Ep. 5 | David Gammel: Why Associations Are More Resilient Than You Think - Even in an AI World

What makes an association irreplaceable — and what's putting real pressure on the model right now? In this episode of Built to Connect, Jackson meets with David Gammel, Executive Director of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, two-time association CEO, and former Chief Practice Officer at McKinley Advisors, to explore what decades of moving between the consulting world and the corner office actually teaches you about leading associations through change.

David argues that the association model's slowness and consensus-driven governance aren't weaknesses — they're what makes it last. He shares how AAPM is approaching AI with a membership that's been doing machine learning research for decades, why creator-led communities are more opportunity than threat, and why the most important thing a leader can do right now is stay optimistically grounded.

Topics covered:

• Consulting vs. staff leadership: what the back-and-forth really teaches you
• Why associations are slow — and why that's not entirely a liability
• AI adoption inside a scientifically forward membership
• Creator-led communities: competition, acquisition, or opportunity?
• The annual meeting model and the case for year-round engagement
• Manufactured serendipity: using data to connect members more meaningfully
• Servant leadership and the legacy of developing other leaders

Transcript

David Gammel 0:02

My entire career, there's been a lot of technology transformations, wave after wave, and every one of them, they've predicted it's gonna end associations as we know it. And hey, look, we're still here. And largely doing the same things. Little-- Doing them differently, using different tools, but still serving the same mission, still creating similar outcomes, even though very different paths to getting there. So I think that's gonna continue. Associations will continue to exist, but we have to adopt, and adapt.

Jackson Boyar 0:30

Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Built to Connect podcast. I'm your host, Jackson Boyar, co-founder and CEO of Rallyboard. Today our guest is David Gammel, who is a two-time association CEO, who also was the chief practice officer at McKinley Advisors. We talk about David's perspective on how the association business model can transform, how it is also very resilient, and what it's like leading an association with members that are forward-thinking on artificial intelligence. It's a great conversation, and we hope you enjoy this episode. David, thank you for being on the Built to Connect podcast today, really excited to have this conversation. You have had a perspective on the association market that I think is quite diverse. You were a consultant, you then became the CEO of the Anthropological Society of America, went back to becoming a consultant at McKinley recently acquired by Smithbucklin. You are now the CEO of AAPM, so I think those different perspectives will really drive a rich conversation today. Maybe we can just start with those three touch points through your career. First at ESA, then McKinley, then AAPM. Start us with ESA. What was it like stepping into your first CEO role?

David Gammel 1:50

Yeah. Thanks, Jackson. Really glad to be here today. Yeah, ESA, that was my first, role as executive director there, and, I learned a ton. I, I-- Looking back, I'm very fond of them, and especially that search committee, 'cause I feel like they took a little bit of a flyer on me, in terms of hiring me, for my first role there. They were ready for... they'd had a lot of turnover in the position over quite a few years before I got there, and I think they were just ready to kinda settle down and, and get some work done. I learned a ton with them. I really enjoy working with scientific groups and, any group that kinda takes, basic discovery and then moves it to applied is kinda-- that's-- I just love that space. Entomology is very much that medical physics, where I am now, is also very much that. With entomology, I was doing-- I started up their advocacy program while I was there, and I'd go to meetings and I'd say, "entomology is the most important discipline you've probably never heard of, or don't know much about," which is usually true. Huge contributions in terms of, agriculture and public health, but also tremendous in just basic discovery and understanding the biodiversity on our planet and how to preserve that. It was a really cool group, and I got to do a lot of great work there in almost nine years with them.

Jackson Boyar 2:51

I know you'd been in the association field prior, elevated to the CEO role. Any new perspectives emerge, the weight of that role? What was that like in the first year or two?

