16 Tweets From Free: The Future Of A Radical Price And The Impact On Your Association

Image by Joseph Robertson http://www.flickr.com/photos/josephrobertson/419102097/in/photostream/

On Tuesday, August 24, 2010, I attended ASAE’s 2010 session Free: The Future of a Radical Price…and the Impact on Your Association. John Crosby, CAE, VP, Communications, Software and Information Industry Association and Jeff De Cagna, Chief Strategist And Founder, Principled Innovation, LLP, facilitated the 75-minute presentation which was also live streamed.

Here are 16 takeaways, in 140 characters or less from their presentation. Some of the tweets use abbreviations and lack punctuation. I’ve added Jeff De Cagna and/or John Crosby’s names to each tweet for clarification.

16 Tweets About Free: The Future Of A Radical Price & The Impact On Your Association

1. What is economy of Wikipedia, Craigs List – It is Gift Economy, free labor, with no expectation of payment says Chris Anderson from Jeff De Cagna
2. The digital age is exerting an unstoppable, downward force on prices for all things made of ideas. – Chris Anderson from Jeff De Cagna
3. Even in digital age, there is no such thing as a free lunch. There is some expectation & some costs. John Crosby
4. If it is too cheap to meter, why charge for it? If it is too important to meter, why charge for it? says John Crosby
5. Abundant information wants to be free. Scarce information wants to be expensive. ~ Chris Anderson from Jeff De Cagna
6. 3 forms of assn value: Membership, education, publishing (information). How is free & gift economy impacting these 3 asks Jeff De Cagna
7. Freeness of membership is commoditizing membership. [Facebook, Ning, other social tools that create tribes] says Jeff De Cagna
8. Commoditized memberships creates digital relationships and consumers says Jeff De Cagna
9. Associations have assumed that they own membership relationships. The network now belongs to ppl says Jeff De Cagna
10. Who owns your association relationships? Who owns the network, membership, audience. Free is challenging the traditional model says Jeff De Cagna
11. Associations have ppl paying rent for membership relationships. Now that ppl own those relationships, membership dues R questioned says Jeff De Cagna
12. If [we] eliminate association dues, how do we design so that ppl increase level of meaning, connectedness says Jeff De Cagna
13. If 10K members & 2K involved w/ 8K not involved, you have 2K members and 8K subscribers says Jeff De Cagna
14. Associations are famous for making things free that they are no longer interested in says Jeff De Cagna
15. Any future you consider for your association – less print, less web, more mobile says Jeff De Cagna  and John Crosby
16. How does info, knowledge [& experiences] get placed within a good [association] context? Important discussion for associations says Jeff De Cagna and John Crosby

How will free impact your association’s offerings? How does your association differentiate it’s membership value from other organizations?