Twelve hundred people came together at the Nonprofit Technology Conference this April to connect with colleagues, learn about the issues, share their knowledge with others, and, of course, have fun.
With almost 100 breakout sessions, no one could attend every session they wanted to. Here we're posting our speakers' presentations and handouts, along with some video and audio recordings of the sessions, so you can find out more about the sessions and topics that interest you.
In this section you'll find materials from all the sessions in the Communications track.
We've gathered presentations and handouts from every session at the NTC, and also have videocasts of the most popular sessions. Browse through the list of sessions below and click on the ones you're interested in for more information and materials.
Viral marketing used to mean getting folks to forward your email. But it's gotten considerably more complex as broadband and rich media have gone mainstream and Web 2.0 tools have appeared on the scene. What's it take to get your message to go viral today, and how can you make it happen?
Effectively conveying your organization’s personality and message, or “brand”, is not about putting a pretty skin on the same old website – it can be a powerful tool to help your constituents understand and find meaning in your message. We’ll look at techniques to explore and define your organization’s brand. Then we’ll talk through ways – both easy and more complex – to help your website embody your brand through features, layout and navigation, taglines, voice, taglines, graphic design, and more. We’ll look at some actual nonprofit websites and workshop how improve the branding conveyed by their website.
At the 2006 NTC, we discussed the then-controversial announcement of Goodmail CertifiedEmail. One year later, it's time to revisit the email delivery assurance landscape. We will review the progress of Goodmail, and examine the ROI from competing email trust services such as Habeas SafeList and Sender Score Certified, and the benefits of other mechanisms like Sender Policy Framework.
Nonprofits have tremendous stories to tell. More and more, nonprofits recognize that they have compelling content to share with the world – their clients, their constituencies, policymakers and the general public. Increasingly, new technology tools and new uses for old technologies like traditional radio broadcasting are creating groundbreaking opportunities for nonprofits to speak out and be heard. Nonprofits are developing greater capacity to tell their stories; new technologies like pod-casting and streaming media give nonprofits a direct outlet to perform unlimited outreach efforts; and current opportunities to obtain new non-commercial FM radio licenses will provide many more nonprofits an opportunity to go on the air. This panel will explore ways that nonprofits can develop compelling audio content, as well as ways to deliver that content via new and old media alike.
How can your organization tap the collective intelligence of your members or supporters? By asking them to step up and produce! Besides generating content that may be better than what you have the resources to produce on your own, participatory media (also known as social media) can help bond supporters to your organization in ways that traditional top-driven communications strategies generally can't. We'll look at different ways you can get the public to create video clips, audio segments, words and pictures that will work for your organization, focusing on specific examples of participatory communications campaigns that have succeeded (as well as some that failed miserably).
e-Newsletters are a staple of online communications, but do you know how many people are actually reading yours? Or WHAT they're reading? In this session, we'll talk about what's known to work in general, and how you can find out what will work best for your newsletter. This session is designed for organizations who already have an e-newsletter and are comfortable with the technology used to manage subscriptions and distribution.
The new generation of internet 2.0 tools provides opportunities and challenges for nonprofit organizations. The short story: if you don’t make effective use of these new communications tools you will be “out of business”. The first step is for organizations to understand that their strength lies within their networks of clients, supporters and fellow nonprofits. Is your board and staff prepared to move into the Nonprofit 2.0 world? Do you know what is possible? Do you have a “strategic” plan? Have you thought about how to re-organize your work flow? Who can you turn to for help? What next?
Podcasting isn’t for everyone, but it can be a great way to get your message out. This session will first identify when podcasting works for nonprofits and showcase some real examples. Then, we’ll walk through a how-to guide to creating and publishing your podcasts.
Advocacy and program delivery via mobile phone text messaging is starting to be all the rage. In this introductory session we'll talk with several mobile experts about:
Broadband is finally here and the organizations that are creating compelling and viral video content are reaping the rewards. Those gala dinner videos are no longer enough. Readily available digital video cameras and editing software allow your organization to capture stories and introduce a wider world to your mission. Video content can be seamlessly integrated into your website and provide the compelling hook for fundraising and advocacy. Portable media players enable you to embed your message in hundreds of sites. But, how do you capitalize on the opportunity? See3’s experts will explore models for web video, including the multi-continent production of the American Jewish World Service, Amnesty International’s use of direct response video and Oxfam’s winning duel with Starbucks on YouTube. This session will be action packed so don’t change the channel.
