Two days after it was canceled because of severe snowstorms in Washington, D.C., ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership's 2010 Technology Conference & Expo (Tech10) delivered on its promise of showing association professionals how to "strategically use technology to better serve your members, effect social change, and uphold your mission" - although not in the way it had intended. Instead, a cadre of those professionals seized the opportunity to stage their own version of the conference via the tools and applications that would have been showcased at Tech10.

The result was a stripped-down, unofficial, all-volunteer version - UnTech10 - held on Feb. 11-12, in person at the Renaissance Washington, D.C., Downtown Hotel (Tech10's original venue), and online for hundreds of virtual attendees. "We feel pretty passionately about this community," said Lindy Dreyer, chief social-media marketer for SocialFish, who with her business partner Maddie Grant, CAE, was supposed to speak at Tech10, and who served as part of the core group of association technology professionals that organized UnTech10. Dreyer added: "When [Tech10] got canceled, we were like, ‘We know all these people, and we know they can still make it out. Let's figure this out.'"

ASAE & The Center officially canceled Tech10 at 3 p.m. on Feb. 9. Dreyer, Grant, and other tech types had been discussing that possibility throughout the day, and within a half-hour of ASAE's announcement, there was an UnTech10 registration page on Eventbrite. A Twitter hashtag - #untech10 - quickly followed. By 6 p.m., Dreyer said, a Web site was up, hosted for free by Omnipress - one of whose account managers, Tony Veroeven, was part of the UnTech10 planning team. Later that night, Peach New Media CEO Dave Will contacted Dreyer about providing live Webcasting.

As this process was unfolding, Grant touched base with Reginald Henry, CAE, chief technology officer for ASAE & The Center, to make sure that he and his organization were okay with UnTech10. They were - unofficially. "We had to cancel [Tech10] and file an insurance claim," Henry said, "so that prevented us from having an official involvement in the conference." But Henry participated on his own, as an association technology professional, moderating a town-hall event that kicked off UnTech10.

On Feb. 10, the organizing team met at the Renaissance, with those who couldn't make it participating via WebEx. The group included Dreyer, Grant, Will, and Veroeven, plus Aaron Biddar, executive vice president of sales and marketing for ThePort Network; Ray van Hilst, director of communications for Avectra; and Sterling Raphael, president and CEO of NFi Studios.

UnTech10 launched the next day, with about 75 people in attendance at the Renaissance and another 400 tuned in for the Webcasts of the program. The second day was all virtual, with speakers across the country presenting content via Webinars. "Because we were using Twitter very heavily, the Twitter backchannel was very active," Dreyer said. "It was also built into the Webcast console, so people could really see what was being discussed right next to the Webcast."

The whole experience - while overwhelmingly positive - wasn't exactly what Dreyer was expecting from Tech10. "I was going to stroll in around 10, talk to some exhibitors, get some work done," she said, laughing. "I had this whole laid-back conference experience planned. And it didn't quite work out that way."

Take Away

Lessons Learned
The Association Technology Conference draws anywhere from 1,200 to 1,400 attendees, according to Reginald Henry, CAE. At press time, ASAE was considering whether it could reschedule Tech10 later in the year. Here are a few lessons that Henry said could be applied from UnTech10:

It doesn't have to be perfect."UnTech10 was a perfect example of [the fact that] the real appeal for people is the content. The experience is important, but the most important thing is the content and getting that to people."There's no slowing down.

"With all the social technologies available, people's expectations are that things will happen a lot faster, and we all have to adjust to that."

Go mobile.
"People participated at UnTech via some of those mobile technologies. That's a big deal."

Christopher Durso is executive editor of Convene.

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