of organizations joined Jeff, Amy, and me last Friday, November 14 at the Greater Washington Board of Trade to talk about web usability testing and how it can improve the online member experience.

After a short networking reception and introductions, Amy, one of Beaconfire’s information architecture and usability consultants, led us through a brief discussion of what usability testing is and why it’s used.  Often, when organizations are designing or redesigning their Web sites, the focus can end up being primarily internal.  That can result in a site that makes sense to association staff but is incomprehensible to members and other constituents.  Usability testing shifts the focus to the user to ensure that your audiences can find what they’re looking for and accomplish what they want to do online.

Amy recommended that usability testing should be a continuing process throughout the entire development and design project to keep the new Web site on track.  Organizations sometimes skip usability testing because they fear it will be too costly.  Amy dispelled that myth by sharing a general rule that, while well known among information architects, came as a bit of a surprise to the session participants:  you can find 90% of the problems on a page with only five testers.

That said, there are a number of factors to consider when engaging in usability testing:

• Where are you in your process?
• What’s your budget, not only in terms of money but also of time and staff resources?
• Who are your audiences?

Amy and Jeff then walked through the various types of usability testing Beaconfire recommends, ranging from heuristic analysis, in which a small number of experts evaluate the Web site against a pre-determined set of usability criteria, through card sorting, which can be done face to face or online, into wireframe prototype testing and even post-launch function testing on the live site.

Amy then led two volunteers through a live wireframe prototype testing exercise both to demonstrate to the participants how usability testing works and to show how much can be learned just from asking two different people to try to accomplish the same task on a wireframe site.

For more information about usability testing, check out the presentation from Friday, read the BFWire interview on usability testing with Amy and Brad, another member of Beaconfire’s functional analysis team, or feel free to contact us to discuss your needs.

Beaconfire is hosting a round table in downtown Washington DC from 3-5 pm on Friday, November 14 on the topic of Web Usability for Associations: Designing for Your Members.

During this casual gathering, we will share examples from some associations we’ve worked with, showing how small changes to their Web sites led to major improvements across a wide range of online activities: joins, renewals, registrations, purchases, participation, advocacy, and volunteering.

The session is designed to encourage networking and learning. A wine and cheese reception will be followed by a short presentation of several association case studies and a free-flowing discussion about how your association can implement, test, and benefit from usability improvements.

For more information, please contact Elizabeth Weaver Engel at elizabeth.engel@beaconfire.com or 703.894.0080 x257.

On Tuesday, September 9, I had the opportunity to speak to the Potomac Employers Roundtable. A group of about 30 people, largely senior HR and Administration professionals from a wide range of organizations (PR consultancies, HR consultancies, nonprofits, and for profits) gathered in the board room of Williams & Mullen bright and early to discuss the role web 2.0 technologies can play in our organizations, and what implications they might have for office policy.

I opened the session by sharing the stories of some of my recent experiences around this topic and then talking about what differentiates Web 1.0 from Web 2.0 (short version: collaboration!), and some of the things Web 2.0 allows users to do:

• Build their own sophisticated web content quickly and easily
• Pull the information they want to themselves in the way they want it
• Enjoy a more dynamic, collaborative online experience

We then had a spirited conversation about various Web 2.0 technologies – blogs, microblogs (aka Twitter), wikis, RSS, and SocNets (aka Facebook and LinkedIn) – with attendees weighing in with their own experiences, personal and professional, using them.

The focus then turned to the topic of the day: policy setting.  Check out the information presented about HR policy and Web 2.0 at Thanks for Playing.

Rather than trying to summarize everything that happened at the ASAE Annual Meeting in San Diego in one post, it struck me that it might be better to handle it as a blog roundup of the Best of the Association Blogosphere.

We should start with ASAE’s official blog Acronym.  ASAE did something clever this year:  rather than placing responsibility for officially blogging the meeting on the already-overburdened shoulders of ASAE staff, they recruited a series of guest bloggers to post items to Acronym.  And post they did – more than 60 separate entries over the course of the month surrounding the meeting.  If it happened at the Annual Meeting, somebody probably covered it for Acronym.

