Meetings

Thursday Buzz: Jumpstart Your Event’s Website

The Online News Association makes its event-scheduling WordPress plug-in available for free. Plus: When it comes to responding to members, there is a need for speed.

Ready to make a snazzy-looking website-based schedule for your event?

The Online News Association (ONA) can help. The journalism group has released its conference calendar online, making its formatting and settings available to any organization—whether a journalism group or an association.

ONA uses it for its own annual convention—and now you can, too. The association worked with the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation (EEJF) to fund the open-source release.

“You can make a beautiful schedule that displays event dates, session times, presenter bios and photos and other essential details,” the association said in a press release.

It’s a WordPress plug-in that can be managed through the spreadsheet function of Google Docs. The schedule boasts a variety of color settings for different tracks. It’s easy to manage with all the fill-in-the-blanks set. Speakers can also be added to the plug-in.

And the best thing is that the open-source calendar is free. Look into it here!

Tweet of the Day

“Hello from the other side, I must’ve called a thousand times …” Hit singer Adele sang those lyrics regarding a romantic relationship, but it also applies to customer service.

Wes Trochlil, who writes about associations and data management, shared his experience of contacting organizations online and not getting a response within three days.

“This is the 21st century. Customers (especially those saying ‘I’m ready to buy’) expect immediate gratification. Are you giving it to them, or not?”

It’s something to think about—especially with Facebook Pages allowing users to send messages and see how quickly admins respond. The customer service platform Zendesk also has begun to focus on response time.

How instant is your gratification?

Links for Afternoon Reading

Are you lacking motivation in the office? Gamification could be a strategy to solve that problem—and can be seen in action with Badgeville’s new MotivationMetrics platform. Antoinette Siu wrote about it over at CMSWire.

Email addiction? It’s a thing. Research says professionals waste five hours a day on their phones—and that includes email usage. Over at Inc., Jessica Stillman shared how to manage emails.

Looking to boost your career? Look into Facebook. There are many Facebook groups out there that cater to career achievement and support. The Muse‘s senior editor, Stacey Gawronski, explained how to get started.

A sample of the interactive calendar ONA created for its 2015 conference.

Patrick deHahn

By Patrick deHahn

Patrick deHahn is a contributor to Associations Now. MORE

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