David Gammel 3:01

Yeah. So I was a solo consultant, doing, what you'd call digital strategy now, before that for about four or five years. Learned a ton doing that. Before that, I'd had staff roles at a couple of different organizations, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, where I really kinda took them online in a meaningful way for the first time in the early two thousands. And then I, kinda grew up, with the trade association, the Employee Relocation Council, where I worked throughout the nineties. Came in as a temp and was a director leading international programs there by the time I left. I think going from a solo consultant to, being an executive director, CEO kinda role, consulting skills really transfer well to that role. When ou're leading an organization, you're leading the staff, you're partnering with the volunteer leadership, trying to get everyone onto a common direction together. You have to do a lot of, diagnostics, like a lot of understanding what's the situation that's going on. Are we having some operational challenges? Are there some opportunities coming up or is our governance functioning well? If yes, if not, why? What-- how can we improve it or build on that? And then how to help everyone have clarity about here's possible future direction, let's pick a couple of those that they really wanna focus on and then make that happen. So consulting really kinda gives you all the building blocks for doing that, for rapidly assessing situations, understanding it, and then, putting all that together into a credible pathway forward that then people will buy into with you, and then you can move forward to do it together. The difference is you have to then operationalize it and make it happen over a long period of time, which is very different from consulting. Having been back and forth, quite a bit, I talk to a lot of folks who are interested in going into consulting or consultants interested in going into, leadership on the staff side, and I always just talk about that change. With consulting, you go in with a client, you do great work, and then you move on to the next one. You're not there for the payoff. You're not there for the long-term impact. Sometimes that's a plus, depending on the group and how the work went. And that's ultimately why I've constantly gotten attracted back to the staff leadership side of things, is that I do enjoy being there for that long-term impact and helping shepherd things in that direction. And that's probably the biggest difference. You can use the consulting stuff, but then you do need a lot of additional, approaches and tools for, really making sure things have impact and lead to the result you want.

Jackson Boyar 5:06

And appreciate that perspective. I started my career doing strategy consulting, and I think it teaches you to get ramped up very quickly on context, but

David Gammel 5:14

Yeah.

Jackson Boyar 5:14

You don't always understand implementation and what it takes to do real change management and frankly, work with people on a recurring basis, not a project basis. so

David Gammel 5:23

Yeah. I'm interested in

Jackson Boyar 5:25

you moved back to McKinley as the chief practice officer. I see that you timed it quite nicely around the pandemic. You didn't have to manage, you know, an annual meeting through that

David Gammel 5:33

Yep.

Jackson Boyar 5:35

chaos. But, going back into consulting a second time, probably with a broader scope, what was it like bringing the CEO experience into the consulting work?

David Gammel 5:45

Well, on that transition, I left ESA after almost nine years, and it was time to go. I'd done a lot of great stuff there, and I think it was time for some fresh perspectives and new leadership, and I was ready to try something different. But when COVID hit a few months later, I did have major regret. I missed the opportunity to be of service to them through that crisis, given how well I knew the organization. I did have, not strong, I just felt a little regret I wasn't there to help them with it. They did great. The guy that followed me did awesome, helped them through that quite well. So it wasn't about that, but just that, I think I would have gotten a lot of, satisfaction and value, having gone... if I'd gone on that journey with them, but I didn't. It wasn't super easy on the consulting side either. So I think it was really challenging for everybody but a different set of problems. But yeah, bringing, I think, my experience as an executive director to the consulting work helped me be a better consultant as well. And I think that's one of the values I've had of jumping back and forth. There's not too many people in the association industry who have followed the same path as I have, maybe a couple. But I think it does give you some additional seasoning, instant credibility with boards of directors and with CEOs, 'cause I've done that role and, I know what it's like. And I think it probably helps us, get to better recommendations and solutions for our clients just 'cause I can bring some of that reality to it, where, the team might be developing some recommendations and I can say, "You know, that one, I know intellectually it's beautiful. That's never ever gonna work." And here's some reasons why, and let's make sure that this is something that's gonna work well for the client." So I think it did help with, with product, for the folks that we worked with when I was at McKinley.

Jackson Boyar 7:12

Makes a ton of sense. And now you're back in, in the CEO seat again, physicists in medicine. What was the mandate coming in this time? Anything you wanted to do differently given all the perspectives you'd gathered?

