I wish I could have attended the ASAE and The Center(...) technology conference that just wrapped up recently. But since I couldn't, I'm glad Ben over at the Certified Association Executive has been doing some posts about it.
What I find particularly interesting, other than his Web 2.0 and Social Media experiment, are his musings on an association's role in creating online communities (here.
- Instead of re-inventing the community, can our associations jump on board with existing online communities, acting as a sponsor or participant in the community?
This, coupled with the comment/amplification from Jeff De Cagna in a comment, makes a lot of sense to me, and not just for associations—why reinvent the wheel if there already are a few spinning? I know some newspapers are starting to link to blogs done by regular people in their communities, and I'd love to do something similar for people blogging in the meetings space. Unfortunately, there aren't very many of us yet, but it's well worth thinking about. I just wonder if people would find that useful, or weird, or if there would be any liability concerns if someone we link to suddenly goes nutty on their blog, or what.