Whose Members Are These, Anyway?

As an Association professional, you know that bringing your members together in a conference venue is an important way to demonstrate your Association’s value to them. And you know that bringing members to meet exhibitors provides an important source of revenue to supplement dues revenue.

As well, you know that it’s important to control the venue for the duration of the conference. After all, you wouldn’t have your conference sit in the midst of a huge facility called the Facebook Conference and Expo Center with thousands of other conferences, would you? It’s your Association, they’re your members, and you’re not about to bring them someone else’s exhibitors, right?

Now of course conferences are as likely to take place in cyberspace as in physical space. But the dynamics are the same: keeping your attendees and exhibitors in an online facility that you control is important. Otherwise you’re just building someone else’s business for them.

And social network platforms typically deny you the opportunity to own your own audience's meeting place.

Global Villages changes all that. Just as you control the venue for the duration of a physical conference and expo, your Village is your property, under your control.

And your Village delivers the established benefit of "controlled circulation," that is, the knowledge that those in your online community are who they say they are - and that they have a legitimate connection to the community.

Own your members' most important destination.

Your annual conference has provided a place where your members get together and share news of the profession, industry, or avocation. Knowing that they'll be with other qualified members of the profession or audience has provided real value to them – and to your organization – for a few days a year.

The rest of the year they hang out, like most people, in some form of social media.

Shouldn't you be the one to provide that social space? Wouldn't they appreciate knowing that there's an online space where they know they'll be rubbing shoulders only with other qualified members of their peer group? Wouldn’t your exhibitors appreciate the same thing – that all attendees are well qualified?