David Gammel 7:26

Yeah, medical physicists, do fascinating work, they're the kinda PhDs in healthcare, there's a lot of master's folks as well, where they work in radiation oncology, medical imaging, and nuclear medicine. So they're all about diagnosis and treatment and doing things, with a high level of quality and a very high level of safety. So that's a big part of their mission, 'cause you're beaming radiation into people's bodies with this. And even on the imaging side, it's a very small dose, very low risk, but you always wanna have it just the, the least amount of radiation possible to get the job done. So I found that really interesting, kinda their role. And going back to what I started with as far as taking highly theoretical stuff and then turning it into action and applied, they do that. So physics is... doesn't get much more theoretical than that, right? That can be very, high-level math, stuff that, I'll never understand, without that training and education and years of experience working with it, and probably not enough brainpower either. But, to be able to take those concepts and then to use it to improve human health, I just really like that a lot. And then as far as issues kinda facing society right now, cancer is, is unfortunately projected to continue to grow. And so it's a growth area, there's a lot of new treatments coming out, and even new modalities involving radiation treatment. So they have a critical role there in helping to, build that pathway and make sure it's done effectively. And then also with AI, on the imaging side, they've been involved in AI machine learning research for, the past twenty plus years imaging's always been in that space. t's just kinda, spread much, beyond that now, and gotten very popularized. At least, the general public's much more aware of it now and, some of the things it can do with large language models. But they've been involved in that from day one. And they have, a potential role around AI in the clinic and serving as that, governance and safety structure for it potentially, especially in the areas that they're already working. So that's stuff that we're engaged with right now of trying to define what that might look like, how it's done in partnership with the physicians and other specialties they work with on a day-to-day basis, and then helping to build support for that. But all that's just around, AI is basically math. Physics is also basically math. So it's just a, it's a nice fit between the two. So those are things that I all found very interesting about coming back to this side. And after, a really great run at McKinley, had to do the COVID years with them, which was a lot, and then, help build the business. Worked with a lot of really fantastic staff there. I'm super excited for them, joining Smithbucklin. I think that's a great move, and just creates a lot of benefit all around for everybody, including their clients and our industry but, I miss the impact, the long-term impact, and the mission impact, that I can have on this side of things, which is, ultimately one of the major factors in making the move back.

Jackson Boyar 9:50

I think it's so interesting that your stakeholders are forward-looking on AI. We can all imagine how radiology is transformed by uploading, an X-ray into an LLM. Imagine there's even more specialized work behind the scenes in this specific field It sounds like you see it as an opportunity for the association, but what is it like working with a membership base that is maybe more forward on AI?

David Gammel 10:18

Yeah. So, um, it's also uneven, right? So there's some folks that have been leading researchers in that space for their entire careers, very well-respected, and like way beyond medical physics as well. They're leaders out there in the broader, scientific community, medical research community. And then we have members that are, 100% clinical, and they're doing their day-to-day job supporting treatment or imaging, and, AI is something that's starting to, impact their work and show up in their tools. So we have that whole spectrum, right? So there's folks that are just figuring out how, how will this help me get my job done and take care of these patients better? Then you have folks that are kind of like, where is this going big-picture-wise? How is it gonna change the technology? How can we use this most effectively? How can it be done in a safe way? It's a lovely spectrum to have. And for our folks that are in more, academic side of things, they do the research, but they also do the training and education. So a medical physicist in an academic hospital, a teaching hospital will be teaching not just medical physicists in training, but also radiologists in training, radiation oncologists in training, nuclear medicine docs in training, and educating them about radiation and how the physics of it works. And so they have this role of training them around AI as well. So one of the things the organization is doing, we have a couple of the groups developing curricula, around artificial intelligence, LLMs, machine learning, really updating that. Cause I think one of the challenges with, You know, there's a, a separate group that, does board certification for our members. There's other, criteria and education they have to meet. Those standards don't keep up with the pace of growth in the field and change. 'Cause they're slow, and they're slow really by design. So there's always this gap. So with this curricula that our members are working on, a couple of task groups, is to really address that education so people are getting up to speed on it, even as our training and certification programs more broadly take a little longer to catch up. 'Cause they need to know about it. These things are coming into clinic faster than, institutions can really react in a lot of ways. So there's a lot of catch-up to be done. That's one way we're looking at it, and it's actually gonna impact, programming that we develop.

Jackson Boyar 12:11

Yeah, a, trend I observed in my prior life working in higher education is the realities of the workforce are changing 20 times faster than any educational institution can update their curriculum and stay

David Gammel 12:23

No.

Jackson Boyar 12:24

relevant to the workforce. I can only imagine it's even more severe, with artificial intelligence in a variety of industries. You feel that there's pressure on the association that may not have existed years ago given the rapid consumer uptake of AI, the expectations of more modern tooling, and different experiences?

David Gammel 12:45

Yeah, I think the opportunity for any association where these tools are relevant is to be the platform where these conversations happen and to make sure that, we're talking about that. So the pace of change is accelerating. Our institutions aren't keeping up. Okay, what are those gaps creating? What are the challenges? How can we as an organization step in to maybe help address some of those? But then also just serve as a platform for the discipline and the broader stakeholders to discuss those things, and to achieve consensus on, okay, these areas there's a lot of things that need work. These three areas are the most critical, so let's really focus some effort there, work across disciplines, and make sure that's happening. We, held a summit in February of this year, bringing together stakeholders from across all the various disciplines that kind of intersect with medical physics to have that very conversation around, artificial intelligence, but also new treatments like, radiopharmaceutical therapy or theranostics, which are very targeted drugs, that carry radiation directly to tumors, for cancer treatment. There's several products that are out there right now specifically for prostate cancer, but there's a whole bunch in the pipeline that are about to come out and treat other types of cancer. And that's growing rapidly, and that's gonna change, workforce needs and requirements and safety protocols, and all the clinics that are gonna be delivering these kinds of treatments. So that was an area we focused on as well.

