Association Chat On Camera! What's Happening to #assnchat?

For the past few weeks Association Chat has been quietly testing a new platform for the weekly Tuesday chats.

Blab is a livestreaming platform that enables a public video chat among four participants at a time. Viewers come in to watch the livestream and they can participate by leaving comments on the desktop application or below on the mobile version. Participants can ask for a seat on camera or respond to the video chat via text. If you are familiar with the likes of Periscope, Meerkat and Google Hangouts, it basically combines all three.

Blab was just launched in April of this year and it is still very much in Beta, though early power users like Joel Comm and Chris Brogan are hosting regular chats and even "Blab Ups" at this point. 

Association Chat has been a regular weekly chat, hosted mostly on Twitter, for the past six years. The chat, created by association legend Jeff De Cagna, was the basis for the popular (and sometimes provocative) hashtag #assnchat. Association Chat has had meetups, tweetups, a book club, and also comes with its own Association Chat group on Facebook.

So far the tests with using Blab for the weekly chats have shown promise. The chats are recorded (you can see replays of past Association Chats on Blab) and the engagement and quality of conversation seems high. My hope is that more voices from the industry will choose to jump in to the available seats on camera each week and share their expertise and opinions on the industry topics du jour. As always, it's the added insights from the participants that creates the value for these chats.

Kait Soloman is a regular Association Chat participant who brings value with every conversation. You can follow her on Twitter: @KaitlinSolomon3

This Tuesday's chat will focus on a more general topic, "What Keeps You up at Night?" We'll also be discussing, "what gets you up in the morning" as suggested by the wildly creative and fun Randi Sumner (follow her on Twitter!). 

Please join the conversation and community live on Tuesday at 2 pm EDT, keep up to date with the Association Chat Facebook Group, and feel free to contact me if you'd like to guest host or have ideas for topics that we should cover in a future chat (a list of planned topics are posted here, but we can always change the schedule around for hot topics!). 

People are always posting interesting articles, links, and thoughts to the Association Chat hashtag, #assnchat, throughout the week on Twitter, so you can always jump in and join the conversation that way, as well. 

See you online!