It is never a good thing when someone from your organization goes to a workshop on the liabilities of anything. It is even worse when you are a Bar Association. Worse still when you are in charge of reaching out to members. Really bad when you are trying to explain social networking to a group in which I am the youngest person.

I find myself tilting at the Web 2.0 windmill on a daily basis, and I have to admit it's getting old. The trends are clear, kids today are using social networking to build community. In the association world, building community is one of the main ways you demonstrate value of membership. Ergo, to attract younger members (and our demographics definitely skew older) and to retain those members (even more important) one needs to offer them that sense of community.

I just had a meeting where, if I wasn't getting blank stares, I was getting questions about whether we would be liable if a member of our group dropped the N word or something. Sometimes, I don't enjoy working with lawyers. Admittedly, I'm a big picture sort of guy, and I definitely don't get hung up on details (often to my detriment..) but these meetings are so quotidian. I tell you, the most frustrating thing is my inability to really respond to the dithering. My defensiveness and frustration are definitely a weakness I need to work on to more effectively communicate.

Last 5 posts by Ezra

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