Jackson Boyar 13:54

It is fair to say, you've seen a lot of different associations, I know you're deeply involved in SAS, that STEM and scientific associations are far more insulated from the disruption of AI and more abundant content and resources through a tool like Claude or GPT.

David Gammel 14:16

I guess in some ways, if their research area intersects with it. I think there's a lot of things happening. Like, their research could be on those tools and those technologies and how it interfaces with their area of focus. But also it's gonna influence how research is done. it's dramatically impacting, scholarly publishing, both in terms of, fraud, you know, fake papers being generated, and I think there's been some stuff coming out about the, just the dramatic increase in, fake citations in, journal articles that have been published, including in medicine, which is very concerning. I'm sure, LLMs are great at creating very plausible-sounding citations, but they're not actually, it doesn't connect the dot to actually this actually was done and exists. And if someone's being a little sloppy with how they use it, that can be a real issue. But also on the flip side, I think these LLMs, in particular offer a lot of opportunity to make our work more efficient. So when an article's, submitted to a journal, for example, there's so much that can be done and is being done on just grabbing all the metadata out of that article, loading it into the submission form makes it so much easier for the author submitting it. Tagging can be automatic, then you just review that to make sure it's accurate. Those things are relatively safe for a well-tuned and trained, tool. And that's very doable right now. For APM, using us as an example, and we're rather extreme, but we have over four hundred different volunteer groups in operation, and that's with, twenty-nine staff. So the vast majority of those don't have direct staff support. But we do provide tools to support their work. So many of them are ge-generating reports, digging into an area that needs further exploration and definition and, support for the community. And with AI, I think that's gonna help us to really, alleviate some of the administrative burden for both our staff as well as our members on just moving those things through the process. They're done with a high level of rigor, because it's, healthcare. This, directly impacts people's health and their safety. For me, it's like, how can we make this easier with the same level of rigor? We always have to maintain the rigor, but if there's stuff in there that's just process and is slow, and largely slow because a human has to find the time to move it forward a step, all right, how can we apply these technologies to help with that? How can we help it to accelerate it through while keeping those, pieces of work that create the rigor itself, so the document that comes out is of equal or higher quality at the end of the day. So those are things we're actively exploring right now. I wouldn't say we've got anything deployed yet, but I think we're gonna have some pilots later this year on some things just focused directly on our members and their volunteer work with us. And we are doing a lot of stuff internally with staff. We've, put them through some training, and we've got Claude for nonprofit teams right now, which is priced attractively for the moment. I'm expecting all those fees to go up pretty soon. And we're just seeing, where we can create value, without harming, degrading the work that we do.

Jackson Boyar 16:52

Yeah. And, I'm fascinated by a dynamic here, where it seems you are, maybe an outlier clearly ahead in your thinking on AI adoption. Um, I'm, I'm a tech entrepreneur by background and, you know, as a result the organizations I've been involved in have been on the cutting edge of tech adoption. By contrast I s- I, see the association space struggling to adopt the newest tools and oftentimes using, systems that work for their members but are maybe ten, fifteen, twenty years behind the curve.

David Gammel 17:28

Yeah.

Jackson Boyar 17:28

I wonder, having been a consultant looking at the industry broadly, why you think that is and, what it's like today. I think seemingly you're changing that dynamic within AAPM, pushing your staff to adopt new tools and bringing AI into the member experience.

