Sure, your association might be into Twitter and Facebook, but probably not like the Online News Association. Its conference, which started Thursday and wraps up on Saturday, scored a couple of people who you might call celebrities in the world of social media.

Online News Draws Star Power

1,400 online journalists at #ona2012. Lots of familiar faces and new innovators. Good to have watched ONA grow up since my 1st 6 years ago.

— Nancy Hanus (@nhanus) September 21, 2012

This weekend’s Online News Association conference in San Francisco drew some big names for its 2012 event, including controversial figures (journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, who famously revealed he was an undocumented immigrant in a New York Times essay last year) and powerhouse platforms (Twitter’s CEO, Dick Costolo, is the conference’s keynote speaker).

Also worth checking is the forward-thinking ONA12 conference site, which features Twitter-based liveblogging of events along with traditional video streaming. (Here’s a sample of what that liveblogging process looks like.)

On “Poking the Bear”

To Grow Membership, Sometimes You Need to Poke the Bear http://t.co/8yDYvdkA Rt @rockettm via @Cvent @DonnaKastner #asae

— Team Slice Works (@sliceworks) September 21, 2012

Kathi Rabil, CEO of Sliceworks, points out an interesting Cvent piece, “To Grow Membership, Sometimes You Need to Poke the Bear.” Poke the bear? What does that mean? Well … essentially, it means making changes even if it means frustrating the old guard.

“It’s understandable that organizations would be reluctant to do anything that might jeopardize relationships with their core base, but this ‘play it safe’ mindset can also hold us back,” writes Donna Kastner, Velvet Chainsaw Consulting’s director of education and engagement. “It prevents us from exploring new ways to grow a more vibrant and engaged membership community.”

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