Author Archive

One of my favorite lectures on hooking an audience is from a ted talk given by J.J. Abrams called "Mystery Box".  In it, he talks about our love of little mysteries, and how we can use them to captivate our audience. I've written a lot in the past year about gamification, and increasing member engagement, and a new phenomenon called "mail order mystery" might be the next key link in the chain.  Mail order mysteries sends members little who-dun-it type mysteries…

When I was a child, I loved dinosaurs.  The first time I watched them come to life on the silver screen I was swept away with wonder.  The bottom line?  Dinosaurs are cool.  And why wouldn't they be? Dinosaurs were majestic creatures; large and ferocious.  Like something you read about in a King Arthur tale, fighting one made legends, and victory forged kings.  So too with the association.  Like the dinosaurs, associations offer something grand and majestic by uniting people of…

One of the things we tend to take advantage of in today's market is how easy everything is.  In the span of a half hour, I can discover a new band, sample through their discography, order their latest CD (or download it on iTunes), and book tickets to their upcoming concert.  There's an expectation that this brand of ease is something that occurs naturally, like it's just baked into the internet. That is until we experience a website that isn't…