David Gammel 17:43

Yeah. Well, J-Jackson, we're still really slow. That's a reality of associations, but I think you just have to focus on where you can have immediate impact, do some pilots, and try it out, and then you grow out from there. But, associations are... If you think about what an association actually is, comparing it to other things out there, we're like these little miniature conglomerates where we bolt these, quite different lines of business together, like meetings, publications, membership, standards, certification, all wildly different businesses. they're all run completely different, but you stick them together, and what they have in common is a common market that came together to form these into a nonprofit that serves a community and has a consensus-based governance layer slapped on top. If you just looked at it, like if you presented this as a case in an MBA school MBA program would be like, that makes zero sense. But, because it is a nonprofit, because it is formed of and by the community, and represents that community, and any profits that it does make, and associations can make profits, that gets plowed right back into mission and supporting the organization. That gives us our credibility. That gives us our ability to do things that for-profits or government institutions can't or won't do, for various reasons. There's a-- Especially in the United States, there's a really clear space we can address and things that we can do. So that's why we function, that's why we provide value. That's why associations are still here. My entire career, there's been a lot of technology transformations, wave after wave, and every one of them, they've predicted it's gonna end associations as we know it. And hey, look, we're still here. And largely doing the same things. Little-- Doing them differently, using different tools, but still serving the same mission, still creating similar outcomes, even though very different paths to getting there. So I think that's gonna continue. Associations will continue to exist, but we have to adopt, and adapt. But we're slower, but it also lets us kinda look at how things worked in the broader world, let other folks, fail first and kinda bow out on some stuff, and then we can try it. So I think to be an association that's on the cutting edge, if you compare yourself to the broader economy and society, you're not cutting edge. But within your space, you can be just because you're pushing a little harder and you're not just waiting for new changes to be imposed on you to the point where you just have to react instead of being proactive. For us, and this is true for some other associations, our members work with technology. They're used to, like, all their machines getting swapped out every few years, new stuff coming in, a lot of it's software now, software-based innovations. They're used to that level of change and new technologies coming. So we have that. We get to benefit from that culture as well, 'cause that kind of infuses our governance, and they expect us to, try and be innovative with technology.

Jackson Boyar 20:08

I think you've put it very elegantly. Helpful to me as an entrepreneur to understand the diversity of the business unit within the typical association that might be only a couple million dollars of operating budget

David Gammel 20:21

Yeah.

Jackson Boyar 20:25

dollars of operating budget in just one of those line items. If I've learnt anything as an entrepreneur it's the power of focus and I think it's

David Gammel 20:31

inherent

Jackson Boyar 20:32

in th association business model is mainly to not be as focused and do more for the community in different ways, which I think makes it more challenging to be product-minded, to focus on one job to be done for the end consumer. Great appreciation for or admiration for the leaders that have to juggle all those priorities. And I think you're right about the resilience of the association model. I'm interested in one competitive dynamic in your take that I've observed, which is, the creator-led community that seems to have merged post-pandemic. There's a lot of people who have started podcasts like me. it's actually quite easy to do. Who have large followings, who are something of a micro-celebrity in the field. This might not exist, within the niche that you're serving, but certainly I've seen it broadly. Uh They'll start a podcast, they'll build a following on social media, and then all of a sudden they'll have a paid Substack. And all of a sudden they'll have

David Gammel 21:26

I

Jackson Boyar 21:27

a membership model, and then they'll have an annual event, and they'll layer on sponsorships, and they start to look like a for-profit association. my research suggests there's maybe twenty-five, thirty thousand of these for-profits across, the industry and, are they competitive? Are they friends of the association? And, they don't have the trust and legacy of

David Gammel 21:45

think

Jackson Boyar 21:46

maybe a hundred years of history, but how, should association leaders think about that force in the market?

David Gammel 21:51

I think it just shows that our business model's pretty strong 'cause everyone's copying it, right? Everyone gets back to, membership, and advertising, which, you know... a lot of groups' advertising revenue has dried up just 'cause, it's go-it's gotten abstracted out to these other platforms. But, yeah, I think, there certainly can be some competition, and, but then they become acquisition opportunities. So if someone builds out a wonderful training library on their own and it becomes really critical to the field, that's an opportunity. You don't have to invent that if they've proven it, and you've got the funds in your reserves, which, groups that have been around for a while usually have some money to, to play with, then you can do that. But it's also a platform that you can then use to get in front of their audience in order to draw back to you. They accept advertising sponsorship dollars and you can, co-create some content. Yeah, I think there's a lot of things you can do to, collaborate. and I've always believed in going where your members are, or your potential members are. So they aren't all gonna be with you, and especially as, the internet came along and these other platforms came about, you've got members congregating on LinkedIn and doing stuff there, maybe on Facebook, maybe on TikTok, for, for if it's, you have a media co-oriented kind of membership. And I think it's just important to be where they are and have a presence in front of them. But even for these kind of solopreneurs who, who launch these things that look like an association, they still aren't. They don't have the governance S it's hard work, managing governance, and you have to build consensus, which is, you're not gonna get e-what you want, a lot of the time, 'cause you have to see what the group will agree to and help them go in that direction. But that does give the association its credibility. So folks, if, someone has created a more compelling product, you can just look at where they're beating you on value and see how you can match it. And then you've got the credibility, to... That no one else can really come, recreate unless they actually literally turn themselves into an association, then they might as well just be with you.

