AMR's own Molly Marsh shares her top five takeaways from the recent Xperience Design Project (XDP) from ASAE. Click read more to view the video.

I started as a Brownie in Girl Scouts and eleven years later, as a senior in high school, I reached the highest award in Girl Scouts — The Gold Award. During this time, I gained valuable skills and experience that has stayed with me and continues to contribute to my success today.

Some of those lessons learned came from earning a badge or going on a field trip, but, the more impactful experiences came from the amazing women troupe leaders around me, one of those being my mom. These women taught me to dream big, believe in myself, be kind to others, be a servant leader, and much more.

As May 25th grows ever closer, GDPR (The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation) continues to seem a Goliath for many associations.  Non-profits and for-profit companies alike are scrambling for compliance and to meet the needs of their customers in a new way taking on new responsibilities for data security and management.  For most, the task can seem daunting and confusing trying to interpret and operationalize the broad law into something that makes sense for day-to-day operation of the association. 

As association meeting professionals, we know that for real learning to occur at our conferences participants must be active contributors to the educational experience. It’s a core principle of adult learning theory, right?! But when you leave “time” in the agenda for discussion, reflection or group work so much can go wrong…how do you ensure there’s enough to discuss, but not too much?

As association professionals, we all engage in written communication pretty much all day every day, whether it’s writing emails, articles, social media posts, press releases, blogs, white papers, minutes, reports… But what about the dreaded public speaking gigs?  Like facilitating a Board meeting, hosting a webinar, or introducing speakers at a conference?