Inside ASI-AP

One of the take aways from Jeff De Cagna's sessions at the Association Forum conference last week (my conference summary blogs day 1 and day 2) was the concept of "small safe tests" or "disciplined experimentation". Jeff posted this article late last year on innovation in associations:

"Creating what’s next is about putting ideas that emerge from insight and foresight into practice through disciplined experimentation. The careful development of prototypes, service tests, proofs of concept and other well-designed experiments makes it possible for associations to safely attempt a wider portfolio of new activities to advance both strategy and innovation efforts. Naturally, association leaders must play close attention to the learning derived from its experimental portfolio and act quickly to integrate that new knowledge into on-going strategic thinking and dialogue."

I agree with Jeff on the concept of small safe tests. I also believe we practise this ourselves internally - like this blog site, our wikis, and other programs we are working on.

I spoke with Jeff on this briefly, and the question I posed was "how do you measure success of the new web 2.0 projects if you are using old world measurement paradigms?". For example, 50 people updating a wiki site might seem a very low take-up compared to traditional newsletters, but in the web 2.0 world 50 people may actually be a very successful result. But how do you actually know this?

One of the iMIS customers in the US - the American Library Association (ALA) - is another subscriber to the safe small test theory. You can read their IT department blog here which covers a large number of experiments being conducted around association 2.0 - including Second Life, Ning and extensive blogging (30+ blogs here http://blogs.ala.org/).

Finally, talking on innovation, Jeff's latest article on the long term future of associations is more good reading.