Check out the very cool “takeover” of ASAE’s already very cool Acronym blog by the Young Association Executives. It is a project of the YAE Committee, and in full disclosure, I did some work with them over the last year (though not about the blog takeover), so I am already a fan of this group. Thanks, Aaron Wolowiec, for the kind words about my work in your post during the takeover.
I have a couple of different reactions. First, as an expert on generational diversity, I want to point something out. Young people are smart. They know how to write. They know how to think. They understand organizations, and they have a lot to contribute. The posts on Acronym make that clear, though I did not need convincing. Unfortunately, I think too many people do need convincing. I hear it when I talk on the subject–people complaining that young people don’t know how to write or can’t articulate clearly. Honestly I find examples of that across all generations.
Second, I love this tactic for a blog. One truism for blogs is that it is good to mix things up. If you write the exact same kind of post, with the same tone, and the same structure, day after day, you’ll likely lose some readers. I am a regular reader of Acronym, but I loved this sudden flurry of new voices. It brought me back to the blog.

We’ve hired a new staff person here at MSP.
And I like this answer. I love data, and I’m no fan of a dozen people sitting in a room deciding what everyone else wants. But there’s a problem here. We already asked them, and we delivered what they said they wanted, and it turns out they didn’t want that. I’m oversimplifying a bit, but I’m just not convinced that every situation calls for a member survey about what they want, or if they want x versus y. Rather, we can ask them that and the data may be helpful, but they will not tell us what to do. Those data will not give us the answer.