We had a chance to attend a CSAE (Canadian Society of Association Executives) Trillium chapter workshop on HR issues for associations. These kind of events are always an interesting first-hand source on what current issues are important for associations.

The presentation itself was OK, but not too exciting - the presenters seemed to know a lot about HR in general but I expected they would present much more specificly about HR in associations (e.g. board issues, volunteer issues) - which was not the case. But each topic was structured as a presentation followed by a discussion - and the questions brought up by attendees very quite association-specific and led to lively discussions.

I found it notable that even though attendees were not techies by any stretch (but seasoned association executives and volunteers), many conversations were about websites. Web technology has definitely become a key enabler for the association industry.

A few people were talking how popular their websites are - and I thought they were a bit bamboozled by their webmasters. They were talking about hits - which is a pretty meaningless measure of popularity (vs. page view or visitors - see explanation). One lady told me her website gets 70,000 hits a day and she thought this means 70,000 people/day (!!) - and I checked out her website - there is no way it gets that kind of traffic.

And during the networking part when I mentioned Wild Apricot and explained that our key priority was to build a system which can be used by normal people - not only techies - I was gratified to hear that everyone thought this was a great idea and had many gripes to share about their technology woes.

Anyway, well organized event, I am looking forward to the future ones!