Katrin Verclas, NTEN

In the NTEN community there has been much critique lately of the Web 2.0-hype that has taken on shrill proportions in the mainstream press. In the end what is this all about? Whatever you think about Web 2.0 tools, what we are seeing is creative expression made a whole lot easier than ever before. This admittedly creates a lot of junk but also some innovative gems. It's about conversations between and within communities and constituents and that is scary and

Kari Peterson, KAPmedia

According to Time Magazine, we collectively are "People of the Year" for 2006. And why? Because we've begun to reclaim the media. We've created and taken advantage of online tools to stake a claim in the vast, difficult to penetrate media landscape. This is good news for us all! Social networking and citizen journalism have allowed the average person to stake a claim in the media -- to have a voice, to share information, to frame the debate, and rally the troops in more

Ali Levine, NTEN Fellow

I couldn't be more excited about the increasingly participatory nature of the Internet and its benefits for nonprofits. It's not just that these Web 2.0 technologies offer new and powerful tools for nonprofits to engage people in the all important activity of two way conversations (as if that wasn't exciting enough) - it's who can be reached this way.

Almost all nonprofits struggle to engage young people with their missions. Each generation seems to decry the lackluster civic participation of the next and

Alexandra Samuel, Social Signal

Alexandra gave a presentation on this topic at last year's Nonprofit Technology Conference. You can see what's scheduled for the 2007 NTC here. (And yes, Alexandra will be there with an update.)

Yes, businesses hype Web 2.0. But nonprofit organizations and advocacy and community groups are in an even better position to take advantage of the move towards bottom-up,
user-driven,

Beth Kanter, Beth's Blog

There's something different about these campaigns. Take a closer look. You'll notice that marketing staff and professional graphics designers didn't create the content - the organizations' supporters did. All of these campaigns use Web 2.0 tools like tagging and social media websites to reach out beyond their known constituent base to raise awareness and in some cases dollars for their causes.

• To mark premature birth awareness month in November the March

It is the end of the year, and everyone is talking about the highs and the lows of 2006. This has been an eventful and interesting year for me, for NTEN and for the NPTech communities. There is energy and conversation that makes me hopeful most days - it seems to be picking up steam. We, civil society technologists - techies for good as the media likes to call us -- are a field, here and increasingly globally as well.

So, for this week's round-up for the Nonprofit Carnival here are my picks for the week, in somewhat random order, following my currently jumbled musings in a brain that is screaming for some space and reflection.

First of all: I am thrilled to report that

I just finished reading my colleague Allan Benamer's anti-Web 2.0 post over at his excellent blog, Confessions of a Nonprofit IT Director. He aptly points out that there isn't a technology in the world that can replace a case manager. That, in fact, the basic technologies deisgned to create EFFICIENCIES will do more for a case manager than any Web 2.0 widget ever will.

Allan. I totally agree with you (and also think that Second Life is kind of weird, though I'm trying to overcome that prejudice! But really, paying real money for a virtual house? I don't get it.)

But I digress. Though I agree with

For the year-end carnival and round-up of the best of the best in the NTEN/NPTech blogosphere, submit your favorite posts on all things tech for social change!

We will:
1. Feature you on the NTEN Blog Carnival (that is, here!)
2. Feature you on the Netsquared blog
3. and send the winning posts out to thousands on the NTEN year-end-amazing-community celebration newsletter.

Who can stand this much fame?

So:

Tag your post(s) with nptech+yearend

- OR

At NTEN, I manage a LOT of events. And we run all KINDS of events. From the ginormous (Will Ferrell, how will I ever thank you enough for that word?!) Nonprofit Technology Conference, to online Ask the Expert Chats. Some events are free, some are not. Some require that we communicate a lot with attendees, others don't. So I'm always getting emails about how we handle event registration.

Laura Quinn and Idealware have just saved me a lot of future typing. They've just released a new report: A Few Good RSVP Tools: Online Registration Options for Free Events. It's a great starting point for organizations running simple events, especially the

IDRC, the Canadian grantmaker, releases the VOIP 4D Primer, a guide on telephony over the Internet in developing regions. Available in four languages, the primer covers "the essentials of telephony over the Internet. For those interested in the more technical details, hands-on guidelines and configuration files are included in the second part. The examples provide essential background to build your own low-cost telephony system."

The guide also "demonstrates three realistic scenarios of how Voice over IP can be deployed in rural communities