What Do Wine and Membership Have in Common?

What Do Wine and Membership Have in Common? – This is the question I answer in my most recent blog post for my company’s blog.

Be the Mockingjay: What the Capitol Can Learn from Associations

BE THE MOCKINGJAY: WHAT THE CAPITOL CAN LEARN FROM ASSOCIATIONS

via Be the Mockingjay: What the Capitol Can Learn from Associations.

Creating a Membership Program Update Video for Recruitment & Retention – Part 3

Part 1 and Part 2 of this project.

This is the final part to this video project. In completing this project I felt disappointed. The final video is not exactly everything I wanted it to be. It also took me entirely too long to create the video, but I think that has to do with the fact that for so long I was stuck. Not having put together a video like this before, I wasn’t sure of what I was doing and I’m one of those people who has a tendency to push uncomfortable tasks away for a “later” date.

My coworkers really like the video – they even said things like “awesome” and “amazing”. Meanwhile, I’m not impressed. I’m probably being too hard on myself. The video does convey the information I wanted it to and it doesn’t look “bad”.

The last step in creating any video (or other content) is to have a marketing/distribution plan. Let’s take a look at that, shall we?

Creating a Membership Program Update Video for Recruitment & Retention – Part 2

So, back in early May, I wrote the first part of this topic here. I’m embarrassed to report that it’s now late July and I’m still trying to finalize the video. Some of the delay was completely not my fault. We had to purchase the software and, uh, yeah okay so I’m grasping at straws. Let’s just soldier on, shall we?

I decided to create a voice over (audio) track and align it with what are effectively slides of information to drive home certain points. For instance, I didn’t want to verbalize all the numbers I was using to report the decline in our profession so I put the numbers on the screen while in the voice over I say that the number of laboratories, technicians, and schools is declining. 

A True Tale of Fear and Loathing in Professional Development

Hello, my name is Will and I’m an introvert. It literally pains me to be in a large crowd of people for too long. In the association management industry, this can be a real liability. Almost everything we do involves directly interacting with other people.

The first five years of my career were spent in the meetings department. I liked working with our members to get them registered, creating the detailed plan of the flow of the meeting, and being on-site problem solving. I did not, however, enjoy the forced relationships with my hotel contacts. This wasn’t because I didn’t like my hotel contacts – I couldn’t understand why I dreaded the interaction, honestly. Looking around at my peers, all I was sure of was that something must be wrong with me.

Fast forward another four or five years and I finally realized the truth of what being an introvert meant. For an excellent overview of extrovert behavior, please read this article from Huffington Post. Are you an introvert, too? If so, there are ways you can still advance your career and make important contacts!