On the run

Every weekend this month, plus at least one other trip mid-week, I'll be either speaking at an ASGA conference or training/consulting with an ASGA member institution. August is typically my busiest travel month for serving ASGA members.

While I don't look forward to the airport waits and delays, I do look forward to the work itself. It's rewarding and satisfying knowing that I can help less-experienced student leaders and advisors.

Fortunately, I'm only gone for two days at a time, so I'm not away too long from my wife and children. That's the hardest part of travel for business: being away from the family.

But when I come home, we always take a family day to do something fun. Yesterday it was bowling (my first time in 31 years). The kids loved it. Next week when I get back from Boston, I'm thinking of taking them to the Tampa zoo.

Travel nowadays, let me tell you, is hardly romantic. Just because I go to cities like Boston, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles doesn't mean that I sight-see and spend time enjoying cool drinks, music, and checking out the landmarks. I usually see the inside of a hotel room, meeting rooms, and the airport.

It's also hard work to travel. All of the preparation takes a ton of time. I'm my own travel agent, so that adds to the complexity. I'm also the "roadie" at our conferences and handle set-up before the event and take-down after. Sweaty work, particularly at this time of year.

But again, I focus on the work and what it is accomplishing and who it is helping. That knowledge that ASGA and I are doing important work that matters helps me make it through the flight delays, jam-packed planes, and over-priced airport meals.

Research, research, research

One of the most-rewarding and interesting aspects of serving Student Governments is helping them with research.

This research can be on everything from student activity fees to student government budgets to elections.

Our members frequently ask ASGA to help them save time, money, and energy on getting information they need. It's a privilege for us to help out.

When we get a request, our team writes, calls, e-mails, and faxes schools nationwide to get answers to specific questions.

Once we get the answers, we add this information to our SG Database. So the research not only benefits the member school that originally asked for it, but all other ASGA members.

Every time we research a subject, we're also adding to the knowledge-base that ASGA stores. This continues to grow and grow and improve.

One thing about ASGA is that we are always growing and improving.

ASGA keeps growing and growing...

In four years, ASGA has grown from an idea to by far the largest student leadership organization in the nation.

ASGA now has 774 member institutions, plus we store information in our searchable database on every Student Government in America. Our ASGA team adds new and updated information every day.

We now produce 10 Student Government training conferences, which frankly are the most helpful and practical in the nation. Our conferences always get better, as we bring in new speakers and new and more interactive workshops and roundtables.

ASGA is the only organization that I know of that gets visibly better ever day. We literally impove every day. We add more knowledge every day. We help solve our members' problems. Everything we do improves our resources and makes ASGA more valuable to all of our members who take avantage of our support.

There is no sign that ASGA is slowing down! We're averaging 170 new member schools each year (probably closer to 200 this year). Every one of our conferences this year has attracted more attendees than the previous year. We're doing more consulting, helping members improve their constitutions and train their members.

It's an exciting time for ASGA and our members. We love serving Student Governments and helping students and administrators!

We're back...

Back to work today after giving it my all at ASGA's National Student Government Summit this past weekend. It was the largest event we've ever produced-- nearly 600 students and advisors from 100 colleges and universities in 38 states. It might have been the largest Student Government conference ever!

Admittedly, it is a whale of a lot of work to produce an event of this size and complexity. We had eight concurrent workshops going on, nearly 50 roundtables, two keynote speakers, and nearly two dozen talented and knowledgable speakers in attendance. What a great experience for everyone.

After we got done Sunday afternoon, and I had my final consulting appointment, we headed for the airport in plenty of time to catch our 7:35 p.m. flight. But we arrived at the gate to find out that weather had delayed our plane and we wouldn't be leaving until 10:30. I didn't get home until 2:20 a.m. Monday morning, missing the traditional frenzied "greeting" from my wife and children. The other ASGA team members didn't get home until nearly 4:00 a.m.!

Also, on the flight up to DC, I was one of the last to board my flight, based on "zones." There were no overhead bins left, so the flight attendant made me check my bag-- I thought they would bring it to me at the end of the flight, but it turns out they "checked" it like normal baggage. But it wasn't there when we arrived-- this was a mission critical bag and had our nametags, petty cash, reports, and several signs. The bag turned up a day later at the conference hotel about 30 minutes before we started our official registration!

Two problems that happened at the beginning and at the end were really the bulk of the challenges we had at this conference, despite its complexity and size. And both problems were outside of our control.

This shows me that despite all of your pre-planning, all of your work ahead to make sure everything goes well, there are things outside of our control. We can't do anything about it.

We just have to do our best and make the event or project happen despite the problems. How we react to those unexpected problems shows what we really are like as leaders.

I'm glad to be home and am spending time with my wife and children. Soon we'll be getting ready for our Chicago and Dallas conferences.

A week to go...

