Keeping up with technology.
Technology continues to transform association practices and processes. Associations--large and small, professional and trade--are creating listservers and bulletin boards to increase member-to-member communication, promoting products and services electronically to cut printing and postage expenses, incorporating e-mail into governance activities to facilitate between-meeting votes, and using Web sites to deliver information to members faster.
Just understand that legal risks may accompany these high-tech activities, say Jeffrey S. Tenenbaum and George E. Constantine in their article, "Untangling the Web." The attorneys offer a variety of tips for reducing your association's liability as you up the ante on your technology initiatives.
For advice from association executives and technology consultants on selecting a content management system, turn to "Managing Web Content: What's Your System?" It's one of the three features in this year's Technology Solutions Directory.
Some associations are turning to content management systems to free up technology staffs and allow knowledge experts to maintain their own Web site pages. Others, such as the Community Association for Rehabilitation (CAR), Inc., Palo Alto, California, switched to a content management system to keep the association Web site's content current and make better use of the site as an information and marketing tool. "A content management system is worth the time, effort, and money ... because in the long run, it will streamline your whole work process, save ... anguish, make you look more professional, and make you operate more effectively," says Wendy Kuehnl, CAR marketing director.
To make your association more professional, authors Greg Jagiello and Katie Atkinson suggest you take a serious look at your Web site. "Improvements to Web usability, however simple, can translate into big increases in customer satisfaction and return on investment," they write in their article, "Improving Web Usability." They also advise you to tell visitors where they are on your site by providing orientation hints, remove reset buttons, and provide status indicators for multistep operations.
Heeding this advice and more, the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, Washington, D.C., recently redesigned its Web site. Standard link behaviors replaced the previous stylized links, pages now feature orientation hints, and the shopping cart link now appears in the header on all pages for maximum visibility. "Feedback has been very, very positive," says Lisa Price, director of database administration and Web site project manager. "We were pleasantly surprised with the low number of 'how to' calls received by our call center" given the fairly major scope of the redesign effort.
Along with insights and guidelines, this year's Technology Solutions Directory lists in alphabetical order companies that specialize in association technology solutions. A grid indicates each company's specific products and services. An online version of the directory will be available in mid-June, featuring hyperlinks to many of the listed companies. Go to ASAE's home page at www.asaenet.org, and select "Directories/Suppliers and Consultants" from the navigation.
Armed with this information, maybe--just maybe--you can keep up with the dizzying pace of technology for another year.