IABC Café

Or maybe the subhead of this post should be “Taking a Bullet for Todd.”

Recently, Todd Hattori, ABC, the current IABC chair, unveiled the vision, goals and strategic priorities of IABC’s 2008-11 Strategic Plan. After his post, the plan was lambasted on other web sites for being full of platitudes and corporate speak.

I am feeling bad that Todd had to take this abuse because as he told you, he was not the author of these words, the IABC senior staff was. So, if the wording of the goals and strategic priorities are not meaningful to you out there in communicators land, I regret that. But from a staff and, I think, board point of view, they help us to picture a future and focus our priorities.

But my main point today is not to defend the words we used in the strategic plan. I guess you know that we like them. Not everyone does. Today, it is time to unveil the objectives that board approved when it met in September. They were also created by the staff, then reviewed and approved by the Executive Board.

They were harder to write because the Board properly wanted our objectives to be measurable. And with measures that meant we were going to be accountable for achieving them. Yikes!

The process that the senior staff used was to take key words in the goals and ask ourselves the question, “how will we know if we are _________ (e.g. global, growing, the definitive source, etc)?” Our answers to these questions were molded into objectives for what IABC would like to accomplish in 2008. We recognized that we could not accomplish all of our goals in one year; the ones adopted in September are the first step in getting there. Here they are:

Growing Our Membership

Increase professional members overall by 8%, outside the United States and Canada by 15%, student members overall by 20% and chapter memberships by at least 8%. Achieve retentiion rates for students of 38% and entry level professionals and senior members that are equal to the overall professional member retention rate of 82%.

Becoming More Global

Twenty percent of the content of IABC’s programs and products will come from sources outside the United States and Canada; at least 20% of the volunteers and leaders on International committees and boards will come from outside the United States and Canada; IABC staff will gain proficiency in non-English languages.

Improving IABC’s on-line network

Improve member awareness and participation in online networking by 25%. Those who use the tools will show an 80% satisfaction rate.

Growing awareness of IABC

Increase articles about IABC viewpoints and findings in mainstream media by 20%, including at least least three media placements in major newspapers in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas, improve ratings in Technorati or equivalent blog rating tool by 20% and increase board and staff presentations at both IABC and non-IABC events by 20%.

Becoming the definitive resource

Revenue from Knowledge Products, research reports and professional development incrases 8% over 2007; use of free content resources increases by 25%; members give the programs, products and services they use an 80% satisfaction rating.

So, those are our objectives for 2008. Naturally, I have some comments, explanations and rationale to offer about each of these, but I am aware that blogs should not last forever, so I will stop and let someone else talk.

But one last thing. That’s not the end of the current plan. In order to achieve these objectives, staff and board have identified a number of tactics, in this model called programmatic priorities, that we need to do. You’ll hear about them shortly.

Now, for me, it’s back to budgeting.

I recently learned about a television show in an African nation that reached half of the country’s population and effected real positive change. No, it wasn’t Oprah; it was “opera,” as in “soap opera!”

“Entertainment education” is a communication strategy that incorporates social learning theory, research on the influence of role models, and quality production values to create demonstrable positive changes in the behavior of people. For a more complete overview of the strategy and some amazing statistical results from several nations across the globe, listen to my podcast interview of Bill Ryerson, president of Population Media Center, the not-for-profit organization that is leading this program’s development and expansion.

I met Bill at the recent IABC International Conference in New Orleans, while we were discussing the IABC Advocacy Initiative during the Tuesday night Advocacy Dine-Around. During our discussion at the Dine-Around, Bill mentioned something that I hope IABC members (or any readers of this blog) might be able to help to accomplish.

The Population Media Center is in discussions with a large philanthropic organization that has expressed interest in funding a huge multi-country humanitarian effort in Africa. The goal is to address on a large scale, three [updated 7/24/07] two aspects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic:

• Communication that would result in positive behaviorial changes,
• Anti-retroviral treatment for HIV-infected individuals, and
• Orphan care based on supporting grass-root, community involvement so that children remain in their local community.

[7/24/07 update: Bill stated in an email, "I should correct some misinformation I gave you regarding the project. It turns out that we do not need to include a component for anti-retro viral treatment."]
As Bill told me, the Population Media Center is providing the communication component; however, he is still seeking organizations that can help provide the other two components in a multi-country effort.

If you or an organization you know might be able to join forces with the Population Media Center, contact Bill Ryerson directly at 1-802-985-8156 or email him at ryersonATpopulationmediaDOTorg (substitute an @ for the AT and a period for the DOT).

I would love to see this effort succeed…it might even make the Oprah Show!

I was glad to read the email yesterday from IABC headquarters, inviting me to participate in an online survey regarding Internet networking sites. It is a good move on IABC’s part, to inquire of its members whether we would find value in a site run by IABC.

The survey did not allow for comments. I sent an email inquiring about that, and the reply from Lee Anne Snedeker, senior vice president, Membership and Market Analysis, was:

[Our] focus was on gathering information that we could use quickly. Unfortunately, reading, compiling, and analyzing comments in a survey takes hours and hours, and we wanted to get a pulse of member thinking before then. We certainly will spend time gathering ideas from members as we move forward.

The desire to move quickly may be, in part, due to the intense comments that went back and forth regarding the future of associations including the IABC, in light of the emergence of popular sites like The Communicators’ Network, MyRagan, Facebook and LinkedIn. If you need to get up-to-speed on that discussion, I’ll suggest reading Shel Holtz’s blog post.

I hope that many IABC members complete the IABC survey. If comments had been allowed, I would have said that I don’t think that IABC should create a social networking site like those I mentioned above. The field is already crowded, and people will not be able to maintain an active presence on every social networking site that springs up. I think it is too late for IABC to get into that particular game.

IABC can still provide value to its members, and perhaps it can find a way to excel in offering some version of the functionality that we’ve seen in networking sites–some of which, like an online forum, blog, and podcasting, already are part of IABC’s mix.