Even Michael Skoler who leads Public Radio International’s interactive activities was surprised by the huge turnout for Ira Glass’ live version of his popular radio show, This American Life.

Wrote Gigaom’s Mathew Ingram, “More than 30,000 watched the first digital show at hundreds of theaters across the U.S. and Canada in the spring of 2008. The next year, 47,000 turned out. They came to be with other fans, experiencing something they all loved together.”

Hint: Host a road tour or gatherings where your online community members can meet face-to-face and collectively hear from their stars, their most valued members.  Unlike associations and civic clubs, many online communities haven’t provided an opportunity for in-person conversations and celebrations.

Conversely many of the traditional clubs aren’t maximizing their opportunity for members to socialize and to learn from members in other chapters – both online and in-person. As sister chapters and organizations get networked via the opportunity to see meet online and in-person, diverse ties deepen. Serendipitous friendships, breakthroughs and collaboration are more likely to happen.

What if, for example, Rotary International invited its members to create short video stories about their inspiring, first-hand experience in civic projects in their community and in other parts of the world? Next, what if Rotary, asked members to vote for their favorite video stories?

Then Rotary could host its own multi-city, simultaneous “film festival.” Invite members and their family and friends to gather locally in public auditoriums, homes and theatres to see and talk about those favorites.

Right afterwards it might host an online, vote-this-hour, People’s Choice contest so that worldwide audience could choose their Top Ten.

With Rotary’s squeaky clean, altruistic image, I’m thinking that many major companies would leap at the chance to underwrite the costs and/or provide the technical support to make this community-building dream come true.

Consider how instructive, heart-warming and member and media attracting that could be for a member-based organization with chapters.

Of course other diverse organizations with avid members, stories to tell and a strong sense of community could emulate their version of this approach.

Off the top of my head, those organizations  include the Westminister Kennel Club’s dog show, college and corporate alumnae organizations, Student Youth Tour Association in partnership with high schools, and the Cyclists’ Touring Club in the UK.

One of the smartest moves a company could make would be to launch and host an online community that becomes the most popular place for its kinds of customers to join, exchange ideas, co-create and otherwise collaborate.

To strengthen ties, understanding and value between members and between the company and members, that firm would, of course, host in-person events in formats that most serve that kind of community’s interests.  Those formats can be as varied as talent contests, mutual mentoring sessions, speed consulting, Pecha Kucha, Ignite or collectively viewing and voting on their favorite, member-created videos on the topics that brought them together.

A company-hosted online community that includes in-person events could be competition for some associations, accustomed to controlling the programs for their members, inviting “vendors” to pay to play yet often not giving them much of a say on how to participate for the greater good of members and vendors.

Have you heard of inventive ways that members of online communities are meeting in-person?

Do you belong to a club, association or other organization?  How could it bring members closer by enabling them to enjoy meeting both online and in face-to-face gatherings?

Become an opportunity-maker for the member organization that most matters to you. Imagine that your association or special interest group kept innovating to create more value and meaning for members.

That’s what TED has done and we can too by taking three collaborative steps over time:

1. Offer a single major conference  – as most associations already do, of course. Involve the members in choosing topics, speakers and formats, base on core guidelines, chosen by member vote. Create a format that enables members to participate in reach a single – and singular goal.

2. Encourage the launch of local conferences yet don’t try to control them. Instead create ground rules for local leaders to succeed while maintaining the quality of the “brand.”

3. Co-brand a fresh version of your national conference with another respected organization on vital topic that matters to the members of both organizations. Allow the founders of your local conferences to co-sponsor that new conference by enabling their members to view it together in their area.

The team at the TED conference announced this third step today.  See how you could adapt these steps to the member group that most matters to you.

Step One

The national TED conference has grown increasingly popular throughout the past 22 years, with the biggest community of members becoming those who avidly watch the videos of speakers.

Step Two

Building on the strength of that largely online community, TED launched, just last April, local events dubbed TEDx. Rather, in true collaborative fashion, they announced guidelines for these local events and invited people to co-host, design and run them. In just one year local leaders stepped up and hosted over 600 such events around the globe.