No matter how cool a new outreach channel may be, no method will succeed unless it tells a good story. In this interactive workshop we will help each other to refocus on the most basic of communications skills: telling a good story. We'll learn how to apply these principles when we communicate using new media tools. Come prepared to talk about your organization, the issues you tackle, and the online tools you use to reach your audience(s). The end.
Every good friend knows that it’s not the advice you give, it’s the sympathetic ear that counts most in any relationship. And, while you are undoubtedly a fount of amazing knowledge and important information, your stakeholders have something to say too. This session will address the importance of providing feedback loops for your stakeholders and how to manage that feedback. Then, we’ll highlight a few online tools that let your stakeholders talk to you.
Using RSS,Tags, and Microformats to Give Your Stakeholders the Content They Want
There are now very simple tools that can be used to aggregate content within your own site, or throughout a community of sites. Now, you can create a web page to display the latest blog posts from your stakeholders that relate to your mission. Or, you can pull in news headlines from your favorite news sources that relate to your latest initiative. Learn how to publish and republish content using these simple technologies.
Social networking tools are a natural fit for nonprofits with a mission to promote. Integrating social networking tactics into your communications and outreach toolset can help you connect your organization and its mission directly with your most passionate supporters. And you don’t need to be a geek or lonelygirl17 to participate — just a clear, compelling message and killer content.
This session will explore how these networks work and show, in detail, how you can tap into their power to grow your constituency, track ROI, and build measurable support for your mission.
How To Use Web Statistics to Read Between the Lines and Build a Better Relationship
Actions speak louder than words, and that’s definitely true in the online world. Every time someone opens one of your emails or visits your website, you should be tracking the interaction to learn what your stakeholders are interested in and, more importantly, what they’re not! This session will outline what metrics are important to track, how to interpret the data, and point to some of the most common tools used.
In this section you'll find materials and presentations from all Affinity Group Meetings at the 2007 NTC. You can continue your discussions online by joining an Affinity Group.
Browse through the list of sessions below and click on the ones you're interested in for more information and materials.
People who use, or want to use, CiviCRM will gather to discuss issues around implementation, administration, training and support.
The Flickr for Nonprofits Affinity group will meet in Washington, DC to share experiences, tips, and ideas about how Flickr can be used to support nonprofits and their programs. We will discuss flickr, tagging, digital photography, flickr contests, participatory media campaigns, and much more. We will organize a flickr collaboration during conference, for example we might take digital photos of the event on a "flickr wall" around particular themes and stream and project our photo stream so everyone at NTC can view it. If energy and interest exist, we will also design a "Flickr Walk" to take place sometime during the conference.
In this section you'll find materials and presentations from all sessions at the 2007 NTC that dealt with fundraising.
We've gathered presentations and handouts from every session at the NTC, and also have videocasts of the most popular sessions. Browse through the list of sessions below and click on the ones you're interested in for more information and materials.
This session describes in detail - via several case studies - best practices for building and optimizing a successful online fundraising campaign. We’ll dissect several real fundraising emails and describe the specific techniques that made them successful. Along the way we’ll answer questions like these:
Integrating your online and offline fundraising campaigns can help you retain donors and raise more money. This session will walk you through various approaches, share results and best practices, and also address some of the challenges to successful integration.
Yep, you should be mobilizing your phones, socializing your networks, and flipping your funnel. Just don’t forget that your good old friend email is still the best way to raise money online. You can raise a healthy amount - thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars - if you approach email fundraising with a measure of intelligence, authenticity, and creativity. This session will deliver advice, insider tips, recommendations, and plenty of examples that show you exactly what to do, step by step, to raise substantial money with email. And, you'll probably have some fun a long the way.
