community application of technology for public benefit
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?” Continue reading “Changes”
The session on harnessing networking tools for social change started with Marty‘s standard explanation of the growing power of autonomous social networks. Good stuff.
Continue reading “Networking for social change”
I had an interesting conversation with someone here who said that her boss wanted to strangle Esther Dyson after her talk today. ED had talked about how it’s at least as important for nonprofits to get more efficient, not just to innovate and do new things all the time. She pretty directly said that nonprofits were inefficient and failing to measure and evaluate our work.
Continue reading “Processing Esther”
My colleagues having lunch at the N-TEN NTC.
Discussion: what other cool things are out there and how we can use tools like these in our work…
Continue reading “Ami & Katrin, part 2”
Session on cool new stuff with Katrin and Ami.
Ami says that technology moves forward in spurts. I remember thinking in the 90’s how fast things were changing. My mind boggled at where we might go. But it stopped around 2000. Ami is saying there’s a new spurt of creativity.
Continue reading “Ami & Katrin, part 1”
Esther Dyson’s keynote speech is being done in the format of an interview with Andrew Blau. Having seen her speak once before, I think this format led to more disjointed thought and less big picture, but I’m guessing this was done because Esther just fishished running her own conference, PC Forum.
Somehow Rob Stuart coaxed about 10 of us into a limo (I think that part was an accident) for the “12 minute” trip to Rosa’s, his favorite place in Chicago. This place is all blues, all the time. The band is decent and sporting a Japanese piano player (which doesn’t sound any different but the mixture of ethnicities of stage is unusual).
A few weak souls already caught a cab home, and I will stick it out for at least one more drink, but I have to send invites for a party I’m hosting before I go to bed tonight. The days are just packed, I tell you.
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”