Last week we talked about the decline of local associations and association chapters.

Many of my older subscribers agreed that this is a real phenomenon. Most of these regretted the loss but had no more of a solution than I did.

Some (presumably) younger subscribers didn’t see that this is a problem, as social media provide plenty of ways for people with similar interests to interact.

Here’s one beyond how they help satisfy the deep-seated need many of us have for human contact: With social media it’s a lot harder to know if someone I’m interacting with has actual expertise and useful experience of their own, or whether they’re Google/Wikipedia insta-experts.

I treasure the experts I know personally because I know the extent to which their opinions are worth paying attention to. Someone on social media? Not so much.

One more point in favor of in-person events: In side-bar conversations during an in-person event, you can ask for a locally-based colleague’s discretion. Social media have no discretion to offer.

Which still might not mean this is an actual problem. It might instead be a constraint, the difference being that problems can be solved. Constraints must be dealt with.

With this in mind, and also recognizing that problems can’t be solved nor can constraints be dealt with in the absence of root cause analysis, here’s my list of likely root causes for the decline in in-person professional socializing:

• Heavy drinking stopped being funny. Or, for that matter, socially acceptable. Who’s going to want to stay after the formal meeting in order to listen to friends at their worst?
• 45+ hour weeks became normal for professionals. And that doesn’t count the ones who wish 45+ was normal, because their weeks were longer. Enough already – they’d like at least some sort of life.
• Going to meetings adds a stop. If I leave work to go home, I’m home. If I leave work for a meeting, that’s one more step before I’m home, and one that takes more energy than I can spare at the moment.
• Less participation leads to fewer volunteers. Fewer volunteers leads to meetings with less appeal. Meetings with less appeal leads to less participation. As vicious cycles go, this one is easy to fall into and hard to break.
• Local associations and chapters are competing with vendors. Vendor events are better-funded and better-orchestrated than what local groups can manage. With a limited in-person time budget, which are you more likely to attend?
• There’s plenty of tangible information-sharing on the web. This adds to the competition for attention and participation. It also makes justifying participation harder when there’s work to do and your boss wants it done Right Now.

Bob’s second-to-last word: My metric for assessing the quality of virtual team meetings is how well they emulate in-person ones. For the time being at least I’m going to continue to apply this same metric to social-media-based professional interactions.

Bob’s last word: On this subject, thanks go to long-time reader and correspondent Sean Murphy for recommending Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. No, I haven’t read it (yet). Just the title sums up a lot of what we’re talking about in a mere two words.

Gotta love it!

Once upon a time there was the Green Mill. There still is, but only the name survived.

In the Twin Cities it’s a well-known restaurant chain specializing in pizza. Before that it was a 3/2 beer joint, sort of like Cheers … everybody knew everyone’s name … but more poorly lit and with stickier floors.

It was, to put a word on it, a community. Then they added deep dish pizza to the menu, it became a go-to place for a more affluent crowd, and while its profits soared its community-ness evaporated.

Once upon a time there was the Little Wagon. It was where you went Friday after work if you worked for the Minneapolis newspaper. It was where we built strong relationships and weak livers.

But over time the whole idea of congregating after work for conversations and conversational lubricants just faded away: More and more of us left work on Fridays to start the weekend with our families, leaving socializing at the Wagon to a shrinking group of loyalists who worked on their cirrhosis the way more fashion-minded individuals worked on their tans.

And then, once upon another time there was the local association.

On my resume I brag (well, I mention) having served as president of the Minnesota Telecommunications Association. We met monthly at a local hotel, September through June, to socialize, compare notes, enjoy dinner, listen to a speaker talking about a topic relevant to the assembled multitude, and then disband so as to re-band at the hotel bar.

But over time we went from taking over the bar, to taking over a few tables at the bar, to occupying a couple of booths, to … well, to go home to our families.

As bar attendance declined, so meeting attendance declined. Eventually the MTA faded out of existence.

And with it went all of the personal networking that used to be one of the main attractions for joining.

Which leads to this week’s questions:

• Is the demise of the local association … the sort with regular events that provide opportunities to socialize (and, yes, “network”) … just my perception based on my personal experience as biased sample? Or is this a real phenomenon?
• To the extent the trend is real, what’s your substitute? Where and how do you make the social connections local associations used to be a vehicle for?

Bob’s last word: My research says I’m just out of touch – the associations and associations of associations report that associations are a growth industry.

But given the source, some of this analysis might be nothing more than the expected boosterism, and more might be that the reported trends are based on sample bias: There’s no reason to expect the same level of survey response from failed or failing associations than from successful ones.

Bob’s sales pitch: Do you like the ideas and approaches you read here in Keep the Joint Running but want more depth? I’ve written a dozen books to give you just that. You’ll find the list here.