ASAE Annual Meeting 2016: Notes & Highlights
The Salt Lake cityscape. (via Flickr user CountryLemonade)

The ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition in Salt Lake City, taking place August 13-16, will be full of astronauts, nonprofit thought leaders, mountain backdrops, and top-40 pop bands with interesting haircuts. But more than any of that, the event will be a showcase for the best and brightest in the world of associations.

Below, I'll be sharing interesting highlights from the event, broken down by day and session. I plan to share highlights from most of the sessions I hit. Feel free to comment and leave some of your insights, and shoot me a message on Twitter if you’d like to be added as a collaborator to this document. Thanks! — Ernie Smith at Associations Now

Saturday, August 13


Stuff on social media I spotted throughout the day


Here’s something neat I spotted at the airport on the way here:

(It’s no meeting half the members of Weezer, but it’s a little more culturally relevant.)


And a useful warning from AICPA’s Heather Pownall:


What you’ll see when you get to the airport:

Looking for something to do in Salt Lake? This Periscope session from Visit Salt Lake, featuring host Maggie McGary and longtime association exec David Jennings, hopes to pull you outside of the walls of the Salt Palace.




Sunday, August 14


Opening keynote

Mark and Scott Kelly, astronauts
The big deal today, clearly, is these guys, who are ready to share their out-of-this-world experiences as as identical twin astronauts. (Mark, if you’re not aware, is the husband of former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who became a prominent gun-control advocate after surviving a mass-shooting attempt in 2011.) Associations Now did a feature on them as part of its May/June 2016 issue. 



Educational sessions I’ll be hitting