Virtual Staffroom - the future of professional organisations questioned

It was rather impromptu but last night I was once again part of a discussion that today is published on the Virtual Staffroom. It was interesting the way that this happened. About a half hour before the recording Chris Skyped me to indicate that it was happening and come along. I was, at the time, in a training planning meeting for a school where the focus was on web2 and collaboration. My planning partners reckoned, in jest, that I set this up but felt that it was a great example of what we had just been talking about.

The podcast discussion was all about the use of free software in education. I had to leave the discussion early as I had another online meeting to attend to discuss arrangements for Richard Stallman visiting my city in Sept 17th. He is one of the founders of this free software thinking. His statement about "Why schools should exclusively use free software" is a worthy and very quick read.

It felt like dominoes falling, the celestial bodies were aligning.

The dominoes keep on falling.

This has got me to thinking about the place that professional organisations have in the education food chain.

One of the things I've been struggling with for some time is the value of professional organisations now that we have access to the 'big thinkers' and 'movers and shakers' in our fields via Twitter, blogs, podcasts, vodcasts, .....................

For people that are connected in this way, when was the last time you learnt something new via a professional organisation? and if you did, was the cost of membership and attendance at the event worth it?

My guess is that the professional organisations are struggling more than ever with membership and conference attendance. Perhaps one of the key benefits of these events is the chance of meeting F2F some of the characters you have been mixing with online, but I notice that people are doing this via Twitter now as well with broadcasts like - I'll be in [location name] tomorrow, catch up for coffee at [venue name] at 2:00pm.

So, professional organisations, what is their future? Are they really dieing? Should we persist or let them die?