Do you want to help your organization take donations online, but aren’t sure how? This session will tell you what you need to know in order to choose a tool and get started. We’ll touch on some of the strategic aspects of online donations, but our focus will be on the tactical: What online donation tools are available? How do they work? How do you know which one is right for your organization? We’ll close by looking more closely at some of the specific tools that are available.
Email is SO yesterday. Well, it’ll probably be around for a few more years, but in terms of online fundraising, there are literally dozens of new strategies you can use to reach your stakeholders. In this session we’ll highlight some of the latest technologies and the circumstances under which they are most successful. We’ll bring up blogs, video appeals, keywords, text messaging and more.
Every department in your organization is a wealth of knowledge about your stakeholders, interacting with hundreds or thousands of people on a regular basis. It’s in the long-term interest of your organization that the development staff know who most those people are, what motivates them, and how they’ve interacted with the organization. In this session, we’ll outline the benefits of sharing stakeholder data across departments, and break down the most common hurdles to making it happen.
Only a few “name brand” nonprofits receive the highest volume of online donations. But they only represent a fraction of the total online giving. The rest are part of what Chris Anderson calls “The Long Tail,” the organizations that collectively make up the majority of online donation transactions. Surviving in the long tail takes a special set of skills – an ability to cultivate and keep passionate users around who are inspired by the niche you fill. In this session, we’ll explore the implications of the “Long Tail” phenomenon and the strategies and tactics that will help you succeed in its wake.
In this section you'll find materials and presentations from all sessions relating to IT staff and consultants.
We've gathered presentations and handouts from every session at the NTC, and also have videocasts of the most popular sessions. Browse through the list of sessions below and click on the ones you're interested in for more information and materials.
Come and hear case studies of using open source software. We'll have some individuals from nonprofits and from technology providers talk about their experiences using open source software. You'll hear about why they chose the software project they did, how they implemented it, what pitfalls they might have run into, and what the final results were.
Not a technical workshop, this technology neutral session is designed for Executive Directors, Managers and other organizational decision makers. It will be of most value to organizations who view their IT system(s) as a mission critical strategic asset. During this workshop, we will explore the design hallmarks of a “resources centralized” vs. the prevalent “resources distributed” IT network. We will discuss the advantages of this type of design with respect to increased operational efficiency, increased network uptime, staff and management collaborative tools, reduction of operating costs and other factors. We will also deliberate the things to consider in determining whether your organization could benefit from full or partial implementation of the centralized network model and the managed services that this architecture enables.
Open source content management systems (CMS) are particularly attractive to the nonprofit community because of their cost-efficiency, but what do these systems actually do? And what are the differences between the most common CMSs? We’ll compare Joomla, Drupal, and Plone for typical nonprofit needs, and then experts in each of the systems - Ryan Ozimek, David Geilhufe, and Patrick Shaw – will demo the systems and answer your questions.
There has been a groundswell in the nonprofit sector around the issue of data integration. We all want each of our applications to be able to share data easily and seamlessly. Open Application Programming Interfaces certainly make this goal more possible. But what exactly is an API? And what makes it open or closed? Finally, what can nonprofits do with APIs to increase their data integration? This session will define all the buzzwords and help you make sense of the power of APIs for your organization.
You can't talk about disaster preparedness too loudly or too often. This session will refresh your memory about the disaster preparedness steps you should make today to avoid problems tomorrow. We'll provide a checklist of the hardware, software and data protection pratices you should implement. We'll also save some time to talk about how you get staff to buy into the disaster preparedness policies.
Open Source content management systems are taking the nonprofit sector by storm, but there's much work to do. Gather together with other folks doing work on Joomla, Drupal/Civicspace and Plone, and talk about new tools, new ways to integrate data, and bang out some new code. We'll gather first to talk briefly about overarching issues and problem solving using open source CMS, then break into specific groups using individual frameworks for the real fun. Join in if you've rolled up your sleeves with any of these frameworks, or are just interested in learning more.
