Blogoclump in Print

Looks like a good month for the blogoclump in the newest issue of Associations Now. Jeff De Cagna has a big spread on what associations can learn from Google via his interview with John Battelle, author of Search: How Google and its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed our Culture (say that three times fast). I have to admit having seen the book at the airports and not having looked at it because it appears with some copycats and I haven't known which one of them to pick up. Batelle is a techno journalist who speaks quite cogently about issues of 2.0 and the like, and applies them to associations. I agree with the conclusion in the article that Google et al represent more of an opportunity than a threat. But interestingly 2.0 means "that associations need to have good answers for questions that might be asked of search engines." Good point, and not everyone is sensitive to these issues.

And Ben Martin has a page on how he hates the word orientation. He'll send you directions for speed networking if you send him an email.

Public sector information design

Here's an article from the UK's Design Council talking about how information design is important in public-sector efforts. Of course, it's helpful to everyone, but this is a good example of the universal need for better presentation of information--and more design.

We've Always Done it That Way: 101 Things About Associations We Must Change

From what I can tell, the impetus for this book was that the folks who wrote it, Jeff De Cagna , David Gammel , Jamie Notter , Mickie Rops and Amy Smith , were “concerned by the instinctively conservative approach to organizational stewardship that far too many association executives and volunteers continue to pursue in the early years of the 21 st century.” I took notes throughout the book, and now I realize they are far too extensive to make a very good book review. And I am definitely the choir that this book is preaching to. However, I really, really liked the problems these folks addressed and they pretty much slaughtered and butchered several sacred cows. This book is not extensive narrative or heavily footnoted, but it is based on the collective experience of 5 people who together have worked with many different organizations, and the collective themes will be familiar to anyone in the field. On a meta level, this book takes observations of what’s happening in the

An Army of Davids

So, I've been spending some time with Glenn Reynold's book (Glenn being of course the seminal and highly influential Instapundit ), and I must say that it gives me lots of language I can use to talk about phenomena that are easily observable right now. I think you could say that Glenn Reynolds has done for technology what Virginia Postrel did with design topics . Which is to say, they beat the drum and say, hey, look at what this democratization of knowledge can do for you! In that vein, the book is really pretty visionary, pointing out the magic of the internet age. And I for one see it as magical. You know how Laura Ingalls Wilder's Pa in Little Town on the Prairie said to Laura that it was an amazing time to be alive (that was in the 1890s)? I've been actively thinking that to myself for the past few years, and An Army of Davids gives me ample evidence to back that up with its talk of citizen empowerment and the "comfy chair revolution." The theme of "

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