There's been a lot of talk in association circles about wikis; the best way to implement them, what programs to use, from freebies to fully integrated systems, etc etc. But I find that setting up the wiki is the easy part. It's getting people to start putting the content in that's hard. So I was interested to see how ASAE would do it, given its position as "industry shaper extraordinaire". And, I noticed the same problems we all face, which is that the content does not magically appear by itself.
Bmart posted a podcast review of Associapedia which neatly summarizes the situation. I also wanted to link to it again because I think Ben has a lot of valuable criticisms here which I personally agree with, and which could be taken on board very quickly; and I don't know if anyone on the Associapedia side heard this a month ago when he posted it, even though I know some of those people are aware of our blogs. As I listened to it again now, and looked at the site at the same time, all of the issues he mentions are still there.
Aside from Ben's comments about the structure of the Associapedia, he brings up the point that there aren't very many people listed as authoring the entries yet. Which, as I started to say earlier, is a problem for any association wanting to start a wiki like this. I can set one up for my organization in a heartbeat - but I am not in the field and cannot populate it for my members. Jeff De Cagna, in his Great Ideas session on wikis, suggested getting someone (or several someones) to champion the wiki, spread the word, and get people involved, which I think is actually the only way to really make it happen. But combined with that, having the kind of session that we had at ASAE this morning might do wonders too, and might even, in the long term, allow the wiki to become part of the culture and lifeblood of an organization.
We basically had 14 people, separated into two groups, discussing membership issues. One group talked about the member value proposition, what is it, how do you calculate the lifetime value of a member, how do you create metrics for measuring return on engagement (thank you Steggles, I am spreading the word for you!), how do you conduct surveys, what about recruitment, retention strategies, what about generational issues, how do you communicate the value of membership when you are talking about benefits to the field (advocacy, government relations) where people benefit regardless of whether they are members or not, how do you deal with chapter relations? The other group discussed dues, classes of membership, discounts, services versus benefits, affinity programs, and communications strategies, new technologies, etc. We touched on a whole bunch of topics, and the point was not to get into great details but to braindump all our ideas into a Word document. We had recorders who typed as fast as we talked.
We still need to find out what the end result will be, whether any useful stubs can be extracted from this for the Associapedia, which we can then go back and expand upon properly, but I thought, what a great way to get started. What an easy thing it would be to have someone record information from any relevant meeting, which could then be condensed into an entry or two (or twenty) in your wiki. Because it is MUCH easier to edit and expand on a topic than it is to start from scratch with a blank piece of paper - we all know that!
And, as it turns out, today's session was the first of its kind, a test run to try this method of brainstorming ideas. I thought, cool!! We all love being part of betas. Beta test everything!!! As a direct result of being part of this test run, I plan to go to lots more Idea Swaps, and I also plan to start writing some entries for the wiki. I had never been to an Idea Swap before, and apparently nothing is usually written down apart from individuals taking their own notes. I thought it would be really great to expand this model (i.e. of braindumping topics onto paper for inclusion into the association wiki later) to not only other Section Idea Swaps specifically on writing Associapedia entries for other Sections, but ANY Idea Swap or Brown Bag session, of which there seem to be a whole lot going on all the time.
I will report back once we get the word that some of the information has been dropped in to the Associapedia. It will be fascinating to see if this works, but at the very least, I think ASAE has now got themselves a few new wiki authors, and that has to be a Good Thing.
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