With organizations finding unique uses for the Salesforce.com CRM system, it’s time our sector has its own brainstorm and code sprint to build new modules for non-profits. Prior to the start of this session, you can submit mashup ideas at the registration desk. We'll pick up to 10, and make them happen at this session. Bring your laptop, your collaborative spirit, and your geek factor. We'll provide the Red Bull and snack food. At the end of the session, groups will report on their work and share lessons learned.
With new mashups popping up every day, it’s time our sector has its own mashup brainstorm and code sprint to build new mashups for non-profits. Prior to the start of this session, you can submit mashup ideas at the registration desk. We'll pick up to 10, and make them happen at this session. Bring your laptop, your collaborative spirit, and your geek factor. We'll provide the Red Bull and snack food. At the end of the session, groups will report on their work and share lessons learned.
Want to capture your organization's story on video and share it with the world on the Internet? You will have an opportunity to learn the secrets of video blogging from leaders of the video blogging community. During the morning session, video blogging experts Jay Dedman, Ryanne Hodson, Andy Carvin, and Jonny Goldstein will share their knowledge and techniques for video making, editing, and distributing online that anyone can easily learn to get started. The afternoon session will be structured as a drop-in clinic (you can stay for as long as you want) where you will have the opportunity to get shoulder-to-shoulder coaching from these expert video bloggers and trainers. You will walk away with actually creating, editing, and uploading a brief video that will be showcased on the NTEN site along with other user-generated content from the NTC Conference. You also discover how easy it is to create good video content for the web. Bring your laptop, your video or digital camera, your collaborative spirit, and your geek factor. We'll provide the Red Bull and snack food. More resources are here:http://ntcvideogeekout.pbwiki.com
Remote desktop and server support was more dream than reality for many years. Now however, better connectivity and new tools have made it possible and affordable. This session will outline some models used in the field for delivering support and maintenance, as well as the tools used. We’ll have live demos (always fun), with plenty of time for Q & A.
Whether you are an accidental techie at a nonprofit or an IT person looking to work with nonprofits, developing a long-term, sustainable working relationship with the nonprofit sector can be difficult. In this session, we will identify the common obstacles facing IT workers in the nonprofit sector, strategies for addressing these obstacles, and resources for the future.
“Microformats” are a major piece of what people are calling “the semantic web” – ways to signify the meaning of text on a web page the same way visual information is indicated – by means of xhtml tags. Designed to be readable first and foremost by humans, and only secondarily by software, microformats provide a way to make visually-displayed information immediately useable to other applications. This session will explore how this is done, and how some current applications are making use of the technology. Finally, we’ll push the state of the art by brainstorming how semantic markup can transform data sharing on the web for non-profit organization.
Those of us that provide technology support for nonprofits get asked a few questions over and over (and over and over) again. Screencasts are a great new way to answer simple how-to’s and record the answers to those frequently asked questions for posterity. A recording of your voice, the image on your screen, and some additional elements, screencasts are perfect for explaining how-to’s for your applications and other specific, tactical uses. In this session we’ll explore some uses for screencasting, the tools you’ll need to create one, and tips and tricks for making them work.
While many nonprofits are calling for increased access to their data through APIs, the sector is also increasingly concerned about security. This session will bring together several of the important vendors in the sector to discuss the move toward Open APIs in the sector, the concerns, and possibilities. This will be a highly interactive session with audience participation encouraged. If you’re curious about what an API is, we encourage you to attend Data Integration: What is an Open API and what difference can it make?
Many nonprofits view technology as a cost center, a veritable black hole of money. One of the most valuable tools for communicating the value of a proposed technology investment is to articulate to your leadership how your organization will benefit in time saved, increased revenue, etc. This session will review a few of the most-used models for calculating the “Return on Investment” for technology spending and cover strategies for articulating the need and benefit to decision makers in your organization.
Voice Over IP is becoming a more popular telephony option. It's a standard choice for residential and commercial phone systems now. But has it replaced other communications systems? In this session, we'll review the benefits and drawbacks to VOIP for standard telephony, conference calls, and video conferencing.
Small is the new big. And widgets are the new black. In the age of openness, it's suddenly very sexy to build small applications that plug into bigger ones. There are a lot of really fun and innovative widgets out there, and this session will take you on a tour of the best for the nonprofit sector.
