Trade associations scramble to keep up with Web

Trade associations scramble to keep up with Web
No one likes being an endangered species. That's one reason trade associations and societies, like businesses before them, are reinventing themselves to meet the needs of Web surfers. Members expect information at Internet speed, and if organizations can't supply it, they run the risk of becoming has-beens.

"Our feeling is that associations could lose their role if they're not careful," said Anne Gordon, chief executive officer at eSociety (Bellevue, Wash.), which provides Web services to organizations. "Associations can become irrelevant to their members if members or potential members can find information on other Web sites. The Internet-centric people coming up go to the Web to find a job or to learn about the industry. The whole notion of joining an association to do this is not natural to them."

Seeing the writing on the wall, many of the associations serving the electronics industry are revamping operations to make better use of the Internet. Indeed, some say that deft use of the Web can actually bolster membership rolls. The Web-savvy IEEE (Piscataway, N.J.), for example, will soon divulge that it saw a 5 percent increase in enrollment in 1999, to 352,000 members.

As the venerable engineering society prepares to unveil broadened capabilities on its Web site this month, the smaller IPC (Northbrook, Ill.) is also putting more effort into the Net. The association for the circuit-board industry recently created a job title: director of e-commerce activities.

"We have a lot of programs going on, so we needed to centralize and push programs ahead so we can become a center for e-commerce and be first to market," said Karla Dahan, who holds that position at IPC. "We're looking to enhance the site so it will be a center, a resource for the industry, a place to buy things. We want to automate purchasing so people can order online and go to another portion of the site to download documents so they don't have to wait while we ship them hard copy or a CD-ROM. We also want to integrate the Web site with our back end, [to] offer more to our members and make our internal maintenance simpler."

The larger IEEE already has many of those capabilities and is constantly fine-tuning and expanding its Web offerings. For example, the association recently instituted a system of multiple levels of access to documents, called Xplore.

"With our new Web services, it's possible for anyone to look at the table of contents for over 5,000 documents: members to look at the abstracts and, if they have a subscription, [to] access the full text," said Anthony Durniak, staff executive for IEEE publications.

"Another thing we're looking at are some services that might have ad support or sponsorship," Durniak said. "If we develop a technical conference, a corporation may sponsor it on the Web. Or they may sponsor coverage of a conference, something like a RealAudio broadcast of a keynote."

Another project in the works will leverage the increasing multimedia capabilities of the Web to create technical presentations with far more capabilities than print alone.

"Say you're reading a paper on digital signal processing," said Bruce Eisenstein, IEEE president, 2000. "You may want to have a before-and-after sound, so someone can actually hear the difference with and without DSP."

However, adding such effects is something to be undertaken with a certain amount of caution. Associations have to make sure that their customer-members will have enough bandwidth so that the graphics and/or video are positive extras, not system-crashers.

"The busiest times for access are Monday through Friday in normal business hours, so we're assuming most people are accessing with a least a 56k modem, probably a T1 line," said the IPC's Dahan. "We need to take that into consideration. Do people have enough bandwidth to download streaming video and have it run correctly? We don't want to alienate or exclude anyone."

Virtual conference

Another new twist now on the drawing board is virtual trade shows. Both the IPC and IEEE are looking at the potential here, though neither organization believes a cyber-event will ever replace the real thing. In fact, such coverage could broaden the audience for speakers and exhibitors, making it more attractive for members to attend in person.

"There's a tremendous opportunity with conferences," said Kenneth Laker, past president of the IEEE. "None of the conferences sponsored by our societies gets more than 20 percent of the total membership to attend. We have the opportunity to put some of that [content] on the Web." For members, he said, "Clearly, getting even part of the conference is better than getting nothing. Now, many of our members get nothing."

One advantage an established organization enjoys over Web upstarts offering similar information is credibility. "One big value is the traditional value of peer review, which increases the value of our information," said Daniel Senese, the IEEE's executive director. "The Web is a Sahara Desert, with all kinds of things that aren't verified. An expert can tell what's valid and what isn't, but it's worth a lot for younger people to know that what we have [posted online] has gone through a peer review, so they know it's valid information."

According to Gordon of eSociety, groups like the IEEE and IPC are far ahead of the average trade association in other industries in terms of Web presence.

"We looked at 175 association Web sites and found only 10 percent were as capable as commercial sites, with all elements, content and other things," Gordon said. "More than 70 percent of associations have Web sites, but a very small percentage of them provide a broad range of offerings."

Being at the forefront of Internet technology seems apt for organizations that serve the high-tech world. Yet, the other side of that coin, said IEEE's Laker, is that the technical prowess of members creates high expectations.

Tough customers

"The Internet is probably a greater challenge for us than for other groups," Laker said. "We are in the information and technology business, and our members are in the same business. They have a higher bar for creatively and usefully employing the Web."

Providing useful information to members can sometimes be a tricky issue. One of the simplest ways to bring members back to the site is to tell them via e-mail about new things they might want to see. But in an era where e-mails are often the topic of cocktail conversation showdowns, these notifications can do as much harm as good.

"Associations need to think of things that compel someone to come back to the site," Gordon said. "They may promote special events or discussions of controversial topics. At the same time, they have to be careful of privacy issues, when and how often they say 'you seem to be interested in this topic.' They need to make sure they're not bothering people."