Convene On Site: Peter Sheahan at ASAE

Okay, now we're dealing with a full-blown meme. Last week I wrote about Tina Brown's opening keynote at the ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition, in which Brown said that "the only thing that matters is telling a story clearly and cleanly." At the closing keynote a few days later, business consultant and author Peter Sheahan told his audience of association executives that members' expectations are "going toward narrative and away from facts." He said: "You're in the business of storytelling far more than you're in the business of fact-telling."

The problem, Sheahan said, is that many organizations have lost track of their own story; they're overly beholden to their founding mission and their longtime members, and can't really explain why they exist. "One of the biggest challenges facing you as an association executive," he said, "is, based on your governance structure, you're forced to meet the needs of members who have a legacy interest rather than the needs of members in the next five to 10 years."

Convene On Site: Tina Brown at ASAE

Tina Brown is probably the most famous magazine editor in the world -- maybe the only famous magazine editor in the world -- having served memorable tenures heading up Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and her own Talk before launching The Daily Beast website and then merging it with Newsweek. But as she talked about her experience transitioning from print to online publications during this morning's opening general session at ASAE's Annual Meeting & Exposition at America's Center in St. Louis, Brown might well have been speaking as a meeting planner. Because two of her big takeaways had no small relevance for our community:

1. Story matters. "Media is always about telling stories," Brown said. "You have to make everything as personal and connected and news-driven as you can." Later, she said: "The only thing that matters is telling a story clearly and cleanly." Forget that she's talking about journalism, and imagine instead that she's telling you about something you know your attendees respond to: storytelling. Making the information and knowledge you share with them -- and they share with each other -- memorable by making it human.

Convene On Site: ASAE Summit Awards

A quick impression from the ASAE Annual Summit Awards Dinner, held at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., last night: There's something to be said for matching a venue to the specific mission of a specific event. The dinner honored six associations for programs that have made the world a better place through initiatives that are flat-out inspiring, from the Food Bank for New York City's Earned Income Tax Credit program to the American Academy of Pediatrics' Helping Babies Breathe program to the American Automobile Association's School Safety Patrol program. And the venue was equally inspiring. The National Building Museum is one of D.C.'s grandest venues, a red-brick palace with a vast, soaring Great Hall dominated by eight 75-foot-high Corinthian columns; and last night, even the table settings (pictured above in a photo by Convene Account Executive Wendy Krizmanic) felt meaningfully ornate. It was the perfect setting in which to contemplate the heights of service to which all our organizations aspire.

Tech10, Take Two

ASAE has just announced that its 2010 Technology Conference & Expo (Tech10) -- which was snowed out in February -- has been rescheduled for Dec. 13-15 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. Based on feedback from the association technology community after the original Tech10 was canceled, ASAE decided to move the event "from the January/February timeframe to a November/December timeframe."

One positive aspect of the first Tech10's cancelation: It gave rise, immediately and spontaneously, to UnTech10. Read all about it in our April issue: digital version here, registration required; text-only version here.