Flickr Photo: Joe LanmanWow.  There is a LOT going on at the NTC this year.  There are over 100 sessions and affinity groups, a very fun party at Tipitina's, a text messaging experiment, and lots of fun packed into the social schedule as well.  How WILL you keep up with it all? 

How about in your calendar?  We've packed the NTC schedule into one handy calendar feed.  Now you can subscribe and have the NTC schedule at your electronic finger-tips.  Choose from:

• iCal
• Google Calendar
• XML

Looking forward to seeing you all there! Hat tip to member Camron Assadi for reminding us to get this done!

Flickr Photo: c2k2eHow much does a nonprofit webmaster make every year? Are nonprofits actually paying to train their IT staff? And is anyone out there actually planning?

In order to shed some light on these questions, NTEN and the Nonprofit Times teamed up to create the Nonprofit IT Staffing Survey. We're pleased to release the second, and final, report from that survey, "Nonprofit IT Staffing: Budgets, Salaries, Training and Planning." This report will tell you what nonprofit IT professionals are earning, how much nonprofits are spending on IT, and how they are supporting IT through training, planning, and evaluation.

> Download the report for free!

On Monday, at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, the FCC held a public hearing on "broadband network management practices". The hearing essentially asked if Comcast and other access providers should have the ability to favor one type of content over another on their networks.

The consensus seems to be "No": today, the New York Attorney General's office subpoenaed Comcast on its network practices.

There are other opinions, some of which are easily dismissed, like this one:

We're only 3 weeks away from the 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference -- and the price of registration increases by $100 on March 1st -- so if you've been waiting for a good moment to make your plans to join us in New Orleans, March 19-21, this just might be it.

> Register for the 2008 NTC

We're also counting on you to help us spread the word. We know the single biggest reason people attend the NTC is because of the recommendation of a colleague or friend. If you could take a moment to talk up the NTC to anybody you know who would benefit, you'll be doing your part to make this year's conference the best one yet.

Just send them to http://nten.org/ntc for the most up-to-date information. Thanks in advance for telling people about the biggest, most fun nonprofit technology event of the year. It's the ultimate compliment, and we appreciate it!

And, of course, we hope you're going to join us, as well.

A monthly roundup of our favorite nonprofit tech resources. Read more posts in our blog.

1. The "Wi-Fi Detector Shirt". They claim it displays wireless signal strength with glowing, animated bars, right there on the shirt. If this actually works, it's the Coolest Thing Ever we've seen this week.
2. Sprout. Maybe you saw our Love Your Techie widget? Sprout has the potential to change the game.
3. Heather Goes Bonkers when her organization wins $1000 from America's Giving Challenge. You've got to love the enthusiasm: if they had hit for $50k, this may have been inappropriate for the office.
4. Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC? Does that make McCain a Xerox Alto
5. Visualizing Information: An Introduction to Information Design. It's well designed!
6. Miriam Engelberg lost her battle with cancer, but her comics live on.
7. Seesmic. YouTube meets Twitter, eh? The company's founder describes himself as a "serial entrepreneur".
8. DeviantArt. Never mind the name -- there are only a few furries. Social networking built around art is an interesting idea, if not original: Photo.net has allowed member interaction for years.
9. Wired Magazine's infographic "The Life Cycle of a Blog Post", as featured in our blog.
10. 5min's video tutorials, including "How to Rock", and the indispensable "How to Ignore Facebook App Invites".

Your guide to resources that will help you put technology to work for your cause.

Get the Most Out of Your Online Campaign

> While more Americans are learning about this year's electioneering from their daily newspaper than the Internet, social media tools have gained traction. Wired recently took a look at one campaign's use of new technologies in "The Tech of Obamamania". You can get the NPTech slant on the election from Care2's Election Blog.

> Of course, most nonprofits aren't trying to win an election, but many of the fundraising and organizational principals remain the same. And while there's been a lot of buzz about the death of social networking -- be sure the check out Slate's "The Facebook Philanthropos" -- Beth Kanter assures us that the reports are overblown. We just need to think more strategically about how we're using all the new toys.

> In that spirit, you may want to take a look at the online campaigning overview on CNN -- yes, CNN! (Sometimes, sound bites are helpful.) -- before checking out two posts on the Wild Apricot blog: "7 Tips to Make Your Charity Badge a Success" and "Online Fundraising 101". Network for Good's study on "The Wired Fundraiser" is also an excellent resource. 

Organize Volunteers Online

> Having trouble keeping your supporters' version of your message in line? Beth's got you covered: "My Organization's Fundraiser Was Abducted by Aliens!"