One of the best sessions I personally attended was Maddie Grant and Jeff De Cagna’s Pecha Kucha session on Tuesday afternoon, August 19.  Maddie’s comments can be found here.  Jeff’s can be found here.  My own take on the session is also online at this point.  You can also get the slides themselves through Slideshare.

BloggerCon and BloggerUnCon were pretty major events, which featured the launch of the A List Bloggers network and of the executive summary of the results of the Association Social Technologies Survey.  Ben Martin talks about the two sessions pretty extensively in his recap of ASAE post, and I wrote a pretty thorough recap of the two sessions as well.

Andy Steggles accidentally started a firestorm with his not-part-of-the-official-program Secret Session.  I figured it was a live test of social media at work in a real association community – and it really worked, as a Google search returns over 10,000 entries – but it also led to an interesting debate, referred by Andy, between Jeff De Cagna and Terrance Barkan on the future of social media in associations.  The whole thing was recorded and has been posted to YouTube.

Speaking of YouTube, ASAE also recorded post-session interviews with a number of this year’s annual meeting speakers talking about issues including diversity, global competition, innovation, and various types of social media.  I was honored to be included in the interviews amongst such luminaries as Patti Digh and Rohit Talwar.

Of course, no post about the 2008 ASAE Annual Meeting would be complete without a mention of the YAP 80s/90s Dance Party extravaganza.  The pictures are all over Acroynm, Flickr, and Facebook, but I think Bob Wolfe summed up the importance of this group best in his post:  Social Media is My Dance Floor.

In conclusion, all I can say is:  Fogdirog!  (And thank you, Captain Fogdirog, aka Jamie Notter.)

Beaconfire will be presenting at the 2008 ASAE & the Center Annual Meeting, which will take place at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, CA, August 16-19, 2008.

Beaconfire senior consultant Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE, will be presenting in ASAE’s new Social Media Lab with Amy Hissrich, Director, Knowledge Initiatives at ASAE & the Center for Association Leadership on Tuesday, August 19 from 8:30 am – 9:45 am. Participants will experience the benefit of real time collaboration through a hands-on demonstration of the latest in association wikis. We will discuss lessons learned and tips for success, and attendees will have the opportunity to try their hands at real-time editing of Associapedia entries.

Beaconfire VP Michael Cervino, Felicia Carr, Director of Online Communications for the National Parks Conservation Association, and Vinnie Wishrad, Director of Membership & Community at Conservation International joined forces to present a session on microsites and landing pages at the recent Bridge Conference.

Michael led a packed room through a brief review of the differences between microsites and landing pages.  A microsite is a separately promoted part of a larger Web site that is designed to meet separate objectives and has a separate URL.  A landing page is designed to incite one particular action via a specific, measurable offer.  His presentation included a decision matrix to help participants figure out which might be the best approach for their particular projects.  He also quickly discussed the potential risks and benefits of each approach before turning the floor over to the case studies.

Felicia Carr then walked us through NPCA’s Elect Teddy campaign, which was launched to encourage the 2008 presidential candidates to make public their positions on NPCA’s centennial initiative and protecting the health of our national parks system.  Although some of the secondary goals of the site were not achieved, Barak Obama, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton each submitted complete answers to all NPCA questions for publication on the site.

• Check out NPCA’s Elect Teddy site.

Vinnie Wishrad then presented Conservation International’s Lost There Felt Here campaign, intended to help prevent deforestation.  The campaign, which was designed to be viral, was supported by a PSA featuring Harrison Ford that was distributed through YouTube, and was, by all accounts, a smashing success.

• Check out CI’s Lost There – Felt Here PSA on YouTube.

Audience members, Vinnie, Felicia, and Michael wrapped up the session discussing the best applications of microsites versus landing pages and the decision criteria Beaconfire uses to help our clients make that choice.

• Download Michael Cervino’s slides (PDF).
• Download Vinnie Wishrad’s slides (PDF).
• Download Felicia Carr’s slides (PDF).