IABC Café

I am referring, of course, to CW, or more specifically Angelo Fernando’s “Tech Talk,” which appears in each issue of CW. It recently won a Maggie Award.

The Maggies are an annual awards program through the Western Publications Association for all publications west of the Mississippi.

Entered in the category of best regularly featured department/section/column in a trade magazine, Angelo’s column beat seven other competitors, including the Stanford Social Innnovation Review and Special Events magazine.

The winning articles were “Social Media Changes the Rules” (Jan/Feb 07), “Transparency Under Attack” (March/April 07) and “The Wisdom of Wikipedians” (Nov/Dec 07).

A total of 94 awards were given to print and digital publications, for both editorial and design. Publications are judged on their readability, focus, depth of research, cohesiveness and how well they meet their objectives. The Maggie award has been around for 57 years and is considered among the highest honors in the publishing industry.

So, Angelo and CW are in good company. I hope all IABC members are regular readers.

As I wrote last week, I attended ASAE’s conference on social responsibility. In addition to the fact that the conference used Appreciative Inquiry as a way of exploring the topic, it also used a different way of involving people from all over the globe.

While most participants were in a ballroom in Oxon Hill, Maryland, there were also groups of people in a number of U.S. cities, whose meetings were connected to our meeting; there were also individuals who were connected virtually.

These off-site participants could listen to the presentations and had the ability to contribute their ideas to the discussion. In one of the work groups I participated in, half of us were in the room discussing our task; the other half were virtual participants who “listened” to our ideas that were posted on the conference site by a staff person. She would also report back to us their comments. When it came time to do a group report, I gave part of it to the group in the room. Then the virtual participants made their contributions by email and the phone.

This is all very intriguing and clearly something IABC should look at. I did talk to one of the virtual participants who felt that connecting virtually has promise, but last week, she found some kinks that still need to be worked out.

So, IABC will explore this way of connecting. Have any of you ever participated in a meeting virtually? What was your experience?

In June 2007 at the closing session of IABC’s international conference in New Orleans, Marcus Buckingham inspired the audience by telling us that the way to succeed is not by trying to correct our weaknesses. Instead, he said, we should discover our strengths and use them fully.

I am in the Washington, D.C. area in the third day of an ASAE (American Society of Association Executives) Global conference on social responsibility. I am here because I want to learn more about what associations are doing to foster social responsibilty and also because the conference is using Appreciative Inquiry, a process I have never experienced.

The conference facilitator, a business professor from Case Western Reserve, began the conference with a Peter Drucker quote: “The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths in ways that make the system’s weaknesses irrelevant.”

The first step of the AI process is to look at what the person, or in this case, the association is doing that is working. What are our strengths? A woman I spoke to at lunch, who leads AI processes told me that Appreciative Inquiry is all about building on strengths. Maybe that’s why it is called “appreciative.”

I am always intrigued when I see the same idea come from different directions. I am happy to see this one pop up again.

More on social responsibility in the next post.