In today's Flash-y, widget-y, smaller-is-better world, we may be leaving behind a huge portion of our potential audience. People with special vision, hearing, and physical needs may not be able to use the tools and services you're designing. In this session, we make the case for the importance of accessible technologies from the perspective of a consumer with a disability, a consultant and an advocate.
In this section you'll find materials and presentations from all sessions targeted at people in leadership positions.
We've gathered presentations and handouts from every session at the NTC, and also have videocasts of the most popular sessions. Browse through the list of sessions below and click on the ones you're interested in for more information and materials.
Everyone is mad for collaboration these days – within orgs, with outside partners, and with funders too. That means you’re often working with lots of different folks, in many places, with tons of information and documents to share. Online collaboration tools now make it possible to bridge those distances through ‘virtual offices’ that can provide more meaningful interactions as well as record your work together. But how do you manage all those communications, make them useful and most important, deliver results? This session will briefly review the best online collaboration tools today, but will focus mostly on strategies for adoption and specific practices that can make those tools most effective.
Net Neutrality may sound like political jargon, but it's actually one of the most important technology policy issues facing the country today. The Internet was founded on the principal that all information would be treated equally; yet in the aftermath of the BrandX Supreme Court case, federal legislation is now required to keep the Internet free from content discrimination. Without legislation, your clients and stakeholders might not always be able to access your website, receive your emails or put their own voices online as easily as before, because of new barriers being put in place by ISPs. This session will outline the net neutrality issue and give you the resources you need to take action.
Since technology began to find its way into nonprofits in the 1980’s, budgeting for it has been a problem. Many nonprofits still have no distinct IT budget or budgeting process, let alone separate capital, operations, and support budgets. This presentation argues that preparation of an IT budget is a critical step both toward controlling IT costs and increasing the usefulness of IT systems. Through the use of standards, templates, and industry experience, nonprofits can develop IT budgets with relative ease, and should.
Meeting your organizational mission doesn't always mean that you are actually feeding hungry people, ensuring cleaner water, or winning an electoral campaign. Technology planning usually involves identifying a set of metrics for your organization, but do those metrics contribute to your mission, or distract you from it? This session will explain the difference and provide you strategies and tools to craft an IT plan that will help you make social change.
Municipal Wireless projects are starkly different from other broadband offers in that part of their design intent is to create a community benefit. While the projects underway in cities, states, counties and neighborhoods vary radically in approach, local nonprofits are leveraging community wireless to create social change. This session will include a survey of how major programs are redefining Digital Inclusion and developing a program structure for social change. Catherine will take a deep dive into the Minneapolis Wireless program where local stakeholders created an outstanding Community Benefits Agreement that became part of the contact and we’ll look at two local projects that have been using wireless access as part of broader programs. Corey will talk about how the People’s Emergency Center in Philadelphia has integrated PC training and WiFi services into programs that support low income families and victims of abuse. Jennifer will discuss the Bay Area Video Coalition’s WiFi Anywhere Project which offers teens new outlets for creative expression.
The art of pulling off a Web project is in knowing what to anticipate before it happens. Your success, then, is rooted in good planning. In this session, we will talk about what elements should be included in your plan, as well as reasonable expectations for time and money. We’ll also explore a few case studies to see what happens when things don’t always go according to plan, and look inside a few actual project budgets. This session is designed for techies and non-techies alike.
There's a lot of talk these days about community driven technologies. Blogs, wikis, MySpace, and YouTube are all at the forefront of a trend that won't stop anytime soon. As individuals demand more opportunities to engage in their communities, what will this mean for the nonprofit sector? What strategies and tools can you implement now? What questions about your organization's culture will you have to address? And, will you ultimately lose or gain control in this age of openness?
Who knows which software and web sites will be important 5 years from now? We can’t predict the future, but we know that technology will continue to evolve. Where our supporters go, we must follow – if not lead! Come to this session to learn more about some emerging tools and current trends in online community-building.