Jackson Boyar 23:36

I think it requires a certain amount of nimbleness from the leadership of the association to observe and act. Yeah, it's refreshing. Rising tide lifts all boats, and competition isn't necessarily the worst thing. Well,

David Gammel 23:47

and there's no stopping it, Jackson. the market does what the market does. And I often have to share this in meetings with boards 'cause they'll get upset about some development. I'm like: that's not illegal, and that's the market doing its thing and people responding to a need out there. So you have that opportunity to respond as well.

Jackson Boyar 24:02

Yeah. let's address that need ourselves.

David Gammel 24:03

Yeah.

Jackson Boyar 24:04

Makes sense. Another pillar of the association business model is the annual meeting, and you talked about the COVID impact. I know you're also a scientific community and, you know, most are impacted by the political climate and scientists maybe not wanting to come to the US for annual events.

David Gammel 24:22

Yeah.

Jackson Boyar 24:23

But all that aside, how do you view the annual meeting pillar of the association business model, the opportunities, the risks as you're, talking to your peers?

David Gammel 24:32

Yeah. I think, humans still like to get together. so I, I think if you look back through COVID and that year or two where, we weren't all able to gather safely, and a lot of things were canceled, we all missed it and wanted to get back to it as fast as we could when we could do so safely, or not safely. I think there's a model there. I don't think that's gonna go away. For our meeting, we were in Washington, DC last year for our annual in, '25 and, had some attendance impact. It was still a very successful meeting overall, but the international mix changed a bit. We lost a lot of Canadians, who would've, compared to a normal amount given the kinda dialogue that was going on back then. This year we're in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada and our, early numbers are very strong. And, when you go to Canada for a US meeting, it's, you always get a little different profile, which I think is gonna happen this time as well. And also, when-- with meetings, I don't know if you're familiar with this, Jackson, yet, but, when you're planning meetings for an association, if they're of any size, a few thousand and up, you have to plan pretty far out in the future. You book four or five years out. sometimes other organizations will book out even further in order to get, good deals with these cities. So you're basically, I liken it to shooting a cannon at a target that's gonna exist five years from now. Like who knows what the world's gonna look like five years from now? Nobody does. It'll be a similar shape probably, but there's gonna be a lot of things we don't anticipate. So you just have to roll with that. I think what everyone learned through COVID and the destinations have gotten better at, even though they've got a lot of leverage now due to demand, is that you have to work together and stay flexible. Stuff happens, and we can flex. We have to be good business partners, and this is really important in selecting a city you're gonna go to, for a meeting. Like for me, I always look at does that city operate as a team? Does the CVB, the Conventions and Visitors Bureau partner well to local hotels? Do they have a good relationship with the local government? Do they have a good relationship with the airport, that we're gonna be using? Do they all come to the table and meet with us and present as a team and speak collectively and really express their desire for our business and wanting to work well with us to create a great experience for the folks we're gonna bring to their wonderful community? That's a great partner. I've seen cities, where, they were cross talking during our meeting with them. Like they were obviously not on the same page, and if they can't get it together for the sales process, they sure aren't going to be very, helpful when a crisis happens or you need to pivot. Just from the business side, I think that's probably the biggest difference post-COVID, is you have to stay flexible. You have to be nimble. You have to be open to change and adapting to it. But people wanna convene. We have to find ways to do it. Costs continue to go up, fuel prices stay high. That's certainly gonna be a long-term factor we'll be, everyone will be wrestling with. But for now it seems like we're gonna do well through that. But regardless, in person matters. But you have to fill in around that. It's not just about the annual, it's, it is about that year-round experience and, we're reorganizing some of our staff to really focus on that experience now. We have a digital experience team that's new for us that's really focused on, engagement and experience for our members and others, around the y- around the year. A lot of it digital, but then also how does that feed into our meeting and vice versa. I don't know if I answered your question, Jackson, but that's the,

Jackson Boyar 27:24

You're getting into it, and I'd love to, to dig into that year-round component that you're using to augment the annual meeting. I think there is no doubt people want to convene in person but at the same time, if I'm, you know, a CFO looking at an operation and thirty, forty, fifty, maybe more percent of the revenue comes from one thing that's three or four days a year, there's just inherent risk there. How do you extend the life cycle of engagement? I'd love to hear about what you're doing at AAPM. In general, what are the effects you've seen to create more touch points

