John D Schultz

I’m currently President of the Minnesota State Auctioneers Association, serve on a variety of state committees, serve on an advisory board to Proxibid, and serve the National Auctioneers Association on two committees (technology and futures). Within this myriad of roles, I’ve recently had the opportunity to look to the future and prognosticate what it will look like. I’ve got to admit, it’s near impossible to tell. However, in the past months and especially in the last week, I keep coming back to an idea about how to structure an association. I’m not sure if it would ever work. Yet, it’s just crazy enough that it might work better than one could imagine.

Couple the crazy idea with my current reading of What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis, and I’ve got a recipe for an association that might just be radical enough to work, or just radical enough that it would fail due to lack of revenues. I’m not sure, and figure this is a great place to get my thoughts out onto paper for your commentary.

So, let’s begin.

First, let’s get the assumptions about associations out of the way. As associations, we’re driven primarily by membership dollars raised through annual dues. We provide value by offering educational offerings through conferences and seminars (at an extra cost above membership dues), and provide monthly periodicals (digital in some cases, print in others) that seek to provide education (included in the membership dues) through articles. We’re inherently afraid that if we give our educational content away, members will have no reason to belong, and will stop paying dues. As a result, all information is locked behind the proverbial membership wall. Plus, if you want to access past educational offerings, you need to pay extra for that (in the form of DVDs or online streaming). All areas that can be tapped for revenue, even if it’s not practical, is exploited.

Now, let’s scrap the model and start over. Let’s assume we’re starting from a complete clean slate, could do what we wanted, and had ample capital to form the basis for our association. Here’s how I would envision the structure.

Members would pay a modest fee. In return they would receive a monthly, or bi-weekly, educational offering digitally. Perhaps once a month it was a newsletter containing informative articles, and the other instance a month was an educational podcast. The association would use it’s membership as the basis for the educational offerings, and use the sphere of influence of its members to find additional educational topics and speakers. There would be an annual conference, and additional symposiums throughout the year. These additional offerings would be premium in nature, and delve deep into the business. All educational offerings not offered at conference or a symposium would be available to anyone – member or not. Additional educational articles would also be written on a twice weekly basis. All this content would be on a site specifically linkable, commentable (sic), shareable, and fully archived.

This model would serve many purposes. It would encourage auctioneers to congregate online at one source for educational offerings and discussions. The association would truly be serving the industry, and not just the member population of the industry. In addition, auctioneers and non-auctioneers would look to the site for informative guidelines, information and education about the auction industry. The association would gain influence and relevance that is lacking in the “hide behind the member wall” mentality.

You may be asking, why would you want to be a member? Simple. The educational offerings offered to all comers would be top notch but pale in comparison to the in-depth, rich aspects of the educational offerings offered to the members. Members would also have access to additional member only educational offerings, and in depth offerings by leading experts from within and outside of the industry. Only members could attend the conference and additional symposiums, and all conference and symposium education would be archived for members to access at any time at no additional charge but not available to non-members.

The short term and long term implications may be that association membership numbers dropped considerably. However, the influence of the association would increase as the entire auction community began to look to one source for information. The more and more I read and interact with the social aspects of the web, and look to the future and see a world based on social interactions and relationships, I can’t help but wonder if the application of a more porous membership wall would lead to a more unified, influential standing within the community.