Following is the orignal scope of the project when I started off on January 1st of 2010. Meanwhile things have changed, a lot. Read all about it in this 2011-post !
“Will the Internet replace Associations ?”
My mission: I give myself one year (2010) to find an answer to the Big Question. I shall be doing desktop research, talking to people, reading books and blogs, analyzing best practices and real life cases, and foremost engaging people to interact and collaborate. This site/blog is therefore the core of the project. I don’t know if I have a lot to tell, but I shall tell what I know.
My tools: These are the tools that I can rely on at this moment (1st of January 2010) and hopefully they will give me a headstart. I will be returning in a more elaborate fashion to these tools during my journey.
– 2Mpact: I am the CEO of a small Belgian company dedicated to rendering premium internet and association management services
– Sectorlink.be: a website, powered by 2Mpact, that enables more than 400 Belgian professional and trade associations to share and distribute content to a niche public of information professionals
– Belgische Verenigingsmanagers: a LinkedIn Group of Belgian association managers that I started in 2009
– FeWeb: I am the Chairman and CEO of the Belgian Association of Webdevelopers, representing more than 500 providers of professional internet services (webdesign, SEO, hosting,…)
– Other mandates: as a result of my professional activities, but out of pure interest as well, I hold several Board-mandates in very differing associations
– The Internet: last but not least, I hope I can use the Internet in all its means and ways for this endeavour. I’m passionate about the Internet, not so much from a technical point of view – you hardly can call me a geek – but rather form a sociological angle, i.e. where is all this going to ?
In order to be able to assess what my undertakings during 2010 have led to, I found it useful to write down some kind of ‘zero-vision’, how I would answer the Big Question today. You can read more about this in post #O.
Marc Mestdagh (LinkedIn : http://be.linkedin.com/in/marcmestdagh)
TFOA.be - The Future of Associations 
Leave a Reply