Kitchen's Ink

If you found this blog and aren’t sure where to begin, this is the page for you.

Kitchen’s Ink is a publication about association management, marketing leadership, and AI — written by a practitioner who is doing the work right now. New posts publish Monday through Friday. The archive goes back to 2016, but the active publication started in March 2026.

Start With These Posts

On AI and association marketing

• How to Strategically Use AI in Association Marketing
• The Case for AI as a Thinking Partner, Not a Production Tool
• The Prompt Is Not the Product

On association marketing and communications

• The Community Is the Content. Your Job Is to Deploy It.
• What a High-Functioning Association Marketing Department Actually Looks Like
• Association Marketing Often Is a Service Department. It Shouldn’t Be.

On organizational leadership

• I Was More Than Surviving My Association Director Role. But I Also Wasn’t Fully Leading. Here’s the Difference.
• What the CAE Actually Commits You To
• Why Your Organization Needs to Conquer the Someday List

About the Author

Curtis Kitchen, CAE — Director of Marketing at the Society for Simulation in Healthcare, past President of the Kansas City Society of Association Executives, and a twelve-year practitioner in association management. I also write children’s books. The Amera Can series — six stories about a bald eagle named Amera that explore character, courage, and doing the right thing — is complete and available on Substack at curtiskitchenbooks.substack.com. Full bio here

A Book Is Coming

The posts on this blog are building toward a manuscript. If you want to know when it’s available, email kitchenski@gmail.com with “Book” in the subject line.