Certified Association Executive: ASAE2008 Interactive Backchannel. Try it. It will completely transform your conference experience!

August 08, 2008

ASAE2008 Interactive Backchannel. Try it. It will completely transform your conference experience!

My ASAE2007 experience was unlike any other conference experience primarily because I could tap into the collective experience of 20-30 ASAE2007 backchannelers. Seriously, you need to be on the backchannel. Dear readers, this is absolutely the BEST way to keep your finger on the pulse of what's happening at ASAE's Annual Meeting and to be engaged in the conference on a higher (dare I say, "meta") level. Why?

Find yourself in a session that sucks? Listen to the interactive backchannel to discover which sessions you might consider moving over to.
Want to find someone to have lunch with? Post to the interactive backchannel and set something up.
Want to know which exhibitors have the best schwag? Backchannelers will let you know!
Impromptu pool party? You'll hear about it on the interactive backchannel.

Now, I mean no disrespect to the ASAE staff on their Twitter profile (I'm following) for their upcoming Annual Meeting, but it's not exactly an interactive backchannel that us Twitter gurus can actually use. Why? Because in order to do so, I'd have to go and turn on mobile alerts for everyone following asaecenter2008 and continually update my mobile alerts as more people follow it. In the words of the Church Lady, "Not gon'do it!"

So, with a little nudge from J-Nott, I have put together a repeat of last year's interactive backchannel. Here's how join.

Pick up your cell phone. Make sure it's turned on.
Compose a TXT message to GO@MOZEO.COM (if you can't TXT to an email address, sorry, you're outta luck*)
Type "Join ASAE2008" into the body of your TXT
Wait for confirmation. Once confirmed, you can post to the backchannel using this syntax: "Go ASAE2008 [my awesome backchannel post]"

And you're done.

*Actually, you can still subscribe to the ASAE2008 group through mozeo.com, but you'll only be able to recieve entries, not post.

Tagged: Association Management; Associations; CAE; Certified Association Executive

4 comments:

Anonymous said...: Who says the Twitter backchannel is a staff thing there Ben? :>)

You can actually follow the @asaecenter08 Twitterstream as an RSS feed, but it's not as immediate as text messages, so this is probably a good idea. No reason we can't have both!; 8/08/2008 11:26 PM
Greg Fine said...: Thanks Ben. I am in. See you in CA!; 8/10/2008 9:29 PM
Lisa Junker said...: I hope the backchannel this year is even more successful than last year, Ben! (And just so you know, the ASAE2008 Twitter profile wasn't created by ASAE & The Center staff. I'm not sure if the volunteer who created it wants to be "outed," so I won't say who he/she is--we really appreciate his/her excitement about the Annual Meeting!); 8/11/2008 6:55 AM
Ben Martin, CAE said...: Interesting twist on the asae2008 twitter account. I think I know who it is by the emoticon.; 8/12/2008 10:47 PM