Hint: To encourage local events, the guidelines start with the benefits for the local organizers and provides an easy-to-follow toolkit: “In the spirit of ‘Ideas Worth Spreading,’ TEDx is a program that enables schools, businesses, libraries or just groups of friends to enjoy a TED-like experience through events they themselves organize, design and host.

We’re supporting approved organizers by offering a free toolkit that includes detailed advice, the right to use recorded TEDTalks, promotion on our site, connection to other organizers, and a little piece of our brand in the form of the TEDx label.”

In so doing, local communities bonded, learning together and created other local collaborations.  Imagine! In over 25 languages were spoken at these talks with opportunities for translation to spread the messages farther – and make speakers more well-known, thus spurring participation by great speakers.

Hint: the more popular your events become the more people you attract to donate their services.

This is the path to peace – and savoring your life with others. Diverse individuals meeting to learn and share best ideas with each other – and, in conversations during the event and afterwards, to find ways they can accomplish greater things together, than they can alone.

Step Three

Today the third step was announced. A new event is linking local groups to the mother ship of the national group – around a new topic area, yet connected to the underlying TED brand of innovation, new ideas – and solving a problem together.  Local groups will get to meet and share this new event live – with other local chapters around the world.  The announcement was that “On September 20, 2010, more than 150 of the world’s leading thinkers and doers will come together in New York for TEDxChange, convened by Melinda French Gates … and hosted by TED founder Chris Anderson.”

With such member loyalty, interest and clout accumulated by TED it can attract a big-time partner – the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  Also together they share a Sweet Spot of mutual interest – bringing bright minds together to address a big problem: how to improve health around the world.

Plus smart partners tie their collaboration to as many meaning goals and events as they credibly can.  For example, this conference is tied to the 10th anniversary of the famous Millennium Development Goals.

This is a three- stage template that you could use to grow the value and visibility of your profession association – and make it more meaningful for your members.

In fact any member-based club or special interest group could adapt it to their needs to grow its capacity to make powerful changes while imbuing its members with a sense of meaning in their participation.

Think what the Rotary Clubs have accomplished over 20 years with their single goal, bottom-up approach to wiping out polio.  Imagine local Rotary clubs have rallied around this single cause and have raised about $127.4 million for this cause – plus personally worked on projects to make it happen. That gives their lives meaning and builds extraordinary bonds between members and with those they selflessly serve. That dedication and progress towards a singular goal (key to great collaboration) attracted the Gates foundation as a partner.

Tip: When people bring out each other’s best talents in collaboration around a sweet spot of mutual interest they accomplish greater things together than they ever could on their own – and they savor the experience along the way.

To make your member-based organization a member-attracting tool for major change and a source of meaning in the life of your members what singular goal would you suggest they achieve?  For your organization, how would you adapt this three-step approach that has been wildly successful for TED?

Job hunting is dispiriting – often lonely and isolating. 

That’s why it was so comforting for job seekers to be in a room full of knowledgeable people who were ready to meet with them, one-on-one, to answer their specific questions. 

From job hunt web sites to career counseling coaches could personalize their advice to each person’s need. Hundreds of unemployed people flocked to this free speed-coaching event in New York. My colleague, transitionist coach Terrence Seamon was one of many coaches who volunteered to sit in “twenty minute sessions, to review their job search campaign strategies as well as their resumes, making sure that they are accomplishments-focused.” The event was the co-created service of The New York Library, Vault and volunteer coaches. 

In this bad economy what top-of-mind topic most concerns your kind of client? 

Recruit a cadre of non-competing and credible experts to coach them in a fast-paced, speed coaching event where participants get hundreds of dollars worth of the specific advice they most seek – and coaches demonstrate their expertise to “pull” prospects towards hiring them.  More than a free for all, “here’s my card” networking event people actually get to meet the individuals they’d most like to know at that time.

You, too, could leverage your value with a custom speed coaching event that serves a hot need or avid interest felt by your kind of clients. Here’s a quick checklist of jumpstart your first popular, speed coaching event:

• What other credible, complementary (non-competing) experts and organizations serve your “mutual market?”

