About a year ago, I launched the Association of Virtual Event Managers, Organizers and Hosts (AOVEM). I felt the time was right to create a community where those who organize virtual events could come together to support each other and get advice.

It didn’t go so well. The model was flawed. Instead of treating AOVEM like a professional association, I treated it as a membership club. Monthly fees, monthly expert interviews, monthly exhaustion.

I memfaded – I had a membership club flame out.

Sadly, the vision I had for AOVEM and the techniques I was using to keep it going were in conflict.

• I hated the monthly membership fees and so too did those who were in the club.
• I also hated coming up with new content each month and surprisingly, members were complaining about not being able to consume it quickly enough.

So, I closed the association in January 2010 and went searching for a new model. I studied what others were doing, but nothing seemed to gel with my vision.

A popular online marketer launched a professional association and I joined because she billed it as “not another membership club.” But I soon realized that it was “just another membership club” and that she was simply using it to upsell to her high level programs.

Yuck! Not what I wanted to do.

It was at Andrea J. Lee’s first Wealthy Thought Leader workshop back in March 2010 that I finally discovered the model I wanted to create. As I furiously wrote down all my ideas, I finally felt a sense of peace as I reviewed the plan I put in place.

Quite simply – I wanted a model that put content creation in the hands of the community with small contributions from me.

It has taken 10 MONTHS – yes, almost a year to rebrand, retool and relaunch the association. I had to wait until 2 domain names expired and were sent to auction before I could make a move. Thankfully, with my friend Bill Sweetman’s help, I got www.virtualeventmanagers.com, the URL of the new association.

So, the new name is International Association of Virtual Event Managers (IAVEM) with a mission to expand the art and science of virtual event management to a global audience.

It’s a true professional association. It’s not an association masquerading as a membership club. It’s a professional association with a global mission.

So, what makes IAVEM different from AOVEM?

• Annual membership fees instead of monthly.
• Monthly huddles that put the focus on small mastermind groups instead of monthly expert interviews generated by me.
• A playbook that all new members get that’ll help them develop their virtual event management mindset (pictured right).
• A job bank where people can post their virtual event request for help. This takes the pressure off of me because right now, all request for help come to me and my burnt out virtual event management team.
• A directory where members can upload their resumes and be found by those wanting to hire virtual event help.
• And a point system that awards members for contributing articles and comment to the Virtual Event Management Knowledge Base (a fancy name for the blog).

Alright, so this is what you get by joining the association, but why bother? Why should you even care about IAVEM? Well, if you’re a:

• Virtual Assistant
• Virtual Event Specialist
• Online Business Manager
• Meeting Planner
• Human Resources Professional
• Project Manager
• Workshop Leader
• Trainer
• Or, if you’re a virtual event professional (in other words, you have hundreds of hours of virtual event management experience)

I’ll share with you in a follow up post the benefits of becoming a member.