Our work in SL debuts at DigitalNow Conference

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 here

Read the latest issue of the Journal of Accountancy article, Accounting for Second Life

See our blogs about CPAs & Second Life http://www.cpaisland.com/ & http://www.slacpa.org/