10 communication secrets of great leaders
Forbes
It is simply impossible to become a great leader without being a great communicator. The key to becoming a skillful communicator is rarely found in what has been taught in the world of academia. From our earliest days in the classroom we are trained to focus on enunciation, vocabulary, presence, delivery, grammar, syntax and the like. In other words, we are taught to focus on ourselves. It is the ability to develop a keen external awareness that separates the truly great communicators from those who muddle through their interactions with others.More

More conflict, stronger associations
ASAE
Thanks to the Internet, association members and leaders are more likely to disagree with each other — and that's a good thing. Online, everybody creates, shares and expands information and knowledge, and those conversations — especially the conflict-driven ones — are essential to an association's growth.More

Trying to serve today's membership 2.0 with a CRM 1.0 system?
Avectra
Is your organization struggling to win the race for relevance? Do you need to humanize the interactions between your organization and members? If so, your technology might not be keeping pace. The first step in addressing these questions is to concede that the status quo for membership management systems or association management systems is no longer acceptable.More

What is social business?
Socious
"Social business" is a white-hot buzzword right now. However, there is little consensus as to what it actually means. In a #socbizchat Twitter chat hosted by online magazine CMSWire last fall, top consultants, executives, and marketers spent over an hour debating the question, "What is social business?" without gaining an inch of common understanding. It seems that most people know it when they see it, but can't tell you what it is in layman's terms.More

Fast facts from the 2012 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report
Membership Marketing Blog
Data is being compiled for the 2012 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report. The data represents responses from nearly 700 unique associations. Overall, all the key indicators point to a much stronger environment for membership organizations than any time since 2009.More

The future of meetings
Meeting Professionals International
Converging technologies, virtual meetings, information overload, remote conferencing, gamification, app development, 3-D printing, calm technologies, open source and cloud computing, augmented reality and speech recognition will all change the way companies do business and plan and host their meetings. And while some of the trends present challenges for the industry, they also present opportunities to enhance and extend meetings beyond face value.More

What associations and meeting professionals want in tradeshow partnerships
Midcourse Corrections
Typically, an association tradeshow should have a potential of $150,000 or more in revenue to justify securing a third-party planner to provide full scope of services. Both the association and independent planner want to establish a partnership that will be profitable for each side. Both the association leadership and the independent planners will have different expectations, priorities and styles. Leveraging this partnership for success will require both parties to manage expectations and understand unique work cultures.More