David Gammel 27:59

Well, Something, and a lot of groups have been doing this since COVID, and I inherited this and I think it works well for us, is that, we don't do, live streaming from our meeting. We do offer a virtual registration, and so a lot-- most of our content's captured, so it's, slides and audio, that are synced together. And, if you have an in-person registration or the virtual option, which costs the same basically, you get access 24 hours later. And so for our members, they do need continuing medical education credits, to maintain their certification and ability to practice. they have a need for that. So that was developed coming through COVID, and it's something we've retained. But that content goes into a library, and then people can access that for years afterwards, and still do their training on that and get their continuing medical education credits. So that takes an asset that, our speakers and members generate at the meeting that then we're able to provide year-round. And then we're not unique there. A lot of folks are doing this, but I think that's a great example of it. But you have to pay a lot of attention to the business model and how you handle registration, 'cause it can cannibalize one way or the other. The people who are going there in person, they're going there for all the serendipitous connections that happen at an in-person meeting. Especially once you get established in a field, and this has happened to me, like when I go to conferences, I g- I get some good stuff out of the sessions, but where I get the really good stuff is in the hallway or over a drink or we're having coffee or running into somebody in the exhibit hall or meeting a vendor at the exhibit hall I didn't know existed, that I physically stumbled over and had a good conversation and maybe that turns into something. All of that value's still there. So you just have to make sure you're viewing the... And going back to your question about, having a product orientation, it's being clear about what those products are, right? So the virtual product is a product that has its own unique value and, capabilities, and you need to market it and price it as such. And the in-person thing, it's totally different product. Like they share stuff in common, but it's, you sell it differently. The experience is different. The reasons people buy it are a little different as well. So I think that's really how you have to approach those, is being smart about that, how you're positioning both of those products, 'cause they are different even if the content's all flowing from really the same source.

Jackson Boyar 29:56

I'm curious over the years if you've seen any associations, your own or otherwise, experiment with transposing that serendipity and impact of the in-person experience into a digital format? And

David Gammel 30:10

you do. Yeah. Yeah.

Jackson Boyar 30:16

It is, it is something that we do, but we're not the only way to do it. I would argue that social capital is the most important asset anyone can cultivate in their career. Think about I'm a millennial, but for Gen Z as well, your annual meeting might be the best way to advance my career.

David Gammel 30:27

Yeah.

Jackson Boyar 30:31

It's cost-prohibitive in some cases and it's also less left to chance. It's the person you sit next to at lunch. Does it have to be left to chance? Are there other ways to curate, to enable those connections to flourish?

David Gammel 30:42

the American Geophysical Union, I think is doing the most cutting-edge stuff around this. And, Thad's been doing some presentations on this, so I think it, it is public knowledge. but they-- And AGU has tens of thousands of members. they have a huge scientific meeting, vast amounts of scientific content flowing through them, and, American Geophysical Union. And so they've used, machine learning tools to kinda map that out, and they've done a couple of things. One, they've generated, recommendations to their members of other members they should connect with, based on just digesting all of the, last ten, twenty years of research papers, presentations. They connect that to all the people that are in common. And, Thad shared with me when he demoed it with one of his officers who was top of her field in a certain specialty, and the list came up with five people. She's like: "Well, these three I've known for my entire career, and I've done a lot of work with, but these two I didn't know existed." And then, but then when she looked at what they were working on, she's like, "I should absolutely be working with these people." So they, drew that out and used that to connect all of their members with each other and just say, "Hey, based on what we know about you, we think these are folks that, would be good for you to connect with. You probably know a bunch of them, but hey, there might be a couple here that you don't." And that generated a lot of value for their members. And then they've done the same for the program, for their major meeting, which is huge, tens of thousands of sessions, and helping people to connect with the content that's most relevant to them. So that, creates a little bit of that manufactured serendipity there. it's not true serendipity 'cause it's based on data, so if you wanna go to the meeting, if you really wanna stumble into something good. But I think that's a-- the best example I've seen lately of using these technologies to leverage data you already have to help members really maximize the value they're getting from you. 'Cause if you're not a member of AGU, you're not gonna get those notes, right? You're not gonna get that introduction or attending their conference. You're not gonna get that curated set of, sessions to go to that's really targeted at you. You're not gonna get these curated lists of scientists to talk to. or-- And I think where it could get really interesting too is with, students and early career scientists and practitioners as they're coming up. One, to help them connect, but for folks that are running labs and institutions who wanna hire the best, like for them to find these folks too and to discover them. So I think there's just so much potential there. We haven't done any of that stuff yet here at AAPM. We're going through a major technology transformation, so we're-- I'm kinda getting the, a lot of the foundational stuff, cleaned up but I'm excited about where we can go with that stuff in the near future.

