President’s Perspective
The 2017 EDmarket
Membership Directory is Here!
BY JIM MCGARRY
EDmarket President & CEO
T
he EDmarket Membership Directory is a snapshot of the key
players in our vibrant and dynamic industry. If you are reading
this article you are most likely a member, so thank you for your
participation. According to the American Society of Association Exec-
utives (yes, there is an association for associations!), one in every three
Americans is a part of the association community, whether as employ-
ees, members or volunteers. Across all industries, it is the members
who are the thought leaders and visionaries driving innovation, and
EDmarket is no exception.
Membership is the lifeblood of
an association and the source from
which we elect our volunteer board,
committee and council members.
These leaders set the direction and
determine our value proposition. They
devote countless hours on behalf of
the association and industry and they
rely on your input as fellow members
to chart the course for future success.
For all of you that have undertaken
the difficult task of creating a strategic
plan, you know the challenges of not
only making honest assessments of
the current climate and competitive
landscape, but predicting future con-
ditions, evaluating opportunities, and
exploring new areas of growth. Now
imagine the challenge representing
and balancing the needs of companies
as varied as EDmarket member com-
panies that range from single-owner
operators to multinational corpora-
tions. It is against this backdrop of
diversity that your leaders embarked
on a planning process nearly two years
34 essentials | summer 2017
ago to ensure the future health of this
association in its next 100 years of
service to the industry.
To quote our strategic plan, our
vision is to “become indispensable to
organizations that want to succeed
in the educational products market-
place.” And our purpose is to “con-
nect people who want to succeed in
the education market by providing
events, resources and leadership to
those serving education.” We identi-
fied four areas of strategic growth to
get us there:
1. EDtech distribution: positioning
ourselves at the center of the new and
evolving conversation around distrib-
uting these products.
2. B2B video exchanges: augment-
ing our show models with an online
model to realize efficiencies and en-
couraging more frequent dialogue.
3. Membership growth: enhanc-
ing value to current members and
allow other categories of members
whose voice is vital to enhancing the
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Membership Directory
conversation on improving student
outcomes.
4. Leadership development: im-
proving the quality of participation
and communication among our mem-
ber companies.
Hard work has been put into all
four of these areas to help to develop
greater value to our members. Stay
tuned for announcements in the next
few weeks about a new creative way
to use video technology to connect
trading partners in an efficient and
personal way and an introduction to
a new conference around EDtech
Distribution.
We know connection to the com-