Changes

So Ed Batista blogged the same session that I did below. Compare and contrast. It’s sort of funny since a year ago I was being a big thorn in his side about not encouraging blogging and distributed input at this conference.

David Geilhufe asks the perpetual question, “So why is NTEN hellbent on making NTC a tradeshow rather than a national Nonprofit Technology Conference?” While I think he’s overstating it a little, the point is right on. My guess is that this happens partially because vendors have more time and energy to put into planning and participating in the conference than most nonprofits do.

Mindful of David’s question, and with this year being my second annual opportunity to bitch about the NTC being too traditional and not learning from network-centric organizing, I personally plan to get involved in the planning for it next year (employer-willing). I have a few ideas already like a single site to aggregate anyone blogging about the conference (a la conventionbloggers.com) and experimenting with technology in some sessions such as an open IRC channel which is visible to all participants during the session. I’ve seen these done at other tech conferences, there’s no reason we can’t try it out and learn from it ourselves.

Here are my suggestions from 2004. What changes would you make?