Or - Reflections on Spring Cleaning

It's that time of year again - time for spring cleaning. At home, I've been cleaning out closets, leaving things neatly organized so I can find everything I need again. I find this ritual irresistible because it gives me the chance to wax nostalgic (and I am not a nostalgic person by nature - this is my one indulgence). I remember where I was when I got the book, sweater or kitchen tool I'm holding. I think about who I was at the time. What I hoped I could do, or who I hoped I could be when I got it. (Most kitchen tools inspire grand delusions of my own gourmet catering business.) It's a great chance to think about the things you've wanted to do, the kind of person you wanted to be, and compare it to the reality. I find that this chore goes best with bottle of Anchor Steam and a lot of pretzels and chocolate!

We've been doing a lot of spring cleaning at N-TEN lately too. We've been taking out all our old programs, looking them over, and re-examining what we hoped to accomplish when we started, what we ended up getting out of it, and what might be more useful in the future. For example, I was looking back at the program for the 2002 Roundup (the NTC precursor) yesterday. It's really interesting to see shat we were talking then, and what's still relevant now. A sampling of some of the (11!) session we offered that year:

<> Beyond Dreamweaver: Creative Solutions for Sustaining Websites
<> Data Standards for Nonprofits
<> Nonprofit Techie Saddlebag
<> Technology Planning Models

We had sessions on tech planning and data standards at the 2006 NTC. So it's interesting to see that there are a core set of topics we will probably always address. We're not going to throw these things out of the N-TEN closet. But it's also interesting to see a couple of other topics on the list - "Nonprofit Techie Saddlebag" and "Beyond Dreamweaver." We wouldn't do those kinds of sessions today. Why?

The technology, the sector and the world have changed so much in the last few years, and we need to address those changes. Five years ago, technology tools cut broad swaths across the nonprofit sector. Heck, I remember working with organizations where I had to convince the ED to give email access to their non-admin staff. Five years ago, the conversation was about evangelizing the need for technology within nonprofits and applying technology tools to create efficiencies.

In the last five years (ironically, since the dot com bubble burst), the world has turned on its head. The question is no longer "How can you do that more efficiently?" The question is "What do you want to make happen?" There's a whole sophisticated set of tools out there that can help nonprofits feed hungry people, aid natural disaster victims, affect public policy change, and more. Whatever you want to make happen, there's a technology tools out there that can help you.

Additionally, things that used to be a premium service are now commodities, like paperclips. I used to install simple local area networks and train staff how to use them five years ago. At the time, there weren't a ton of affordable technology providers to do this. Now, you can find a techie on every street corner doing this kind of work (though the networks are wireless now!), and they're all undercutting each other's costs.

Finally, the public policy arena is catching up with technology as well. Increasingly, legislators are making decisions about technology access and use that will affect the nonprofit sector. From anti-spam laws to municipal wireless, nonprofits have a lot at stake.

What does this mean for N-TEN and our community? It means that the kind of broad, general topics that N-TEN used to address (tips for updating your web site!), while still relevant for a portion of the sector, need to make way for some bigger questions, questions whose answers will change the nonprofit technology landscape. So, for the near future, N-TEN will focus on five questions:

<> Is paying for email delivery inevitable?

<> How will data standards help nonprofits better control and use their data?

<> What will ubiquitous wireless access mean to the nonprofit sector

<> Which 2006 advocacy tactics will make the difference in 2008

<> Community building, distributed authorship and mashups - Are open source trends becoming mainstream?

Our strategy with each question is to:

<> Educate the community about the issues surrounding each question. This will include practical application (What are the best strategies for managing data across three applications and five departments?) as well as policy and theory (How can the community best advocate for data standards?).

<> Understand and promote the community interest. Through a series of surveys and interviews, we will attempt to paint a picture of what the community needs and expects in each of these areas.

<> Create community to explore these issues organically. We're launching N-TEN affinity groups, where you can connect with peers any time day or night to address these and other relevant issues. We invite you to join the discussion now during this beta period at http://groups.nten.org

Which brings me to the original question: What do you want to make happen?

Helping you reach your answer to this question and get the job done is our mission. I hope that our spring cleaning makes us better able to do just that.