• What preoccupies your clients?  

• When would it be easiest for them to meet?

• What is a convenient and attractive meeting location for them?

• What if you created a helpful meeting momento – an eBook of three tips from each coach plus their bio and s brief description of all partnering organizations, with links to all resources cited in the eBook?

• How long should your event be?  Some are as short as two hours and as long as a day.  One-on-one coaching sessions in different events range from five-minutes to 20-minutes. Collectively choose the length that works best for your kind of attendee and speed coaching theme.

• Consider combining 20-minutes “expert roundtable” sessions for five to eight attendees to ask an expert questions – concurrent with the one-on-one speed coaching sessions. 

Put the coaching sessions on one side of a ballroom or other large meeting place and the roundtables on the other.

• Place large signs behind each coach with their name and/or topic and on roundtables with the table topic.

The more partnering coaches and organizations you involve the lower the per-partner cost and the higher the benefit to them for participating – and the higher the number of people you can reach and serve.

Here is one kind of speed coaching event I co-designed with the astute head of the S.F. chapter of Savor the Success, Ayesha Mathews-Wadhwa. 

If a coffee shop owner and a former minister can make money by leading groups then, perhaps, so can you and I.  In the following success stories see if there’s a method you’d like to try. With the right approach people are happy to pay you for the opportunity to hone a skill they already have or to re-invent themselves. Perhaps you can re-invent yourself and gain more financial security and independence as you build a side or main business, teaching others what you know.

Why Teach Groups Rather Than Individuals?

Remember what Willie answered when asked why he robs banks? “Because that’s where the money is.” Learning by yourself isn’t as much fun as when in an actively engaged group.

Shared enjoyment reinforces an individual’s belief that they like the class and themselves while in it, research shows. That’s why people usually learn faster in experiential group learning.  Plus they bond with each other, admire you (the leader) – and are more likely to recommend the class to others. That’s a faster path to profitability.

Choose the Group Teaching Approach That Works for You

What skill can you teach others so they can secure more work from current clients and/or get to new clients – or launch into a new profession? Here are six extremely different (and profitable) kinds of group training:

1. Enable others to jumpstart a specific kind of business you know inside out. After many years as the owner of a popular coffee shop, Jake was restless for a change.  He almost became a customer service trainer for retailers because he loved teaching others. Then he realized he could show others the most efficient way to launch a coffee café. After working with a curriculum instructor he designed a set of six weekend long courses so that even those with a full-time work could be sufficiently prepared before they left their job.

Then Jake contacted several columnists and bloggers who covered food or small business and suggested that his unfolding story of changing how he worked might interest their readers. With their coverage plus referral from his café customers he filled his first class.  Now his class is filled by word of mouth.

2. Offer experts a new tool to sell to their customers. Beyond fixing furnaces, when HVAC contractors (a huge market) get trained as a group  – to sell and install whole home air cleaners, they have a new reason to call on customers.  In an upscale market. They can target homeowners with respiratory problems and those who’ve sealed their homes for energy-savings.  When group training includes practice in how describe the service to clients, by phone and in person plus a promo kit: “Breath Healthy Air at Home” of advertising templates and tips sheets for consumers, graduates of the training are ready to jumpstart their outreach – and make more money sooner.

3. Teach others to lead groups, using your content.  Therapists and life coaches who are fans of former Methodist minister Susan Page’s book, Why Talking is Not Enough, rave about it to their clients.  Susan offered them a way to make money by leading groups in learning the principles in her book.  For a fee, Susan provided a training manual. Thus she created a new profit center for herself plus a way to sell more books and build her fan base through her cadre of trained group leaders.

Artists, Jane Pollak and Rebecca Shapiro lead groups on how to turn their creative bent into a business.

Tongue Fu! author Sam Horn takes a different tack.  She personally trains and certifies groups of people to teach her content.  

