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I’m pulling together my best of 2008 blog awards, but as a distraction, I decided to head back to this post from January 1, 2008 to see how my ten association predictions for 2008 fared.

Prediction #1: There will be a really cool new association launched that will generate huge buzz in the association community.
Okay, I admit to having some inside knowledge last year about friends’ ideas to start new associations. This year we saw several new communities or “organizations” launched (or in various stages of launch), specifically ANPMP, SNAMA, YAP, and SNAP. If I had to choose one to be the “really cool new association” I think the honors would have to go to YAP.

Prediction #2: Six more blogs about associations will be hatched.
Yeah, yeah yeah, it’s a sandbag prediction. Although the number of new blogs about associations started in 2008 numbers at least 10, here are the first six that come to mind for me:

1. Guilt by Association
2. Caron Mason, CAE
3. Associations 2020
4. Future Association Executive
5. Renato Sogueco
6. Thx4Playing

Prediction #3: Everyone will complain about the new IRS form 990.
Hmm. Come to think of it, I’m not hearing much grumbling, but maybe I just don’t run in those circles. ASAE sure sent a lot of e-mails about its classes on the new 990 though. This is a pretty major deal, and once execs actually start filling out the forms, I think the groans will become much louder.

Prediction #4: ASAE & The Center will debut two new research projects. One will be great, the other… not so much.
I was wrong on this one. I thought Decision to Volunteer and Designing Your Future were both first-rate projects. If forced to choose which project was the greater of the two, I’d have to pick Designing Your Future.

Prediction #5: Acronym will get redesigned and the President & CEO of the Center, Susan Sarfati, will start blogging there.
LOL! Ah, so instead of Susan Sarfati starting to blog on Acronym, she instead *ahem* resigns as President & CEO of the Center for Association Leadership and Executive Vice President of ASAE (longest title in history???). I think Susan would have made a fine blogger, and who knows? Maybe she’ll start blogging in her new professional life. As for the Acronym redesign… I don’t mean to be overly critical, but I’d say a redesign is overdue. It’s virtually the same as it was when it debuted two and a half years ago. Fortunately Acronym added a comments feed this year.

Five predictions down, five to go. Stay tuned for another post this week recapping the remaining predictions.

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Here in Richmond, one of the major topics of conversation is the financial woes of Richmond-based consumer electronics chain Circuit City. You probably know all about the 150 stores being closed nationwide, but you might not know that they’ve laid off 500-800 workers at their corporate headquarters. In a mid-sized city like Richmond, that’s a pretty big deal.

You also probably know all about their demise… Competitor Best Buy revolutionizes the industry, Circuit City slow to adapt, Circuit City lays off 3000 of their best salespeople as a cost-cutting measure in early 2007, recession hits, Circuit City closes stores, lays off more staff, declares bankruptcy etc. etc. etc.

Well, across the street from our office is one of the remaining Circuit City stores. Last Tuesday, two co-workers and I strolled into this store after a pizza lunch in search of a BlackBerry Storm to play with (no such luck, didn’t come out until Friday). Deciding to stay inside for a few minutes to avoid the unseasonably cold November in Richmond, we browsed around looking at other gadgets.

Then we started to notice something: Whereas you could barely get a sales associate to look you in the eye two weeks ago, now every red polo wearing human in the joint was walking right up to us and asking if they could help us find anything.

At first this was a novel and welcome phenomenon. But after being approached by the fourth associate in less than five minutes, I began to get irritated. Even after shooing one of them away, he insisted on handing me some kind of pamphlet. I reluctantly took it and put it down on a display a few moments later.

After returning to the office and settling in at my desk, I discovered an e-mail from Circuit City in my inbox. It was one of several from them that had arrived in the past week. That was the last straw. I unsubbed from their e-mail blasts. I’ll continue to shop Circuit City because it feels good to support the local economy, but less altruistic shoppers won’t. Circuit City’s intentions are good, I’m sure, but you know where the road paved with good intentions leads.

Simultaneously, this week I’ve received more than one blast e-mail per day on average from an organization I belong to, and not a week goes by that I don’t get an e-mail inviting me to attend a particular upcoming conference. Enough already!

Trying too hard makes you look desperate. And desperation doesn’t do you any favors. Not with me, anyway. It makes me wonder what problem you have that you’re overcompensating for, and if I should be worried about doing business with you because of it.

In these tough economic times, you may be tempted to try a lot harder on the sales effort. Tread lightly. I submit to you that you should try a lot harder on the design effort instead.

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I’ve attended a number of conferences recently in which I’ve (over)heard several conversations amongst consultant-types saying “They had so-and-so speaking about such-and-such, and nobody I talked to had even heard of them.” The air of the gripe seems to be, “If they had hired me, it would have been a better session.”

To which I always want to answer, “They’ve never heard of you, either.”

