Inside ASI-AP

The second day of this conference was last Thursday, but it has taken me a few days to catch up on writing it up. I attended all but the first session, and the conference finished up at 5pm.

The most enjoyable session was that keynoted by Jeff De Cagna, who I wrote about from the first day. Today, he spoke in more detail about associations 2.0. Also presenting with him was Ron Hair, the local manager of Affiniscape. Unfortunately, the CEO of Affiniscape US - Brian Cooper (an expat Aussie) - was unable to make the trip, so Ron stepped in at the last minute and gave Brian's presentation. Brian is actually a great speaker, but Ron managed to do an admirable job in his place. There was a big turnout for this presentation - more than half of the conference delegates, and there was plenty of time for questions.

Some of the questions were good and relevant - like how do we get started with RSS, blogs and wiki's; and also questions on the legal issues with wiki pages particularly as they relate to those associations with medical or other professional advice. A great question came from Susan at the Geological Society (GSA - an iMIS customer) who wanted to know how they could prevent those who believe in creationism (and intelligent design) from updating blogs or wiki pages that are for scientists in a web 2.0 world. The panel was unable to answer this question, but it did make me go and look up more about the GSA position on this - and it was clearly available on their website here.

In the after-lunch session, we had 3 customers all speaking in different sessions, so I was unable to see them all. I did go and listen to John Maroney from the Actuaries talk in a panel on the differences between CEO's from for-profits and non-profits. Each of the 3 panel members had previously worked in for-profits and now work in non-profits. All 3 spoke highly of their time in non-profits, and when asked directly about the difference in pay - all 3 answered that the pay was almost the same - which I think was a surprising answer to most in the room. John spoke very well, without Powerpoints, and with good humour about actuaries, including lots of plugs for this actuarial joke website http://www.actuarialjokes.com/.

The final sessions were on the future of non-profits - and included a presentation by Professor Mark Lyons (author of Third Sector: the contribution of nonprofit and cooperative enterprises in Australia), and David Thomson (chair of the Nonprofit Roundtable). I will post on this separately.