Yesterday, our team shipped the rest of the materials that we'll be using at our upcoming National Student Government Summit in Washington, D.C. It's the largest Student Government conference in the nation.

It takes months of planning and hard work to produce an event of this magnitude. Nearly all of ASGA's "headquarters" staff is coming to pitch in. Compared to our regional conferences, we have more than four times the number of speakers, workshops, and even days (this is a four-day conference, while our regionals are one-day events).

It was exciting yesterday to see the last of the boxes head out.

Last night, when I was with the family doing a little shopping, I noticed the time-- 7:03 p.m. I told everyone that one week from now, our conference video introduction would be playing and we would be starting the conference!

The National Student Government Summit is by far ASGA's biggest and most exciting event. And as it grows (all four years it has grown in number of participants, speakers, and workshops), it becomes more of a challenge to manage. But our team works hard and we get better at planning. We're learning all the time, just like our "constituents," Student Government leaders and advisors.

We're an organization that continually tries to grow and improve.

For those of you who are coming to DC next week, thanks. You're in for a great time and will learn a lot. See you in DC!

Connecting with your constituents

Most students don't care about Student Government, even if the SG is a powerhouse and is influential. Most students don't think SG does anything for them personally.

We have to show students that we're involved in their lives and that we matter throughout the year. SGs can't just be visible during election season (when they bombard everyone with fliers and buttons and freebies and accost passersby to vote).

One of ASGA's goals this year is to make sure we communicate with our members throughout the year in many ways. We developed a plan yesterday to call each member institution four times a year, to try to answer questions and remind them of what we offer and the resources we have. We also will e-mail them monthly with the ASGA newsletter, fax periodically, and mail them with updates. It's our hope that we teach our members how ASGA can serve them.

Your SG can do the same. You should develop a strategic plan of how to interact with your constituents regularly, to solicit feedback, share news, get ideas, and show you care.

Connecting with our constituents makes us relevant in their lives and then we become indispensible to them.

The first, the best, and the most

Student Governments are pretty quick to say things like "we have the largest budget in the nation," or "we have the most members" or "we were the first to do...whatever."

With 5,100 student governments nationwide, nearly everything has been done before or tried before.

For example, Wesleyan University's WSA representatives bragged in their campus newspaper that they're the first student government to create an "endowment" using unused funds from their annual budget. This is hardly true. There are several examples of fiscally conservative student governments (Eastern Connecticut State University, the University of Wyoming, and several of the public institutions in California come to mind immediately) that have roll-over monies that they hold close each year.

One of ASGA's many strengths is our vast database that includes information like this on every student governnment in America. Our members can search this. They also can communicate with thousands of their peers using our list-servs.

Instead of reinventing the wheel, they can save time by using ASGA's resources.

Wesleyan's WSA does something, however, that is worthy of mention. They produce a mid-year progress report that is circulated to the campus press, students, and staff. This reminds WSA members about the progress that has been made on specific projects, and it always reminds them of what it left to be done. It can help them focus on marshalling their resources to focus on completing specific projects before their terms of office conclude.

Devoting our lives to improving student government

The team that runs ASGA is made up of full-time professionals who specialize in student governance and student leadership. What makes ASGA so unique as a resource is our total focus on helping student governments improve. We live and breath student government every day and that simply makes us the best there is in the world at student government training. We're immersed in the research, data we gather on every school in America, and hundreds of e-mails we get daily. We also subscribe to campus newspaper newsfeeds and are constantly searching the web for new trends, hot issues, and solutions to problems.

Our members know that this is our mission. For me, as executive director, there is nothing more important to me (aside from my wife and children). It is my full-time mission in life: to improve America's government by training student leaders to be effective and ethical future public servants.

Always improving, always growing

In my 25 years in student leadership, I've never encountered an SG organization that literally gets better by the minute. ASGA does.

We literally are growing and improving our resources every minute of every day during the work week. Our data team is gathering more information, we're conducting more research, adding new members, producing new conferences, and much more.

It's exciting to be part of something that is truly changing the face of student governments across America!

Advisors training

Just got back from ASGA's Advisors conference in Miami. We had more attendees for the third year in a row. It was a good time to get to know some new, green advisors and also reconnect with other allies we've worked with for several years. I enjoyed having dinners two nights with our speakers, Chris, Vicky, and Suzette. They're super-smart people and share the vision of ASGA: improving student governments and in the long-run, improving our nation's government.

It was a long drive down and back (five hours each way), but I got home about 11:30 p.m. on Saturday night and was able to spend the day with my wife and children.

All in all, it was a great conference and ASGA continued to improve and grow and serve our members better. We learn from every one of the conferences we produce.

Join ASGA to improve your SG!

ASGA is the national professional association serving and supporting collegiate student governments. Please see http://www.asgaonline.com/ for details.

ASGA has nearly 1,000 member institutions of all types and sizes nationwide.