Next edition: April 7, 2009

The next edition of the Best of Chamber Management Blog Carnival is now seeking submissions from Chamber and association bloggers! Please look over your past months' posts and select the very best of interest to Chamber of Commerce management professionals. Topics can cover leadership/management, communications, member service/value, fund-raising, community involvement, recession management, or anything else you think will be of interest.

To submit your articles, visit the Blog Carnival Submission Page. Submission deadline is Noon on April 3; the Carnival will come out April 7.

Please note these submission guidelines:

• You must be the author of the article you submit to the Carnival.
• The article you submit must be available on a publicly accessible blog - we cannot accept submissions which require a subscription to view.
• You do not have to be in the Chamber industry to submit an article, nor does your article have to have been written specifically for Chamber professionals. However, the content of your article must be of interest to Chamber professionals and applicable to Chamber work.
• Authors should select a specific category for their article on the Submission Page. If you are unsure of which category to select, just select "Other" and we'll either leave it there or re-assign it to a more appropriate category for you.

Best of Chamber Management - Carnival 1

Here's the inaugural edition of Best of Chamber Management, a round-up of articles from top-notch Chamber and Association bloggers. This first issue features articles from seven chamber/association professionals on topics ranging from the use of social media to rethinking the importance of perfection. Enjoy - and, be sure to subscribe to each of these excellent blogs to read more from the authors.


Board Management
Jamie Notter reminds chambers and associations that everyone within an organization has the capacity to lead, and that leadership must be system-wide. In his post, Great Ideas: Leadership Lessons, he notes: "Leadership is simply about being able to shape the future. Making things happen."


Membership Development
Tony Rossell postulates that an organization's membership value proposition doesn't have to be perfect to be marketable, noting, "Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good." Keep the Membership Recruitment and Retention Engine Running offers advice for getting out there even if your member program is still a work in progress.

Communications
Integrating social media into Chamber communications is quickly becoming a must. Curt Moss of Weblink International presents Social Media Marketing for Chambers, offering examples of Chambers doing it well and compelling stats on why it's a necessity now.

Now that you're planning how to use social media in your communications mix, don't forget: it takes a certain kind of person to represent the organization's brand online. David Gammel offers thoughts on this with Customer Service as Performance Art.


Member Value
Technology can automate routine tasks, freeing your time. But, are you using the additional time to connect with members? Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE offers the video, Jeffrey Cufaude on High Touch v. High Tech, along with thought-provoking commentary, posted at Thanks For Playing.

Jeff De Cagna offers food for thought with Social technologies and The Benjamin Button Paradox posted at Principled Innovation Blog, saying, "We’ll never give (members) a reason to see things differently until we give them something worth seeing...."


Member Interest
Bill Sheridan looks at one state that's working collaboratively to solve problems that defy solutions, with his post Businesses battle 'wicked problems' with 'we' solutions posted at CPA Success.


That concludes this edition of Best of Chamber Management. The next edition comes out March 31, with a submission deadline of Noon on Friday, March 27. Visit the Carnival Submission Page to submit your latest, best blogpost for Chamber professionals!

Submissions are in - look for the Carnival March 10!

Thanks to all who submitted articles for this inaugural edition of Best of Chamber Management! Submissions are now closed for this issue. It looks like an amazing group of blog posts, and I'm looking forward to sharing them with you!

All authors will automatically receive a link to the carnival when it' s published on Tuesday, March 10. If you didn't submit an article but are a Chamber or Association management professional and want to receive a link, subscribe to this blog's RSS feed (link at right) or just drop me an email at info@edmchamber.org.

More soon - thanks!

Submissions open for first edition!

We're now accepting submissions for the inaugural edition of the Best of Chamber Management Blog Carnival! If you blog about topics of interest to Chamber of Commerce professionals, pick your best writing and submit it to us via our Blog Carnival Submission page.

Please note these submission guidelines:

• You must be the author of the article you submit to the Carnival.
• The article you submit must be available on a publicly accessible blog - we cannot accept submissions which require a subscription to view.
• You do not have to be in the Chamber industry to submit an article, nor does your article have to have been written specifically for Chamber professionals. However, the content of your article must be of interest to Chamber professionals and applicable to Chamber work.
• Authors should select a specific category for their article on the Submission Page. If you are unsure of which category to select, just select "Other" and we'll either leave it there or re-assign it to a more appropriate category for you.

If you need to contact us for any reason after submitting your article, just send an email to info@edmchamber.org.

What is the Best of Chamber Management Carnival?

Welcome to the homepage of the Best of Chamber Management (BOCM) Blog Carnival! A blog carnival is a recurring compilation of the best and latest blog postings about a particular topic. The BOCM Carnival is for Chamber of Commerce professionals to share their best practices in all aspects of chamber management, including member service, economic development, community involvement and fund-raising.

BOCM is hosted by the East Des Moines Chamber of Commerce in Des Moines, Iowa. Information about our first edition will be forthcoming soon.

Also - the East Des Moines Chamber can be found on various social networking sites around the web. Look us up on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as EDMchamber!

If you have any questions meanwhile, send us an email at info@edmchamber.org!