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In the virtual world called “Second Life” (www.secondlife.com), you create your own 3D character and meet all kinds of strange people. I was first put onto this by a peer who has a part-time job in Second Life working as a bar manager in a pub in Ireland. Her husband is the resident DJ during the same shift.

For those of you who are scratching your head, yes, she meets and greets everyone who comes into the bar for a (virtual) drink and her husband spins records and gives shout-outs—while they both are at home, in bed with their laptops. I went online one Friday night to check it out.

My colleague welcomed me into the bar, and her husband announced to all that I was a friend of the hostess. Before I knew it I was chatting away with 30 other people while dancing the Irish jig—apparently I clicked on something that made me an immediate expert.

After the night was out, my friend and her husband picked up their tip jar (yes, they get tips) and took me back to their online home. The house was down a cobbled road, exactly how I remembered Dublin. We sat in front of the fireplace and chatted away until 1 a.m. It really is a whole other world!

Much like Second Life, the benefits of Web 2.0 are not about a specific technology but rather about a new way of interacting with friends, coworkers, and the whole connected world in ways that are more user friendly, satisfying, and productive. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Flickr, and more—these sites are essentially a way for people to connect with each other, as well as contribute to and control the content of the websites that they use.

The list below covers Web 2.0 tools that associations are using right now to take advantage of these opportunities.

Second Life

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) was fortunate to have a couple of keen staff, Jessica Medaille and Jennifer Ragan-Fore, who took an interest in Second Life as a potential way to attract and convene members. In just six months, more than 1,300 people joined ISTE’s Second Life group.

Ragan-Fore, general membership program director, researched Second Life on her own time and figured out how to establish a modest presence there at a cost of about $400 annual rent for the organization’s virtual building. Based on a strong member response to the initial foray, ISTE decided to upgrade to an island. The ISTE presence was built on a shoestring (total cost: less than $3,000), but there is no way you can tell when visiting.

There were a few surprises along the way. ISTE’s number-one assumption was that the most popular aspect of its virtual environment would be education. In fact, the association’s Thursday night social has been much more popular than any of its professional development events. ISTE also underestimated how much member engagement this new medium would generate.

As Ragan-Fore puts it, “We have finally found a way to engage our volunteers, people who aren’t normally able to participate in the organization by traditional means. They finally feel a part of this community.” ISTE “meeters and greeters” (called docents) volunteer using a free Google global calendar. So far the association has an average of seven hours per day covered, seven days per week. As one member put it, “I’ve always wanted to volunteer but have not had the time, but now I can do it from my own couch.” ISTE has even recruited new international members—a group the association has trouble reaching through more traditional marketing.

Second Life is not the only virtual world out there. Digitell, Inc., recently launched a world for associations that feels like a typical annual conference: exhibit hall, seminar rooms, executive board rooms, café networking lounge, hotel, and more. Exhibitors can even hire booths and embed videos for attendees to click on and view. It’s not the cheapest option, but unlike Second Life, which is open to all who enter, the Digitell product is a world created just for the association and can be easily restricted to members or invited guests. The cost is approximately $25,000 for setup and $1,000 to $5,000 per month for hosting, depending on usage.

Directory 2.0

The traditional online member directory allows you to search by first name, last name, and company name, perhaps even by specific demographic information that relates to the industry. But Directory 2.0 features the core competencies of a social media site like Facebook. Consider some of the following ideas:

Search. Basic and advanced search—everything the traditional online directory has.

Friends. Members should be able to send “friends requests” to others when browsing through the directory. Once the other member has accepted the request, a new level of trust is established between the two parties. For example, only those who are part of Jane Member’s friends list can join an ad hoc networking group that Jane has created or see her more detailed profile page.

MyProfile. Give members the opportunity to really showcase themselves with information on interests, hobbies, and areas of expertise, as well as full biographies and photos. A member might have a virtual wall on which other members can write (see how Facebook does it—a simple and popular feature).

Mutual friends. When someone is looking at a member’s profile, the directory should provide information on mutual friends. This can remind members of how they know someone or provide a sense of serendipity: “Ah, I didn’t know Bob knows Mary!”

Blogs. Allow members to create blogs, which are then showcased on your site. Allow the member to choose whether the blog is open to the public or members only.

Demographics. Remember to display demographics about each member profile, such as number of views, wall postings, blogs, friends, unique visits, and so forth. Demographics have been key to the success of YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and other social networking sites.

One of the best association member directories has been built by Meeting Professionals International (www.mpiweb.org) and while it doesn’t have all the features of Directory 2.0, it is very close and recognizing the success it deserves.

Ad Hoc Networks

Most associations have some kind of discussion groups or forums, but in almost every case they are preestablished as dictated by staff. The next evolution is “groups on demand,” where members can create their own groups as they wish.

A member may have just attended a professional development course and want to stay in touch with the other attendees. He or she simply creates an ad hoc group and invites the other attendees to join. Within seconds, they have a platform to discuss the lessons of the course, brainstorm ideas, share photos of the night out they had together, and simply stay in touch. If the association had created the group, it would likely have failed; but when created by a participant for participants, it has a much stronger chance of success.

When this very subject was discussed at my organization, the Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS), there was obvious concern about diluting member value: What if members want to add nonmembers to their ad hoc groups? However, when the ad hoc model was displayed with all the associated permissions, it was clear there was a workable compromise. The deal maker was the thought of our members building their friend lists and uploading nonmember email addresses into their ad hoc groups—ultimately creating an incredible prospecting database.

Resource Library

A resource library has traditionally been an area where members can share and find documents. The American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery went well beyond that.

