The New York State Bar Association’s report is designed to respond to ethics and privacy concerns stoked by tools like ChatGPT. The New York State Bar Association has released guidelines to its members on the use of generative AI with a goal of addressing privacy breaches, ethical missteps, and “hallucinated” case briefs. The NYSBA’s report [PDF], published earlier this month, is the product of a months-long process developed by a dedicated Task Force on Artificial Intelligence, one of the first acts taken by president Richard Lewis. “We pick issues [for task forces] because they’re the issues ..read more

A new CEO survey finds a lot of anxiety bubbling under some surface optimism. Associations are well-positioned to assist. Despite an election year on top of economic and global-conflict stresses, leaders today say they’re feeling pretty good about things. According to KPMG’s 2023 CEO Outlook report, released last week, optimism is abundant. A strong majority of global CEOs (73 percent) say they’re “confident about the economy over the next three years.” There’s a twist, though—the optimism has a lot to do with how the leaders perceive other people are handling their business. As the report poi ..read more

The Future Partners report also found that planners remain concerned about inflation and a challenging political climate.  Meeting planners are troubled by escalating costs but remain optimistic about growing attendance in the coming years, according to a new survey. The seventh annual State of the Meetings & Convention Industry report, published last week by research firm Future Partners in collaboration with marketing firms Miles Partnership and Digital Edge, found that meeting planners are concerned about escalating costs around line items like food and beverage (F&B), but also ..read more

Volunteer leaders often start board service poorly oriented on governance. One expert is streamlining the process, highlighting the importance of simply getting along. Becoming a board member is relatively straightforward at most associations. You demonstrate expertise in a profession, volunteer with the association that serves it, then make your way through the association’s particular governance pipeline to get a board seat. Becoming a good, strategy-minded board member is often another matter, though. Boards don’t always come in with a solid grounding of the work they’re being asked to do ..read more

Associations’ silos can get in the way of making progress around AI, one expert says. But they can leverage other assets. A report in February found that nonprofits have been much slower than their corporate counterparts when it comes to adoption of generative AI. Jamie Notter, founder and CEO of the consultancy Propel, which works with associations, isn’t surprised. “AI is going to be so iterative—we do not know what direction this is going to go in until we actually start playing around with it,” he said. “And that’s not in the wheelhouse of associations—trying it and learning and adjusting ..read more

Leaders are under more pressure to speak out on hot topics. The right response is a function of a good plan—and some organizational awareness. The current news cycle is stressful for a lot of associations—at least two major global conflicts, an election year, plus anxiety over immigration, the economy, and more. Even if you as a leader don’t see the need to weigh in on today’s hot topic, there’s a good chance a substantive group of members or other stakeholders do want to see you speak out.  But even if you decide it’s worth making a statement, there’s the question of what the content of ..read more

The iSeatz survey features input from members beyond associations, including season-ticket holders and participants in subscription and loyalty programs. Members of a wide variety of groups are looking for value, belonging, and personalized attention, according to a new report. The Benefits of Belonging, released last month by loyalty technology company iSeatz, is based on online surveys of more than 2,000 managers and customers of membership groups, which encompassed clubs, professional associations, trade groups, and subscription programs.  Though that covers a wide range of member grou ..read more

Women are still excluded from top leadership positions. Resolving that problem requires some flexibility—and debunking some myths. Despite a lot of hard work on the matter in recent years, gender parity in the C-suite is still a struggle. According to the Pew Research Center, the number of women CEOs at Fortune 500 companies has steadily increased, but still only represent about 10 percent of the total; on the governance side, women only make up about 30 percent of corporate board members. A recent report from Gallup points out that part of the reason for the gap is work-life balance—more wome ..read more

The Association for Computing Machinery, following a broader trend, has made its flagship publication available for free, part of an evolving business model for research-based organizations. Earlier this month, Communications of the ACM, published by the Association for Computing Machinery, made two substantial moves. First, it shifted from a print journal with a website to an exclusively online publication. The second and bigger change was its shift to open access, leaving the journal available for free to all visitors. In a press release about the move, ACM stressed that the shift will speed ..read more

A new report finds that associations feel things are looking up. And there’s good reason for that to continue—if they don’t get complacent.  Optimists in the C-suite can be hard to find these days. Multiple surveys have found that CEOs are anxious about election-year politics, lingering effects of inflation, and what technologies like generative AI mean for their business.  But the main takeaway from Marketing General International’s 2024 Association Economic Outlook Report [PDF], released last week, is that associations are generally feeling positive. According to the report, based ..read more