What do Intranets, VoIP, outcome measurement software, Wikis and smart choices about your network have to do with feeding hungry people or cleaning up the environment? A lot, actually. Decision you make about what technology to incorporate into your organization and how you go about doing it can have a direct impact on the way your staff can accomplish their jobs. If done right, the end result is that you and your colleagues can better deliver the mission of your organization. In this session, three nonprofit organizations will share their own case studies for how their technology efforts are paying off every day for their staff.
Make the most of the time that Executive Director’s devote to thinking about technology. Discuss strategies for creating appropriate technology solutions that have potential to reduce costs and increase capacity. Leadership is crucial to the successful use of technology in nonprofits, learn how to foster it. Talk with seasoned consultants and real-life practitioners about what they find to be the essential (and non-essential) elements of this task. This interactive session is most appropriate for anyone interacting with ED’s and other leaders around technology.
We had two amazing speakers for our plenary sessions. David Weinberger led us through the evolution - and impact of that evolution – of content, ideas and organization from the physical (e.g. libraries, Encyclopedia Britannica, newspapers) to the digital (Amazon, Wikipedia, blogs). Melissa Flournoy spoke about Louisiana's recovery from Hurricane Katrina and the effect technology had on helping nonprofits recover.
Miss these speakers? Watch a video of their presentation.
David Weinberger, April 5, 2007
Melissa Flournoy, April 6, 2007
In this section you'll find materials and presentations from all sessions relating to nonprofit programs staff.
We've gathered presentations and handouts from every session at the NTC, and also have videocasts of the most popular sessions. Browse through the list of sessions below and click on the ones you're interested in for more information and materials.
This session is intended for organizations who want to provide online registrations for events. We'll review the best practices for managing ticketing and registration online, focusing on the user experience from first click to confirmation email.
Training your clients and stakeholders used to involve a large physical space, equipment, and travel costs. New tools and increased Internet access mean you can provide real-time and asynchronous training online. This session will introduce several methods to present online learning opportunities and will highlight what's important to make each work.
Broadband access cards and wireless devices have the potential to change the way data is collected in nonprofits that provide services outside of office buildings. This session will explore the carious ways these new technologies can vastly increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your work in the field. Nonprofits that can make use of these technologies include Homelessness and Outreach agencies, canvassing and other advocacy organizations.
Participants will...
Many times an organization quickly jumps into the question of which technology to choose without first defining what they need and what the organization will need to do in order to achieve the benefits of the technology. This session will review how to define your organization’s technology needs, what changes your organization will need to make, and how to review available solutions. An organization that has recently made a technology solution decision will discuss the approach they used, lessons learned, and their satisfaction with the outcome.
FreeClinics serve the 45 million uninsured Americans. Most of the clinics are small, grassroots based organizations that are strong on passion but low on funding and staff. To build capacity, the National Association has brought over $50 million dollars worth of donated product and discounted products to their member free clinics. The Free Clinics implemented of a supply chain management system with their technology partner, a fellow nonprofit, the Aidmatrix Foundation.
Often, we assume that our low-income clients don’t have access to technology. Usually that’s not the case at all, though sometimes it’s a different kind of technology and it’s not always “a computer accessing the Internet” kind of model. In this session we’ll identify the kinds of technology tools our low income client’s use, and make some suggestions for how you can tailor your programs to their needs and means. The session will also provide information on access points, and helping our client community effectively use technology. This session will focus on the experience and research in the United States.
Recruiting and maintaining relationships with volunteers is tough work. But it's a whole lot easier when you have a system to help you understand who your volunteer is, what they're interested in, and what they're best suited to help with. Volunteer recruitment and management systems can help you do just that! In this session, we'll hear from nonprofits that are using these systems to manage their one-time and long-term volunteers. You'll hear how they use the tools; how the tools have impacted their work, and even get a peek at some of the tools.
The 2008 election campaigns are already in motion, especially at the presidential level, and they’re harnessing tools and technologies that barely existed in 2004. What can we learn from Gov. Warner’s press conference in Second Life, Barack Obama’s social networking tools, or John Edwards’ blogger debacle?