As part of a new e-membership initiative aimed at attracting international members, ASCRS looked for innovative ways to expand its online offerings—and realized the true potential of its resource library. Many of its eye-surgeon members use specialized equipment to take videos of surgeries and photos of eyes in various stages of disease. ASCRS asked its members to upload and tag (adding keywords and a brief description) videos, photos, or albums of photos for other members to view and comment upon, rate, and share. This was so successful that ASCRS now broadcasts live surgeries. Industry partners can also showcase new equipment using educational infomercials.

Richard Blacklock, director of membership marketing, says, “Ophthalmologists virtually anywhere in the world, as long as they have internet, can post questions about and/or pictures of interesting cases and receive practically instant, free consultation from, literally, the best minds in ophthalmology. For example, members in China are able to watch and listen to live surgical procedures being performed by other members. We have only been pushing the video medium a short time and already have over 60 videos, with hundreds more expected, in our archive. It is truly a rewarding experience knowing that people around the world are being cured of crippling eye diseases with the help of the tools which we are able to offer.”

The HigherLogic.com software allows any member to upload any type of digitally formatted video, which is then dynamically converted to a Flash movie file—the same way YouTube does it. Every video is embedded with the ASCRS logo as a watermark and has an embedded five-second introduction from the association. “Sometimes we expand the permissions of a video so others can embed the video in third-party sites. By overlaying the video with our own promo, we are sure it still gives us the recognition we deserve,” says Blacklock.

Search based on the tags members provide is another key feature. Blacklock says, “The regular search not only searches the tags but also the contents of every uploaded document within the resource library. Typically, members do their initial search and then click on a tag to narrow down their search even more.”

When asked about the member/nonmember issue, Blacklock says, “We opted to allow nonmembers to search our resource library and view the document description, title, and comments, but we don’t allow them to download the document. When they try, we ask them to register as guests so they can receive certain designated content, but we also offer them an opportunity to join ASCRS so they can receive the full benefits of membership.” Members can also forward documents to peers—a valued member benefit that also provides the association with a marketable prospect list.

E-groups/Discussion Groups

Listservers are one of the biggest missed opportunities at many associations. A typical medium-sized association might have 10 lists—most likely offered in a plain-text digest or real-time email format. There are tremendous opportunities to take this to the next level.

The National Association of Health Underwriters (NAHU) is using listserver software that incorporates social media features that enrich the user experience. Emails are now nicely formatted in HTML, and the association can embed internal or external advertising. RIMS recently socialized its e-groups with the same software from PluginForLyris.com that NAHU is using. The result in both instances has been an overwhelming success.

Vincent Seglior, director of professional development at RIMS, explains, “The advertising medium has helped transform our educational offerings. Over the past three years we have seen our course offerings double to keep up with the demand which this new exposure has helped generate. We are able to track all the clickthroughs so we are easily able to see where traffic is coming from, and the e-groups advertising is a serious component.”

RIMS has been able to cut down on the number of marketing emails to its members while also recognizing a significant nondues revenue opportunity. While NAHU uses the new medium to advertise only internal products and services, RIMS allocates two weeks of every month for external advertisements, at a cost to advertisers of 12 cents per email generated. With 40 lists ranging from 100 to 8,500 subscribers each, the nondues revenue potential is approximately $400,000 per year.

Wikis

A wiki is a very simple collaborative environment where anyone can edit a document. In a traditional wiki, you don’t even need to log in. That was part of the success of Wikipedia, the world’s largest free encyclopedia.

Meeting Professionals International has recognized huge success with its wikis. They built a “lite” version of the software that is more palatable to working professionals (as opposed to technical enthusiasts). Rob Price, director of web experiences for the association, attributes the success to the choice not to use the traditional wiki syntax. “We’ve kept it simple and provided users a simple-to-use WYSIWYG [what you see is what you get] editor, which is common to all our other editing components, such as blogs and member profiles,” he says.

EDUCAUSE also has had success with wikis, although not in the areas it expected. While EDUCAUSE anticipated the majority of the activity to come from publicly accessible wikis, the association was surprised to see that most edits were generated around its team wikis. As Matt Pasiewicz, content program manager, puts it, “Our team wikis are conceptually disposable/temporal wikis. We set them up for a specific purpose, like a committee rewriting a publication or that type of thing.” He also notes that marketing is a key driver to a wiki’s success. With the team wikis it is much easier, but the public wikis need to be pushed much more.

Pod, Video, Screen, and Webcasts

EDUCAUSE is not new to streaming media. Since January 2005, it has published approximately 600 podcasts from 20 minutes to one hour in length. Much of the content is from its events, such as the organization’s annual conference; session recordings are outsourced to a third party, which records all the sessions for free and shares the revenue from the sale of the content. Other podcasts are based on interviews conducted via Skype, which is inexpensive and easy to use.

Don’t underestimate the resources required for producing regularly scheduled interviews: A one-hour recording might take six hours of staff time to turn into a finished product of 20 to 40 minutes in length. EDUCAUSE employs at least one full-time employee to set up and facilitate the streaming media but is able to recoup some of the cost through sales and sponsorships. Pasiewicz notes that EDUCAUSE often makes use of journalism students and members to record interviews.

RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds are appearing all over the place. They allow members to subscribe to anything which might change with any frequency. For example, RIMS has RSS feeds attached to its course calendar, so members can get live updates of any recently added courses. Our magazine provides feeds for its blog as well as its articles.

While RIMS has recognized much success from its magazine and blog, we’ve had little uptake on the course calendar feed. Pasiewicz from EDUCAUSE also notes that his association offers a variety of feeds around its website, but is not seeing the subscriptions the association was hoping for. However, this may soon change; the latest version of Microsoft Outlook comes equipped with integrated RSS feed readers.

Andy Steggles is chief information officer of the Risk and Insurance Management Society, Inc. He has launched a Facebook group for association professionals, “Association of Associations.” Email: asteggles@rims.org

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