
What will the future members of Associations be like? How will we stay relevant to this new generation? These were some of the questions we were to address during our panel discussion at the
Digital Now Conference in Orlando on April 23 - 26, 2008.
The Digital Now is a national Association Leadership conference which features 350+ of the leading non-profit Associations in the U.S. This is the only "don't miss" conference I have on my calendar and I have been attending since the beginning in 2000.

The panel was titled
Tomorrow's Members, Listening to the Voices of Our Future Featuring Julie Evans, CEO of
Project Tomorrow, Ronald
Moen, CEO of the American Dietetic Association, Dave Fellers,
CAE, Executive Director of the Radiological Society of North America, and myself, CEO of the
Maryland Association of CPAs. You can download notes from our presentation by
clicking here.
For my part, I wanted to tie in our work in the virtual world of
Second Life with the latest research on this new generation (
millennial, Gen Y, Gaming generation). So, I thought it would be interesting to have them tell the story (and demonstrate the talent of this generation). That is where
McDonogh School comes in.

As part of their senior project, Andrew Hood and Chris Mfume of
McDonogh School were tasked with making a movie about our work in Second Life (
CPA Island) that would tie in the latest research on K-12 students and their views on technology. They would also run demonstrations about Second Life during one day of the conference. Since our CPA Island was mostly developed by another
McDonogh School student, Thomas Hood (who
debutted it last year at this same conference), Thomas, who is now a freshman at
Salisbury University was asked to join us for the demos.
The video was a huge hit as were the demonstrations. These Gen
Yers presented
themselves well and showed the group their
skillz in technology...
Resources:
See the Second Life Movie created by
McDonogh School Seniors by
clicking hereRead the latest issue of the Journal of Accountancy article,
Accounting for Second LifeSee our blogs about
CPAs & Second Life
http://www.cpaisland.com/ &
http://www.slacpa.org/