Lou Rosenfeld gave some advice to the content strategists out there on a couple of points. First, he wanted to remind them that engaged participants, not membership, was key:
Engage, folks, engage. Again and again and again. Associations are not so good at doing that. They see their targets as recruiting and retaining “members”. You don’t want members. Members bitch about not getting enough value for their $40/year fee. No, you want participants.
Second, don’t dawdle, don’t over-think – sometimes just do:
Victor Lombardi once gave me a sage piece of advice: “Just launch the fucker”. You should do the same; get it to market and keep your momentum going.
Worried about the long-term consequences of such decisions? Five points of extra credit. But the costs of migration, steep and painful as they will be, will be far cheaper than dithering and ultimately doing nothing today.
I bet you can see the parallels with librarianship without me spelling them out to you.
I’ve heard that ALA used to be this behemoth of an organization locked down behind closed doors where the hardy or select few found a seat at the round table. I have hope that my generation of new librarians won’t experience this with the evolving open community that is ALA Connect; we’ll be participants, not members.
Victor Lombardi’s advice was sage, if a bit crude. Sometimes you really just have to launch that product/service/initiative and let it grow organically. Trim it if you must (and you will), but at least give it a chance. Too many times great ideas get stuck in committee or overshadowed by the doubters. And, yes, the big stuff does need some real organization and forethought, but how many times do the little projects get labeled as “big stuff?” – a lot.
Just launch it.
