It’s T-9 days to the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference, put on with style and aplomb by the amazing crew at NTEN, all of whom I’m proud to call my friends and associates in the scheme to make nonprofits start using technology strategically. This year we’re gathering at the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia.
I fly in Wednesday night, where I’m planning to shamefully miss (again) the annual pre-Day of Service dinner and eat with friends at Ted’s Montana Grill. After that, I’m hosting what looks like an annual brewpub gathering at the Porter Beer Bar — come and join us!
On Thursday, I’ll start the day at the annual Day of Service, where I’ll be lending what expertise I have to the Feminist Women’s Health Center. Length of consult pending, I’ll then pop over to the unconference on open data standards, hosted by Netsquared. The easiest way to find me on Wednesday, though, will be to head over to the Science Fair and locate booth 63, where I’ll be manning the Idealware table, and talking about our new web site, the revitalized blog, and our first book, among other things.
For the main conference on Friday and Saturday, I’m leading a five session sub-track that we’ve named the Tech Track. This is in service of my standard rant about our nonprofit community’s need to support the front-line tech staff — accidental or otherwise — who struggle through the hassles of crashed servers, mis-routed routers, cloud versus closet computing, so-small-you-can’t-see-em budgets, and the challenge of communicating technology strategy to peers and higher-ups who don’t consider technology as much more than fancy typewriters.
The Tech Track operates on a few principle tenets:
- The best NTEN Sessions are driven by peer discussion, not endless presentations.
- The outcome of this track should be the creation of an ongoing nptech community, in addition to whatever wisdom is shared during the conference.
- Every time a PowerPoint Presentation is created, a kitten dies.
Tag for the track is #ntctech. Joining me are Johanna Bates, Matt Eschelman, Tracy Kronzak, John Merritt, Michelle Murrain, Michael Sola, and Thomas Taylor. Note that John or Matt will be subbing for Tracy on Session one.
