I’m taking the step here of committing to make a blog entry at least once a week, and while this still pales in comparison to those who blog daily, I encourage other association executive directors to follow my lead.

It’s taken no small amount of suasion on the part of some AIBS staff and other associates to get me over the hump of worrying about the additional time that regular blog postings might take. In the end, I’ve been won over by seeing blogging as simply an extension—and a bit of a 2-for-1 deal—of the emailing that I, as AIBS’s executive director and CEO, engage in all the time as I respond to, explain, clarify, pitch, and sometimes defend AIBS’s mission activities for an AIBS member or other email correspondent. Many emails of this sort are suitable for reading by a broad audience, so with minimal reformatting I can post them to the AIBS website as a blog entry for search engines to find and all to read (and to comment on, but comments can be set to require approval before going live).

Every executive director and CEO, I argue, has the responsibility to be an effective communicator of his or her organization’s mission activities and focus on behalf of the organization’s board. Many corporate CEOs maintain blogs. For membership-governed associations, even more so, a blog gives a chief executive another way to keep members informed, and perhaps even give them a bit of a peek into the kitchen to see how the meal is being prepared.

I’ll close by noting a favorite website of mine on blogging, that of Wigley & Associates on using blogs as an effective leadership tool. Executive directors and CEOs can take note of the listing there on what to blog about (and think about how many of these you are already doing, so why not get them online for a much larger audience to see?):

• Illustrate your values, mission, goals and strategies
• Provide recognition to an employee, a colleague, an organisation or business in the community
• Leverage your media diet
• Chronicle a decision or a current, unresolved problem
• Teach about a service, program, department
• Point to changes/additions to your website
• Reveal aspects of your non-work life
• Teach about the complexities of an issue

The COPUS Coalition, a project launched in early 2007 that is integrally supported by AIBS in partnership with other scientific groups, more than doubled its number of participating organizations over the short summer months to reach its first milestone of 100 on 17 September and 102 on 19 September. Many of the participants are AIBS member societies and organizations (MSOs), many more come from other scientific disciplines as well as universities, science centers and museums, advocacy groups, media, educators, businesses, and industry.

It's great to see this high level of enthusiasm among so many organizations eager to work together. The pressing need for all of us to foster a greater public understanding of the nature of science and its value to society transcends traditional boundaries among scientific and professional disciplines, so let's keep breaking down walls together. The COPUS team's three-year plan includes aiming for 150 participating organizations by the end of 2007, with representation in every U.S. State. Regional and thematic hubs are already starting to form, and we have launched, as the first major COPUS product, an online database of participating organizations' related events, programs, and resources that all members of the public are invited to use as a tool to learn more about what's going on in their community, across the country, and how they can get involved.

COPUS has released the first edition of its monthly newsletter, the COPUS Clarion. Full of great updates about the network's activity, the newsletter also highlights September’s program of the month the "Student Biotech Expo" of the Northwest Association of Biomedical Research. Articles in this month's Clarion give progress updates on the formation of regional COPUS Hubs of activity, development of the Understanding Science Web site, the launch of the WGBH / Sigma Xi Science Cafe Web site, and an update on the COPUS Program and Resource Database.

Check out the recently updated COPUS activities page to see what projects are underway.