Even if you aren’t a published author you could create a book based on your expertise and launch a similar train-the-group leader practice.  Create an online social network or group blog through which the graduates can stay in touch, compare stories, help each other hone their practice, refer others to the training and contribute suggestions for improving your training.  Of course, your book will be sold as part of the training. And you’ll reward contributing individuals with free eBooks from partnering authors with complementary expertise and with recognition in the book and in your future training.

4. Offer an intensive, group learning through projects experience. Once you’ve attracted a sizeable base of happy graduates and become more well-known for your work, you might launch a more in-depth opportunity for a group to learn together, as Seth Godin just did with his  crowdsourced alternative MBA program. In creating your steps to launch yours, read his innovative and efficient way to attract and organize participants in this experiential, project-based program.

5. Host an open-to-the-public seminar or series of seminars, using free social media tools like MeetUp (to announce the meeting details), Paypal (for payments). Although MeetUp is mainly used for enthusiasts who share an interest, many, like Edith Yeung are charging for meetings. For the niche market you seek to serve (the more narrow the more lucrative) you might lead a seminar and/or host other experts or panels to speak to your group’s specific interest.  Alternatively, you might post your class on Biznik (as a member) or Teachstreet.

6. Generate recurring revenue by providing follow-up opportunities

To deepen the loyalty and expertise in those you teach consider offering an ongoing program of learning.  That might include telebriefings that are recorded for member download, an annual gathering for graduates, a group blog, and contests for best suggestions for improvements. 

Create a community. Include online crowdsourcing features that enable those you’ve trained to get to know each other, share and compare their knowledge – and to be rewarded for their best contributions (as voted by co-members).

Rewards could include recognition on the site and giving credit to them, during future group training and in the educational materials.  Plus you may bundle gift packages for these highest-performing participants.  Since there are other experts and companies that want to reach the kind of people you teach, ask them for contributions to that gift package. Such contributions might include books, tapes, other products, one hour of individual coaching, etc.

Also offer special training for those who make the most valuable contributions to improving what you teach and/or who attract and lead the most groups.  Following the 80/20 Pareto Principle, your top 20 percent probably generate the most profits for you and for themselves.  I’m inclined to think it is actually your top five percent. 

Yet taking extraordinary care of all the people you’ve trained is not only the right thing to do, you never know which group leader will suddenly gets an insight that dramatically improves your training or has a group member who introduces your approach to a whole new niche market or attracts a media story that inspires new people to seek your training.

Ponder this:  In your industry or profession, what special skill could you teach that enables people to:

• stand out in their profession (job protection)

• differentiate their work from that of the competition

• enter a new market?

Are you interested in translating your expertise into group training as a new way to earn a living or to create a new profit center?  

Will you “simply” train groups and possibly certify graduates? 

Will you offer them a manual or learning kit or ongoing in-person and online training?

Will you foster a community around the work as a way of improving your content and enabling people to learn from each other?

Are you already leading groups, using your content or others?  I’d love to hear about your experience. 

What methods you are using to attract, train, recruit and reward new group members? 

What do you offer for free and how do you charge?

I’d love to learn from you and to share what you’ve discovered.

Anyone seeking more meeting participation may be discovering new ways by attending Obama-led town hall meetings. Some opinion leaders find Obama’s inferred endorsement of google tools jarring. Yet the three he’s using would be helpful to most any event planner, cause advocate, online entrepreneur or global team leader.  They are free, easy to use and scalable:

  AppEngine (a platform), Google Moderator (a tool to vote on which questions should be asked) and, of course, YouTube (for spreading the show – I mean meeting). At the platform you can invite participants to submit and to vote on the questions they want asked.  Yes, it’s crowdsourcing the “best” questions. And priceless visibility for google, with Katie Stanton’s involvement, when the questions are directed at Obama and on a top-of-mind-topic, the economy.  Enable participants to gain bragging rights - as they do for the town meetings - by inviting them to video themselves asking their question.

Exhibitors: here’s a surefire way to attract more warmed-up prospects to your booth, learn about their needs and bond with them as a festive part of the conference. As a speaker, I’ve forged value-building alliances with exhibitors that you can adapt to your kind of exhibiting.