> And while you could just start your own social networking site, with your own rules, wouldn't be easier just to get the recording of Peter Deitz's excellent webinar, "Sharing the Message: How to Work Effectively with Your Organization's Wired Fundraisers". (Might this be a good use of NTEN's new webinar MultiPasses? Yes, it might.)

> Wait, what's that you say? You have to organize real, live people? Oh, boy. Fortunately, NTEN Members enjoy a discount on Mission Research's GiftWorks, which has a Volunteer Management component. The World Cares Center offers trainings for working with volunteers in disaster situations. And Coyote Communications has a good section on volunteer management, including an overview of available software options.

> If you just want to volunteer yourself, you've got a lot of options, like Network for Good, VolunteerMatch, and the unfortunately named Nabuur.com. 

Rock YouTube

> So, you want to rock YouTube harder than the dueling 1984 parody ads created by rogue supporters of the Clinton and Obama campaigns? First, get your organization signed up for YouTube's nonprofit program. Then, follow Holly Ross's advice and check out Project for Awesome.

> This guy's got an oh-so-meta series on gaining YouTube subscribers. You can also dress up your video using one of the many tools available or by following some tongue-in-cheek advice from across the pond. Just take care: as NPR reports, somebody may put the "anti" in "social media" by critiquing your video.

Join Michelle Murrain and NTEN for the webinar, "OpenOffice.org: The Free and Open Source Office Suite".

OpenOffice.org is a free and open source office suite with the same (and in some ways more) functionality as most of MS Office. It reads and writes MS Office file formats, and has a native file format that is an open standard, which protects data integrity and access forever. Learn about how you can use OpenOffice.org today in your organization.

When: Tuesday, February 26th, 11 am PT / 2 PM ET

Cost: $25 for NTEN Members, $50 for Non-members

Presented By: Michelle Murrain, NOSI

> Learn more and register today!

LOLnptechNTEN member Beth Dunn picked up on the discussion on Beth Kanter's blog about outcome-based thinking for nonprofits using social media. She encourages those who set out on the "journey" through social media for good causes to plan ahead and keep notes.

Amy Sample Ward discusses Twitter for nonprofits, emphasizing the importance of individual interest over organizational broadcasting. Amy always applies the golden rule when she tweets.

Judi Sohn is back with another down-to-earth -- or from-the-trenches -- post about what it really means to implement a new technology for an organization, even if it's a free technology (such as Salesforce or Google Apps for nonprofits). Someone has to spend staff time (or consulting fees) learning the tool before it can be applied to the organization's mission.

Beth Kanter summarizes the many definitions and implications of "authenticity" and "transparency" for the nonprofit sector.

There's sad news from our anonymous NTEN friend 1centNPtech: his/her organization has decided to outsource their technology planning and oversight. Please drop by our comrade's blog to offer your condolences. And maybe some job leads.

Michelle Murrain rants about the problems with custom CMS solutions for nonprofits. She calls on all nonprofits to reject the custom CMS option in their RFPs.

Our very own Holly Ross was highlighted in PBS.org's Idea Lab blog for talking about the "power" of information, nonprofits, and technology.

If your organization is considering whether (and how) to apply social networking for your cause, read Beth Kanter's contribution to Network For Good's blog, "8 Secrets of Effective Online Networking."

Finally, Deborah Finn wrote a guide on search engine optimization (SEO). She was kind enough to re-publish it on her blog.

As many of you know, I just became Executive Director in November of last year. Although I've been in the nonprofit tech community for nearly a decade -- and at NTEN for over 5 years -- I have to admit that I was pretty startled the first time someone asked me, after I took over as ED, "So, what is NTEN?"

I didn't have a good answer.

Of course, I've used a variety of stock responses over the years, none of which have ever really satisfied me. We help nonprofits with technology, but we're not ABOUT technology. We're a community of nonprofit technology professionals, but we're not all server room geeks. It gets a little confusing, and I'm spending a lot of time thinking about it these days. I don't think I'm any closer to the mythical elevator pitch, but the one thing I can say for sure is that NTEN *is* our members.

So I figured I should ask you: what is NTEN to you? What do you get? What do you learn? What do we empower you to do?

If you are in the NE, I encourage you to participate in an event from the fabulous Berkman Center. On February 25, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School will host a Federal Communications Commission en banc hearing on broadband network management practices, and a public post-panel discussion and reception.

The FCC will hear from two panels of stakeholders who will offer policy and technical perspectives. Panelists will include executives from BitTorrent, Comcast, Verizon, and Sony, as well as network visionaries and architects. Berkman Center Faculty Co-Director Yochai Benkler will speak on the policy panel.

The full schedule and list of panelists can be downloaded at:
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-280373A1.pdf.