Webinar: New-style Associations: The Community of Practice Approach by Community by Association

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About This Webinar

We are saying associations are communities, in fact communities of practice (aimed at sharing knowledge and learning), but are they truly acting like a community? After 60 years of organizing in-person conferences as the primary way to build their community, there is a massive opportunity for associations to reimagine the way they build their communities, sped up by the current digital transformation on steroids. What are these opportunities and are associations up to reinvent themselves or are they going back to the way it always was?

Presenter

Mathijs Vleeming

Strategic Consultant, Open Social

After 20 years at the heart of the international association meetings industry at ICCA, Mathijs is now “Online Community Evangelist” at Open Social, passionately preaching about the major opportunity for associations to increase their impact by empowering their members to share your-round.

Mathijs studied Communications Science, and has a long career in the international meetings industry. He started at a Marketing Agency in the nineties, marketing exhibitions in the Amsterdam RAI before moving to ICCA (the International Congress and Convention Association) in 2001. At ICCA he took on various projects leading up to a Director Marketing role: He designed ICCA’s PR- and Social Media Strategy, centralised marketing activities, promoted all ICCA events, managed Online Product Development and Software Projects, and managed the implementation of a CRM system.

Having been involved in “professional community building 1.0” as Director Marketing with ICCA and always believing in the potential of online community platforms for associations, his mission is to contribute to the transformation of community building for associations. In February 2021 he partnered up with Open Social on this mission.

Open Social is #MadeToShare: It is an open source community platform by the community, for the community. Open Social has mastered the art of sharing, serving some of the biggest international NGOs as clients, including the United Nations and Greenpeace, and has won several international awards.

Open Social places sharing at the heart of everything it does. Because sharing is what turns a group of individuals into a community. As people share their goals, their passion, their innovations, their knowledge and stories, they become a unified community that can change the world.