Good Stuff from Joan Eisenstodt

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When diverse people come together

Posted by: JoanEisenstodt in Social Responsibility, Industry Associations, CSR Corp. Social Responsibility on Apr 30, 2008

with a mission of social responsibility, remarkable things happen.

Day 2 of the ASAE/Center Global Summit on Social Responsibility is done. We did so much good work today to move us to our conclusion on Friday. We took the work of Wednesday, using our dreams and our thoughts about SR in the association community for 2020 and got into how we'd do it.

My random thoughts are below, somewhat edited for this audience v. those who have participated in the Summit. I will distill information learned and observed in the near future and write about how we can use the tools and techniques for other meetings.

Today, in addition to participating f2f at Gaylord National, I also participated virtually on one of the computers available in the room. The virtual participants were, for the most part, participating alone (v. in the groups who started w/ us on Wed.) The ideas just flew!

Find out if your local SAE (Society for Association Executives) participated or will do something with the outcomes and the next steps. Get involved. This is not just about associations - it's out our industry - our world - and each of us. Social responsibility begins right there .. with you.

>>This afternoon's process of creating where we go next for Friday's discussions to move us to greater action was energizing in many ways: hearing many voices (literally), seeing the line up of people AND (for me) participating physically and virtually to see the tremendous number of ideas, and that we really have 'lift-off' for the next stage of this. Some thoughts from today: - What do you do when you learn that a person or group talk the talk but don't walk the talk? - What's the right amount of structure when doing AI? [AI is Appreciative Inquiry.] - How does the language we use reflect our process? - What could have been done on day 2 to better integrate those who were just joining us in a way to make them understand where we'd been so far on our journey? - How do we who have been so involved take this message forth and build on it and build from it - securing the buy in from many? - My shudder moments today were that the lectern was left on the stage all day (it's just a 'thing' I have about lecterns) and the use of a certain copyrighted theme and theme music that is never to be used w/o specific permission was used in one of the presesentations. How could the latter have happened? - If all meetings become virtual, what happens to hotels and other venues? - What will it take to move SR into the curriculum of hospitality and meetings programs? Who will take that on? Is that a project that MPI, PCMA, IAEE, SGMP and others will tackle? Or will CHRIE join us? (WHO reading this is going to CHRIE this summer and wants to learn more?) - Seeing the video of IDEO was just cool. Why can't all places be more like them? Today went faster .. more breaks were built in, we had a longer time for lunch (THANKS organizers), and we had movement and what I think was more light in the room. Relationships are being built that will carry us all into the next phase of this.<<