Pacific Northwest Spring Forum 2024

The Pacific Northwest chapter's Spring Forum alternates between Seattle and Portland, and 2024 was Portland's turn. Chapter members from Washington and Oregon filled a river-view conference room for a day built around two themes: digital member engagement and remote-first staffing.

Ravi Deshpande-Cole, director of technology at the Council of Municipal Transit Planners, walked the room through what had worked and what hadn't in his own association's move to online engagement tools — a year ahead of the digital work NANA's own team would take on. "Every association thinks its members are different," he said. "Most of them are asking for the same three things: a working login, a way to pay dues online, and someone who answers the phone."

Signe Thorvaldsen, executive director of the Cascadia Forest Products Council, spoke twice on running a four-person association remote-first since 2020 — what she measures to know staff are actually productive, and where remote work has made hiring easier rather than harder for an association headquartered outside a major metro.

Attendees worked through a shared toolkit for scoring digital engagement, tested against their own membership data where they had it in hand. Several small associations left with a first draft of a scoring model to bring back to their boards.

The forum ran from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. with a working lunch included. The Portland Riverside Conference Center is a short walk from downtown hotels and reachable by the Portland streetcar.

The Spring Forum suits any Pacific Northwest chapter member wrestling with digital tools or remote staffing, from a two-person association weighing its first hire to a larger organization retiring a legacy database. Non-chapter members are welcome at the higher registration rate, and several attendees each year travel from outside the region specifically for the remote-staffing track.