Observations on the 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference

Wednesday, March 26. 2008

Kurt Voelker and I (Andrew Cohen), traveled to New Orleans to participate in the 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference. This was my fourth conference and the most useful and fulfilling. In addition our volunteering and presenting, we learned quite a bit. Here are our key take-aways:

Kurt's Observations:

Great to see the growing numbers! More interesting people doing more innovative work than ever before. It's clear to me that the nonprofit community sees technology, and the web specifically as a critical component to creating social good.
Despite no singular massive success with the Social Web, it's clear that organizations are recognizing that their constituencies and target audiences are more sophisticated than ever, and nonprofits are working hard to align their communications with the next generation of donors, activists, thinkers, and doers that have already bought into the social web.
Open interoperability breeds innovation - and software providers are starting to get it. Most software vendors I spoke with saw open access to data and services as a must have feature to remain competitive - this is good news!

Andrew's Observations:

I noticed a positive continued commitment from software vendors to open the door to NTEN members and smaller organizations. I sat in on a session led by Google's Frederick Vallaey who promised to expedite Google Grant approvals for NTEN members. This provides any registered 501(c)(3) three months of free Adwords) I also participated in a session titled "SalesForce for Good Not Evil" in which some smaller organizations showed how a central commercial platform using SalesForce's offer of 10 free licenses for charitable orgs. Other attendees including Mozy, ReadyTalk and (ahem) Forum One's own ProjectSpaces also offer discounts. Lesson learned: Always ask product vendors whether there is a nonprofit discount.

Mobile technologies are growing slowly but steadily in the United States. They are still the big exception to the open interoperability Kurt mentions above. At the Mobile Advocacy session I heard compelling case studies, but each was unusual and still rather fledgling. Once again, the closed systems of the greedy wireless carriers -- AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc. -- are the main constraint to real innovation here. For instance, it still costs an organization $1,000/month to have a vanity mobile short code or "mobile URL."

The conference continues to be one model for how to extend an event through friendly, open (and sometime frenzied) sharing of conference notes and artifacts. During the conference, over 300 attendees were Twittering -- about one out of five. In some sessions, the panels took questions from people in other breakout sessions. At one point, I "tweeted" a key finding from one session, and, within a few minutes, I received (and posed to the panel) a follow-up question submitted by an attendee at a different session in another room. And I'm still working through all of the blog posts, presentations, videos, and photos tagged with "08NTC."

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Posted by Andrew Cohen in Events at 15:35 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)

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Hey Andrew,

I'd be interested to get your vibe on the state of social technology use in the recovery effort of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf. Being that I work with our Rebuilding Together affiliate (as well as other local nonprofits) in the city, my impression is that there is a great deal more that organizations like Habitat for Humanity, the Red Cross, and yes, even Rebuilding Together, could be doing to keep volunteers, donors, and other stakeholders in the rebuilding process linked together.

#1 Alan Sisco (Homepage) on 2008-03-26 18:14 (Reply)

Hi Alan -- I don't have much personal knowledge in this realm. The conference had an excellent plenary by three leaders in the rebuilding effort including the editor of www.louisianarebuilds.info. It's a terrific resource, but I was disappointed a bit that it's pretty much top-down information distribution without much space for citizens to connect with each other. In my brief survey of the site, I didn't find, for example, any online social tools for coordinating efforts or even discussion forums. However, she pointed out that the site is written primarily for residents. Poor literacy, low computer aptitude, and limited network access are all real challenges.

Generalist Community Sites like Craig's List (http://neworleans.craigslist.org) are still providing a valuable way for people to go "hyper-local" in sort of a billboard fashion. But I haven't seen much movement from big organizations -- particularly in the vein you mentioned -- for coordinating initiatives.

It looks like smaller groups are doing some innovative stuff. For example, the New Orleans Housing Resource Center has just won NetSquared grant to map the recovery. I"m not sure if any social features are planned: http://thinknola.com/post/n2y3-mashup-challenge/

Some approaches are quite simple. A site called Squandered Heritage (http://squanderedheritage.com) has used Flickr to catalog houses that are (often incorrectly) slated for demolition.

Andrew

#2 Andrew Cohen (Homepage) on 2008-03-27 13:49 (Reply)

Great summary of some NTEN sessions by the folks at See3 Communications in Chicago -
http://blog.see3.net/2008/03/27/nten-does-web-20/

Chris

#3 Chris Wolz (Homepage) on 2008-03-28 09:48 (Reply)

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Influence covers innovations in communication, Internet technology and strategy to generate influence on important public policy issues. Chris Wolz manages this blog with the help of his colleagues at Forum One Communications, a web strategy/technology firm in the Washington DC area.