In addition to distilling the lessons of 2004 and 2006, this panel’s experts will tell you what’s coming in 2008 and how the NTEN community can stay ahead of the curve.
NPO’s have always faced great challenges integrating data systems in order to increase efficiencies and simplify complex reporting. This is becoming more of a mission-critical task all the time, with donors and funders looking for richer examples of how we meet our social bottom lines. But, the task just became more complex, as more and more of our data lives on external systems like Salesforce.com and ETapestry. How can we best meet these new challenges, and what tools do we need to be aware of to help us succeed?
Effective organizations plan for success. Learn the basic concepts and practices of planning and evaluating your programs to ensure sustained effectiveness. In this interactive session, the presenters will demonstrate Innovation Network's Point K, a suite of free tools recently featured by SocialEdge as a Web 2.0 tool for planning and measuring effectiveness in the social sector. The presenters will highlight new ways of engaging with funders and other stakeholders that support more formative, participatory approaches to planning, monitoring, and assessing program performance. The session will feature real case studies of how Point K community members are leveraging the tools, and the implications and possibilities for organizations to share and collaborate with a broader network as a means to articulate, measure, and communicate the impact of their work.
Inventory tracking in nonprofits is big business. Fortunately, many of the same technologies that actual big businesses are using have become more accessible in price and ease of use. This session will present case studies of some of the most innovative and accessible inventory tracking options available today.
People are gathering themselves into online communities and social networks even as they are gathering themselves in churches and youth soccer leagues. But how do we navigate these online communities and mobilize grassroots action among them? The trick is to create a voice in these communities and use that voice to help people turn their voices into an organized action. The panelists will address these basic questions, how do you effectively spread your message in social networks, how you use your message to drive people to take action, and how you turn your activist into a community that makes the stakes of goals their own.
Information technology provides new and powerful ways to deliver both direct and indirect services to low and moderate-income clients. From self-help legal materials and resources on keeping healthy to the ability to locate food banks and shelters and determine eligibility for public benefits, clients now have unprecedented access to information that has the potential to empower and transform their lives. This session will look at the ways in which information technology has been used to increase the quality of, and access to, services for low and moderate-income clients. Issues such as usability, accessibility, and privacy will be discussed, as well as strategies for outreach, communications, activating community partners and ensuring that service delivery is tailored to the unique needs of clients and identifying where non-technology or hybrid solutions may provide better outcomes.
Believe it or not, online games are about more than car races and shoot-em-ups. And with a new movement, we're not talking about boring edutainment either. Last spring, MTV reached more than a million young people with a game on the Darfur genocide. Youth groups are building games about social issues and fostering leadership skills in the process. A growing coalition is emerging to reach a new generation in the language so many of them already speak: games. Cheaper tools and new partnerships are emerging, as well as important differences between making games and other media. Games are already a mainstream form of media, and can help traditional nonprofits go beyond preaching to the converted and find new audiences. This session will outline some of the easier ways to implement gaming strategies and give you tips to make your endeavor a success.
Many "Web 2.0" tools are all about bringing people together online. This session will highlight the many ways Web 2.0 tools can help you engage and build community, the technical challenges you'll face, and the organizational questions that you'll have to address. By focusing on case studies from the sector, you'll walk away with real-world lessons.
This session will addresses the “why” and “how” regarding online communities for nonprofits. We’ll discuss how online communication and collaboration adds value to a nonprofit’s mission and programs, highlight the return on investment potential, and how to measure and achieve success. Moderated by Sarah Golightly of GoLightly Community, this session features noted learning and community coach Marcia Conner. We’ll showcase best practices in online community building, and review several case studies including NTEN's Affinity Groups, YMCA of Greater Cincinnati, and others.
Municipal wireless projects will mean that you can create social change in new, bold ways. Soon, your organization, your clients, and your stakeholders may have access to free and low cost wireless Internet access through a municipal wireless system or at least have access to a wireless system that covers your whole city. Imagine if:
What will you do with when the municipal wireless project goes live? Come find out! This session will inspire you to dream big, encourage you to identify real programs and projects you can implement, and connect you with the resources and skills you’ll need to make it happen.