I had a great time at NTC - it was wonderful to see old friends and meet new ones. But I was struck by how much the same the problems are that nonprofits continue to face. I think perhaps we need to ask some deeper questions.

From the stories I've heard this week, small and medium-sized nonprofits still don't have in-house technology expertise to make evaluations about what directions to go in. They struggle mightily with software, no matter whether it's free/open source or proprietary, shrink-wrapped or custom-built, on their desktops or web-hosted. The technology has gotten more sophisticated - but the problems many nonprofits are facing are exactly the same.

On reflecting about this, this is what I wrote on my way back from NTC on Sunday:

"Sometimes, the forward march of technology seems like this train I'm riding on - inexorably traveling down the track of capitalist profit while nonprofits are hanging on to those little hand-powered trucks that we, the people who serve them in this realm are working really hard to pump up and down, so we can try and gamely keep up. And while they watch really large organizations zip by them in bigger, better vehicles, looking exactly like they know where they are going. But no one seems to be asking 'why are we on this track in the first place?' 'Is being on this track going to really help me save the whales/feed people/organize/save the planet?' "

I'm thinking a lot about what a different kind of nonprofit technology consulting might look like. And I've started to think about questions I want to be asking when I work with nonprofits on technology:

• Asking whether technology implementations in their organization in the past have really facilitated their mission? In what ways have they not?

• Asking whether technology has played a beneficiary, damaging, or neutral role in internal organizational dynamics and staff morale?

• Asking, before implementing a new technology, what problem is really attempting to be solved? is it a problem that can be solved in any other ways?

• How does increasing the use of networking technology, on-line presence, and Internet communications facilitate or hinder work that is done face to face?

• How can they make choices about technology not just based on cost/TCO or feature set - but to bring in issues of the effects on staff, organizational dynamics, and the role of factors such as organizational determination of data destiny, source and ownership of software, and environmental impact?

• How can they be encouraged and facilitated to look at the bigger picture - how does what an organization does with technology affect the larger community and the planet?

Michele Martin, of the Bamboo Project, has added to this list:

• If we select a technology solution, what organizational and managerial changes do we need to make in order to ensure that we achieve the objectives of the technology implementation?

• How does this technology improve conditions for our primary customers?

• In what ways does this technology support and facilitate human connection? Does it appropriately replace people-to-people interactions or does it make us more faceless and anonymous?

I know that there are some technology implementations that are completely appropriate, mission-facilitating, good for staff, good for clients and constituents, and even good for the greater community, and good for the planet. I want every single technology implementation to be like that.