“Make Every Moment Count” is the title of a CD that a pharmaceutical company gave away at their exhibit booth at two major conferences. 

Half of the CD covered the company’s new product highlights and “how-to’s”; the other half featured companion tips to those I offered in my opening keynote on communicate to connect. The person who introduced me announced the CD gift from the exhibitor. At the end of my talk the introducer drew attendees’ attention to the descriptive gift cards on their seats. He added that they could get their gift (“limited number available”) at the company’s booth right after my talk, and that I would be at the booth for 30 minutes to answer questions.

At the booth, exhibitors offered a bonus gift: a free copy of my autographed book (with the company’s sticker on the front) to those attendees they pre-qualified as possible prospects who agreed to “take three to five minutes” to fill out a 15 question survey. (Speakers are thus able to bulk sale their books to partnering exhibitors as I did.) 

Exhibitors: Identify a popular presenter in the key conference and tradeshow in which you participate. Recruit that speaker to co-present a proposal to conference and exhibit staff at those high priority shows, one that leverages value for all parties. 

For example, your firm could underwrite all or part of a speaker’s fee in exchange for this integrated outreach.  As well, work with the speaker to co-create two PDF e-books, with a print version of each.  Offer the printed version as a meeting souvenir, combining the speaker’s tips and your company’s advice about buying and using your kind of product or service (with a special offer to the first 50 attendees who visit the booth). 

The eBook can have links to many parts of your web site including one with an online survey and follow-up offer. 

As part of your agreement with the organization hosting the conference, a reference to these free souvenirs could be placed on the their web site page with details for the upcoming conference.

Ask that the printed booklet be placed on attendees’ seats prior to your sponsored speaker’s presentation. Provide the second eBook and printed booklet to customers throughout the year.

Reduce your costs and increase your credibility and visibility by joining forces with one to three other non-competing exhibitors who often participate in the same trade shows as you do. Identify the speaker.  Ask that you have adjacent booths. Combine your tips into blockbuster eBooks and printed booklets.  That way you gain a warmed-up introduction to each other’s booth visitors.

Every once in awhile I’m going to share a Me2We kind of nugget from someone on my blog roll. See that roll now on the right side of the page, scrolling down through “Recommended Links.”

Today we’ll turn to the Center for Graphic Facilitation where Peter Durand takes Fast Company to task. Why? They skipped one vital point in their article, 10 Rules of Effective Brainstorming.  The “traffic cop.”  That’s an unbiased facilitator. I heartily agree. How else can you keep the conversation from flying off in all directions like balls in a pinball machine?

Durant suggests:
• Bring in an outsider or someone from a different groups inside the organization.

• Find someone who is trained as a facilitator or has skills in group dynamics
(able to read when the team is flagging or when it is hitting on all cylinders).

• See the person has patience, yet is willing to exercise discipline if one person can’t stop talking or is becoming aggressive.

• In advance, let that person observe the group in action, at another meeting.

To really help a group brainstorm or make decisions, get a facilitator who can draw the conversation, for all to see, as it unfolds in real time, as David Sibbet does – perhaps you? Dan Roam can show you how to draw. Oh, yes, and be sure to meet on the right side of the brain.

It takes a tenth of a second to form an impression. So imagine how difficult it is to hold their interest for five minutes.  That’s a short time for you and a looooooong time to them. For practice in being memorably brief, find or start an Ignite group.  They are popping up all over, including in my hometown of Portland where an early social media mentor of mine spoke – Adam DuVander. Baltimore, Phoenix, Philly and Seattle are hosting them too. As in Pecha Kucha gatherings you are limited to 20 slides, advancing automatically every 15 seconds.

But that’s in a meeting room where you can rely on Powerpoint.  The next stage in communicate-to-connect prowess is to start an Ignite group where slides and PowerPoint aren’t allowed. In fact, ban technology beyond a microphone, if needed.

Yes, images help, but use them to warm people up to your idea before you are with them – or to reinforce it afterwards.  Use precious face time to connect. Anyway, in most everyday situations where you want to ignite a fire under your idea, you won’t have technology on hand, except, perhaps your cell phone. Besides, the most authentic messages happen when we see you saying them  – and come to believe in both.

