lotusmedia 2.0

Thanks to Tantek Çelik for setting up a wiki for us at NetSquared.pbwiki.com. I have posted partial chat transcripts there on the N2Y2 page. Here’s day 1 and day 2.

I made these transcripts by just copying the log whenever I remembered, so there are some gaps especially at the beginning. Please fill in any bits if you also saved it.

This is the first part of a rant I have been mulling over for about 3 years now. I want to get it up before the end of the event, so I will save my proposal for a second post. Cross-posted at www.netsquared.org/blog/rubyji/mind-gap-part-1

Advanced nonprofit technology practitioners need a place to connect and learn from each other. Who will fill this gap?

For years this was the collective whine from the hundreds of NTAPs who attend the Nonprofit Technology Conference to help other colleagues in the sector. When NetSquared was announced in 2005, I was excited to hear they would be bringing together the best minds from the nonprofit world with the leading technologists. Would this be the long-awaited venue for advanced “NPTECH” conversation?

In 2006, I attended NetSquared and it was one of the most useful and impactful conferences I had been to in years. (See my blog post here.) I eagerly signed up to come and participate again this year.

As you know if you are reading this, N2Y2 has a different goal, which is to connect innovative projects with the funding they need to succeed. I question whether $25,000 is enough to really make much impact, but I appreciate that this is a good goal. But it’s one that I don’t have any personal investment in, and it leaves the need for interaction largely unmet.

Tune in for Part Two: Eating our own dogfood, and meeting our own needs. To be posted here and at www.netsquared.org/blog/rubyji

So NetSquared is going well. As expected: tons of great people and too much information (in a good way). I’ve been posting updates on Twitter, you can see mine and other people’s comments at twitter.com/NetSquared/with_friends

I also started a new “back channel” as the official IRC wasn’t working for everyone. We’re using the free and very easy Meebo (as inspired by Alan Benamer’s NPtech chat). See us at wwwl.meebo.com/room/netsquared/

There are already a bunch of pictures posted at flickr.com/photos/tags/n2y2/

I’ll be getting up veeery early tomorrow morning to head west for the second annual NetSquared conference-thingy. Last year’s event had a profound effect on me. It’s where I first started using Second Life , and it’s where I had the opportunity to deepen my relationship with the brilliant Micah Sifry which led to my eventual involvement in techPresident and the Personal Democracy Forum. In other words, some of the most interesting and professionally beneficial things I’ve done in the past year grew out of NetSquared.

N2Y2 (as they are calling this second event) is going to be very different from last year’s conference. In fact, they’ve thrown out the standard conference format and instead are focusing the entire event around 21 projects that were selected by the NetSquared community (ie: anyone who wanted to vote). The entire event will be about improving the projects from a technical, financial, and management perspective.

I’m not really sure yet how I feel about this change, but as with many conferences, much of the value comes in the wonderful people you can meet, and I’m sure this year will be no exception. You can follow the action via the N2Y2 tag and NetSquared’s Twitter friends page. Read Beth’s Blog or the NetSquared community blog for more goodness.

As I mentioned before, my special part to play will be as one of 21 “champions,” each of whom is helping one of the projects through the process. My project is the Genocide Intervention Network, which aims to utilize social networks and social media to build the movement against Darfur and other atrocities. For my homework, I plan to spend some quality time on the plane reading their excellent proposal. If you get the chance to read it, I’d love to hear any feedback.

In honor of the launch of Change.org’s new political actions tools and of the fact that I am going the be the “project champion” for the Genocide Intervention Network next week at NetSquared, here’s a widget that brings them both together.

The Genocide Intervention Network envisions a world in which the global community is willing and able to protect civilians from genocide and mass atrocities. Our mission is to empower individuals and communities with the tools to prevent and stop genocide.

More on both subjects later. Right now, I have a job to do (for 3 more days)!

It seems like after every conference I come away with a handful of business cards and the intention to follow up with lots of new people and possibilities. However, my intention does not always translate into action. Although I still hope to contact these folks and/or blog about about all the cool things they are doing, for now I am going to do a brain dump to document (and lazily ping) everyone.

Keep reading A collective “nice to meet you” »

I just got home after a very long day of inter-coastal travel. I will post a longer thing tommorrow about the rest of the awesome people I met at NetSquared.

So I was recruited to lead a Making it Happen: Tips & Tricks session at NetSquared. I called it: how to be more cause-based, aka network-centric advocacy, aka bottom-up, aka cluetrain advocacy, aka user-centered, aka movement building. Basically I gave a little intro to the above topic and discussed it with anyone who wanted to stop by. People asked a lot of good questions and together we came up with a lot of great ideas for how to empower the supporters of our issues and help them lead our movements for change.

Thanks to everyone for chatting with me:
Keep reading Thanks for making it happen with me »

NetSquared was one of the best conferences I’ve been to in years. I kept having experiences that were so interesting I wanted to blog about them but the coolness didn’t stop and I was torn between doing cool stuff and blogging about it. (Yes I am a geek!)

There were just as many cool people as at other conferences, but less chaff. One of the most radical transformations for me: I have now joined the world of Second Life. Gotta go have some experiences…

Tim Bishop (aka Geodog) took some great Notes from the Activism session at NetSquared on Tuesday. I think our session “Activism: when emailing your congressperson doesn’t quite feel like enough…” went well, but after attending “Gender and the social web: new tools, same…stuff?” I think it could have been organized much better to have more audience particiption better conversation.

Susan Mernit, who led the gender session, had each speaker give a brief intro to the topic and then threw some focused questions out to the entire room. It was a really interesting and insightful conversation, but it seems Lisa Stone is still measuring the success of BlogHer by it’s acceptance by the male-dominated blogerati!

Here are my notes and conversation (typos and all) from the gender session in the hallway. I have edited out the comments that were simultaneous form other sessions…

Keep reading Lessons learned »

This morning’s NetSquared panel is three white guys in suits talking about their corporate Business Model Revolution. They even said “monetize” - the death knell of any panel as far I’m concerned. Finally I’ll get a chance to catch up on my e-mail. (I also want post some notes from yesterday, but some of them have to get extracted from the ‘hallway’ archive.)