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McKinley Matters newsletter is out, as is this month’s Blog Watchdog column. Subscribe to McKinley Matters to get this column and others from the smart people at McKinley Marketing on a monthly basis. As always, I have to say this: I’m a paid freelance writer for McKinley Marketing.

As 2008 draws to a close, most association professionals are faced with thin 2009 budgets and ever-growing to-do lists. This month we focus on doing more with less. Let’s look to the blogs for help:

First, let’s step outside the association blogosphere to hear from Realtor-by-day, basketball referee-by-night, Daniel Rothamel, who goes by “the Real Estate Zebra.” Daniel is a smart and savvy real estate agent who loves social media. The trouble is, his clientele isn’t quite there yet. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t use social media in his market, but he has been forced to re-imagine how to get the results he needs with the tools he wants to use.

In journalism, reporting the news — not running a printing press — is the essential business activity. That’s why David Gammel was relieved to see a traditional newspaper (Christian Science Monitor), in light of declining revenues, favor its reporters over its traditional print periodical. Making the painful decision to get out of the print business, Christian Science Monitor will be able to continue providing high quality reporting, while other papers lay off reporters in order to make ends meet. Does your association have a similar core competency that provides the foundation of your association’s value proposition?

Sometimes, you can go overboard trying to do more with less. Take for instance overzealous web developers who implement all manner of hyperactive and seizure-inducing features like videos that automatically pop up, multiple animated banner ads, Flash intro screens, and on and on. Frank Fortin from Guilt by Association offers up a few more web no-no’s that have him making a quick click on his browser’s Back button. Note: the comments are just as educational as the post.

Finally… sometimes doing more with less means just going back and checking to make sure you’re executing on the basics. Take, for instance, this tale about invoices from Wes Trochlil at Effective Database Management. Does your association do the things that help the money come in quickly? In these times, cash flow can be a serious issue. Bonus tip: Don’t forget Kevin Holland’s advice on dues invoices: Bills get paid, letters get filed.

As always, if you have feedback or a tip, e-mail B {at} BenMartinCAE {dot} com

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From Cindy Butts:

“I recently got an email from an airline that started “Dear Mr. Soandso” … then continued.”

Who begins typing a personal e-mail with “Dear…” anymore? As far as I can tell, only the survivors of deceased African millionaires hoping to transfer a fortune through my bank account and European lottery officials.

Today, e-mails begin as follows:

<Name>,

In olden times, Dear used to mean something. Hand-writing a letter, putting it in an envelope, addressing it, stamping it and mailing it was time consuming and meant you really only sent letters to those you held dear.

E-mail has none of those warm fuzzies. Today, in e-mail, Dear is a dead giveaway, the equivalent of “the following is a paid announcement.” In other words, it’s implicit permission to delete immediately or delay action.

Drop the “Dear” from your e-mail marketing.

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How about this?

“Smart” businesses recognized that social networking could not easily be separated from “professional” networking, he argued.

“In today’s difficult business environment, the instinctive reaction can be to batten down the hatches and return to the traditional ‘command and control’ techniques that enable managers to closely monitor and measure productivity,” he said.

“Allowing workers to have more freedom and flexibility might seem counterintuitive, but it appears to create business more capable of maintaining stability.”

Social networking sites “good for businesses” (Reuters) by Reuters: Yahoo! Tech.

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With apologies to the DC residents…

Like many associations, this week, ours is telling members how to cast their congressional votes on Tuesday. In prepping a communication to members about the election, I found this really amazing and interactive site that makes it super easy for people to find out their congressional district. It even has a nifty Google Maps mashup.

Here’s a link for those of you who live in the Old Dominion: GovTrack: Virginia’s Representatives – Congressional District Maps.

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Today Linkedin announces the roll out of several professional applications (like Facebook’s) based on Google’s Open Social platform. Sounds good in theory. They have some cools apps to choose from like Wordpress, Google Docs, Slideshare and TripIt. To add an application to your Linkedin profile, you go to Linkedin’s Applications page, select an app, and click install.

That’s when things get ugly. As you can see in these screenshots, every attempt I made to add an app failed. I thought the problem might be with Firefox, but I got the same error in IE7. Maybe Linkedin’s servers are failing under the demand, maybe the problem’s with Open Social, or maybe it’s the third party application providers that are flunking the test. In any case, it’s quite disappointing. Click the screenshots for a larger view:

The other disappointing thing is that the Wordpress application seems to only accept Wordpress.com blogs, not self-hosted blogs like this one (did ya notice the change?). But maybe this is just another server glitch.

In any case, I hope Linkedin can pull this together. The Wordpress and TripIt apps are ones I’d actually use.

Check out this video of what Linkedin hopes to deliver on with its applications features:

UPDATE: Well, it looks like some of these features were added to my profile despite the error messages. TripIt and Wordpress both added successfully. Slideshare is hanging at 80% of completion.