Session participants Debbie King and Wayne Eckerson discuss bringing the technical and business sides of an organization together, the pros and cons of self-service, benefits of visualization and story-telling, the usefulness of analytics of maturity models, and how data leads to insights which leads to action.

Debbie King, Wayne Eckerson, Bryan Kelly, Susan Avery

How can one conference cover all the ideas surging through the association space? This session attempts to deliver just that, rapid-fire style. You’ll want to take notes; the concepts might be meaty, but each speaker will present their idea for 5 minutes before we move onto the next. They will cover topics ranging from how design thinking can be used to create a strategic plan to tackling new innovations in the association space.

Lowell Aplebaum, Donté Shannon, Alexis Simoneau, Adrienne Bryant, Rhea Steele, Liz Icenogle, Maggie McGary, Shelly Alcorn, Russ Webb, Tori Liu, Michelle Lui, Prabhash Shrestha, Jessica Falborn, Carla Lochiatto, Amanda Auchenpaugh Cook, DJ Johnson, Shira Harrington, Amy Hager, Trevor Mitchell

Is there a way to break the barriers within our organization’s departments, and remove the "us and them" mentality that comes with them? The session features association professionals Mike Moss, Aldo Maragoni, Beth Burchill, Christopher Hunter, and Sean Glaze. All from a range of departments, they will share stories from their own experiences witnessing these communication barriers, and tips to start overcoming them.

Mike Moss, Aldo Maragoni, Beth Burchill, Christopher Hunter, Sean Glaze

Sharon Kneebone, Addy Kujawa, and Cecilia Sepp engage in a paradigm-smashing discussion about the professional society membership model and its future. In addition to having experience as CEOs, all of our panelists have been membership directors and/or component relations professionals. This session will probe the notion of membership models to consider the relationship between membership dues and the value your association offers its members.

Cecilia Sepp, Sharon Knewwbone, Addy Kujawa

Elizabeth Weaver Engel, Guillermo Ortiz and Ann Mei Chang dive deeper into the core principles of lean innovation: starting with a clear goal, engaging your stakeholders, identifying risks and assumptions, validating your hypotheses, deciding on metrics for measuring success, and pivoting, persevering or abandoning a project. In this session we will learn if it is really possible to be more efficient with fewer resources.

Elizabeth Weaver Engel, Guillermo Ortiz, Ann Mei Chang

Who is responsible for membership in your organization? What about for member recruitment and retention? The answer should always be: everyone. No matter what your position in your association, membership should drive your work. This session looks at sustainable membership growth as an organic element driven by the chief staff executive throughout all silos of an organization. Ed Rigsbee and Matt Mantione will explore strategies and tactics for getting everyone involved in growing your organization in a member-ROI-centric manner.

Ed Rigsbee, Matt Mantione

In this session, Beth Brodovsky, Maddie Grant and Amanda Kaiser discuss taking membership engagement one step further by offering actionable tips and tricks for cultivating member participation.

Beth Brodovsky, Maddie Grant, Amanda Kaiser

The topic of ‘non-dues revenue’ is raising some interesting questions within the association space, and provoking some more fundamental concerns about the nature and mission of our organizations. There are those who are skeptical, or even fearful, of non-dues revenue attempts, seeing them as cash grabs that are in conflict with the aims and values of their association. But is this perhaps due to a lack of a cohesive organizational strategy? If so, how can we pursue revenue opportunities that actually strengthen our organization’s relationships – with members and industry partners alike?

Scott Oser, Garth Jordan, Keith Chamberlain, Bruce Rosenthal