Author: Ruby Sinreich

I’m really glad that Kaliya was paying enough attention to write about what was wrong with the Microsoft guy speaking over lunch at the NTC today. I was one of the hundreds of people who signaled my appreciation for Microsoft by talking loudly all the way through the (very poorly designed) presentation.

Her bottom line on the security guy: can’t trust him.

I appreciate all the money they gave to help sponsor this excellent conference, but the big commercial was un-called-for and probably not that helpful to anyone either.

The session on Civic Space and CiviCRM is dimly lit by the glow of the computer screens. I know about Civic Space and I’m interested in maybe using it on www.OrangePolitics.org sometime in the distant future. But I haven’t heard about the CRM (constituent relationship management) thing, which is something we’re looking for at work to manage an internal contact database.
Continue reading “Getting things done with open source” →

I plan to pay a lot of attention to this “distributed activism” panel since I have to lead a similar session next week!
Continue reading “Network centricity” →

I enjoyed eating lunch with some of the brilliant minds of Beaconfire Consulting. I geeked out with Tim of fiercefamilies.org who also reminded me of CSS Zen Garden, which is an excellent site demonstrating the power and beauty of style sheets.

I went to a session about “persuasive storytelling: sharpening your message.” It sounded interesting, but it turned out to be about writing proposals to foundations. Six of us jumped up and left when we hard it was about fundraising. Now I’m watching an “extreme website makeover.”

I’m in a session on how to do effective trainings now. They started by showing how NOT to do it, which was pretty funny.

New word for the day: “androgogy” = adult learning.
Continue reading “Training on training” →

• Mena Trott started her keynote with apologies for her presentation. I hope this just self deprecation and not a sign of things to come.
• She shared some amusing examples of bloggers helping who are not that much in need of help: save karyn, the star wars kids.
• Blogs are sites that:
  – have chronology
  – are frequently updated
  – archive content
  – media rich (photos etc.)
  – are easy to use & maintain
  – updatable via web, clients, mobile
  – easy to parse, read, and follow

  – are maintained by inexpensive tools

  * capture personal voice

Continue reading “Mena speaks” →

I have added a page on the NTC wiki for anyone who is blogging the conference to add themselves.

Maybe next year we’ll get our act together and have an RSS feed.