Jackson Boyar 32:58

Having spent 10 years in my past to improve college graduation rates, one of the things we observed is that the students who needed the support most were least likely to raise their hand.

David Gammel 33:09

Yeah. Oh.

Jackson Boyar 33:10

The same might go for the long tail of membership who are less likely to engage. But if you can make it easier and remove friction from that point of engagement because you're curating the five people you should meet and they're that relevant to your background, I think it can move the needle significantly. One or two more questions to wrap up on a slightly different topic. I know you are yourself an ASAE fellow. You're on the selection committee this year, believe asked you to look for exemplary leadership, in the association field. I'd love to get your definition of what that looks like having been a CEO multiple times and consulting with CEOs and boards.

David Gammel 33:46

How to become a fellow? Um. Mm-hmm.

Jackson Boyar 33:47

How to become a fellow exactly, but being an exemplary leader in the association field, what does that look like?

David Gammel 33:53

Yeah, I think it's, For me, it always comes back to, and this is my opinion, and not everybody shares this, but for me, it always comes back to servant leadership. And not servile, servant leadership. And that basically mean-- And there's a whole literature, Greenleaf wrote the original stuff on this, and and it's evolved a little bit over time. But for me, it's about being of service to other leaders, and so helping other leaders lead more effectively and expressing your leadership through that. And I think that is literally what associations are about. it's about ach-- It's about a community coming together to achieve things together that they can't do separately, through the vehicle of an association. But through that, you generate leaders, and, the work of a CEO or an executive director is to partner with, leaders on their board, leaders on their staff, and to help them be more effective at what they do, help develop leaders in the discipline and the industry, help develop leaders on their staff. So for me, the folks I respect the most are the ones who have an amazing alumni group of folks that have been in their circles at various times and have developed into leaders down the road. And whether that's on the volunteer side or on the staff side but to have that orientation and that contribution, I think is as human beings, some of the highest value and service things we can do for humanity is to be of service to others and support their leadership and their growth. And it took me a while to kinda realize this, but 'cause I kinda fell into associations randomly at the start. But, this is why I keep doing this stuff, is that's the part I like. And that develops me as a leader, so that, that's how I try to express my leadership is by supporting other leaders. And sometimes you're doing great tactical, you're getting stuff done as part of that. It's not just coaching people but, for me, those-- that's what I look for in true leadership in the association space is folks whose organizations, thrive. It's not a cult of personality around them individually that the organization thrives after they leave one way or another, and that the folks that they've touched on, have their lives improved.

Jackson Boyar 35:39

Creating new generations of leaders

David Gammel 35:41

Yeah.

Jackson Boyar 35:42

you is really the legacy. So if you were to broadcast one recommendation to other association leaders, this is the closing question, would you tell them to do differently?

David Gammel 35:55

Oh gosh. I feel like we all have such challenging, unique jobs. I hesitate to, unless I'm getting paid for it as a consultant tell them what to do. I don't know, just be open. I think this is, This should be a fun job. It should be a fun profession, even with the challenges we deal with. And to maintain that attitude as we go through this, I think is critical. And it's a struggle. I've, I've had some tough times the last few years of the various things we've all had to go through in society and with our work. But to try to hold onto that optimistic, hopeful attitude as a leader, I think is really the most critical thing, both for your own mental health, but also for those around you. You set the tone. You set the tone with your board and your leadership. You set the tone with your staff for sure. And, I think to stay positive, to be, practically optimistic maybe, or optimistic in a practical way, not in a Pollyanna way where people stop listening to you, is really important. So I think if anything to share with anybody or to take away from this is that.

Jackson Boyar 36:46

Yeah. And, clearly you are, someone who's lived it, but I think the empathy you bring to the conversation makes you that much, more trustworthy when you say optimism is possible, in a difficult environment and in a difficult job.

David Gammel 36:56

That's

Jackson Boyar 36:57

and a

David Gammel 36:58

right.

Jackson Boyar 37:01

Thank you David It's been a great conversation, and excited to watch you flourish at AAPM.

David Gammel 37:06

Thanks so much, Jackson. Really appreciate it.