Executive Director of NTEN

The last two months have been a fascinating ride. Since I took the helm at NTEN in June, I have toured the country asking you what you want from NTEN and from this community. And you told us at meet-ups, on your blogs, through the NTEN community survey, and of course in pictures.

You are a diverse group. About 60% of you work in nonprofits as IT, communications, or program staff, 28% are consultants and service providers, 10% sell products, and a smattering are funders or have other roles. You are everywhere in the country, but a lot of you are on the East and West coasts and in large cities in the Midwest. You work in every issue area of the nonprofit sector - you deliver services, you advocate, you strive to make the world more just, less polluted, more participatory, and more beautiful.

You want to get from us and from each other technology help and ideas that make your work better and your lives easier. You want a sense of community and professional belonging. You want help just in time and affordable training when you need it. You want innovative ideas for using technology tools in your daily work, and you want to share the innovations you come up with every day with your peers. You want a support network to make the case for why technology is important and should be supported in social change work. And you want to be part of something bigger - a network and a movement.

NTEN was founded in 2001 when this movement was still small and emerging. We are now a "field" with all the good and the complicated this entails. We are a market for companies selling products to nonprofits, and we are collectively becoming more sophisticated in the way we use technology. We are building less and innovating more on existing layers of increasingly free and distributed tools. We are using new technologies and are re-inventing and re-mixing them with old ones for new purposes. We are increasingly innovating from the bottom up. And all the while, we are still struggling with the mundane, the day-to-day operations, the backends, the data silos, management and leadership, lack of distribution channels to scale our grassroots innovations, and lack of resources and capitalization. We have yet to make - collectively - the most compelling case for why exactly technology is so critical in making the world a better place even if many of you do so daily in your work.

In short, we are at a very interesting moment in time. I am coming to NTEN with a core set of beliefs that make me the person that I am and that have been part of the guiding logic of my professional life. As part of our work assessing where we are as a community and where we want to be, we articulated a set of values that we want the NTEN community to embody - in spirit, in program, and in action.

They are:

• We are practical dreamers. We believe in the power of technology to make the world a better and more just place for all.
• We are the community where people involved in nonprofit technology connect to share ideas, tools, ideas, and resources.
• We are a stage and a platform for your voices, ideas, and debates on technology-related issues that affect us all in our work.
• We are accountable to you and to your needs and strive to engage, listen, and be responsive to you, our members, in all that we do.
• We embrace change. We work in a dynamic, ever-changing field and are responsive to new ideas, innovations, technology, and market changes.
• We believe that laughter, irreverence, fun, and a deep joy about what is and what is possible are essential to our work.
• We walk the talk. We want to surface new ideas within this community, and we want to demonstrate them. We are eager to adopt the tools and practices that will matter in this sector.
• Our processes, strategies, and products are open and transparent.

I strongly believe in Jim Collin's Good to Great axiom that what makes a great organization or company - or person - are "core values and enduring core purpose (which should never change)" that are distinct" from their operating practices and business strategies (which should be changing constantly in response to a changing world)."

Our programs, trainings, and peer exchanges will constantly change as we strive to innovate, improve, refine, and make them better. The program for 2006 is available online and outlines our activities for the rest of the year. We cannot do it alone. We need a collective effort that embodies a sense of community, mutual aid, a bit of normative theory, and community service and political action.

My friend David Weinberger wrote about his unified theory of the web in Small Pieces Loosely Joined, and picking up the theme Yochi Benckler speaks about it in his book The Wealth of Networks. NTEN and the NTEN community can and will manifest in a small but tangible way what these two talk about - that technology changes social production and exchange and lets individuals and communities play an enormously greater role - alongside property and markets - than they have ever before to improve our human condition.

It is what your work is about, and it is what we here at NTEN are about. It is an honor and a privilege to work with you and be part of you, of this community, and of this movement.