At your association’s annual conference imagine having two sessions each day where ten  (pre-conference sign-ups ) attendees present their message, one after the other, Ignite-style.

Add a Wisdom of the Crowds feature:  Video the sessions and post them on your association’s site or blog.  Then all members could sign in for the first month after the conference and view and vote for their top five favorites. That might provide meaty insights into what most matters to members.  Plus it’s a palpable way to motivate and honor members for their best and succinctly-presented advice.

Update: Yet if you must use PowerPoint then get Nancy Duarte’s groundbreaking book Slide:ology and turn the pages in awe at the beauty and practicality of her approach. Like presentation zen guru, Garr Reynolds I am so delighted by her approach – and her generosity in including free videos of some of the presentations in the book.

Your hobby or work expertise or belief may be unusual, yet it’s likely that people near you share your interest. Or they may just want to have fun. How can you find those kindred spirits? By hosting an ever-better MeetUp.

Also consider start a MeetUp to create a profit center for yourself. Or to hone a skill or support a cause.

What’s a MeetUp? Let masterful Lee LeFever quickly show you.Imagine making money by making others happier. See a large one to get ideas.

• Perhaps, like Liz Ryan, you’ve built a successful online business out of serving clusters of local constituencies. Using MeetUp you can offer your people a new service. Face-to-face gatherings. Through your MeetUp, individuals can chat with people they’ve met online.

• They can meet regularly in some format that they collectively choose, with your leadership. Suggest formats such a mastermind or other kind of mutual support group, cross-consulting or speaker series.

• Forge an alliance of your local MeetUp chapters.  Get ideas from how other alliances work. Recruit and reward local organizers who host “our” gatherings.

• Let each “chapter” decide whether they want their MeetUps to be free or for-fee or a mix of both. Should your local leaders be paid or share in the revenue raised through a speaker series or set of seminars?

• Get input from your host leaders by arranging regular conference calls with them via a free service such as Skype or FreeConferenceCall. In true Me2We fashion you can facilitate their sharing of ideas for MeetUp formats and topics. Explore how these phone seminars and in-person meetings can complement the online offering that you, like Liz Ryan, offer your clients.

• Take a look at an online, for-profit model (in which I participate) that also supports face-to-face gatherings that are organized and hosted by members – biznik.

• Or start or join a MeetUp of your peers. I belong to the Bay Area Reporters and Journalists organized by Susan Kuchinskas.

Why explore these ideas?

Because, if your expertise or experience matches the interest of a distinct niche market, then the approach outlined in this post enables you to enlarge your circle of friends and/or make money in supporting others’ strong needs or interests.

Oops. Don’t just design and decorate your people-serving place or event. Storyboard it.  Create the experience for them, just as a movie director plans the sequence of scenes to pull people in and evoke an strong emotional response. But, unlike a movie director, you can involve all the senses.

From the first smell to the last sound of your store, stadium, conference, hotel, hospital, home or other site, create the moment-by-moment sensory cues you want others to experience. If you sell something, they will buy more.  With the right storyboarding you build bragging rights in the people who walk in. That’s priceless. Yet, used wrongly, a sensory cue can alienate customers, as Westin and others discovered. Now, begin with an Exposures Audit.

Relatedly, want to increase per-customer spending? Then provide free samples – the right way.  Our so-called ice cream bon bon bombshell experiment boosted movie goers’ spending 24 percent.  And we’ve repeated that success for clients at places as diverse as restaurateurs, meeting planners and museum store managers. Next, where possible, personalize your customer’s experience. A tall order.

In short, you can create a popular, one-of-a-kind place or event by offering the right multi-sensory story.  Next time you step inside a place notice what details affect your impression of the place.

Want more on behavior or experience creation?  Read

How You Can Prompt Us to Feel or Do Something

How What You Hear, See or Feel Affects What You Think or Do

Make Your Meeting or Product Come Alive in Images

An Engaging Way to Ask Your Group What They Want

Public “Sculpture” That Moves Us to Play or Cry