2009/04/26-28: Notes from NTEN Conference

Notes from the NTEN Nonprofit Technology Conference, San Francisco, April 26-28, 2009.

Paula Jone's notes

I have attached my notes from the plenaries and various sessions I attended. Enjoy!

Leandra Ganko's notes

I have attached my notes from the "33 Ways to Drive People to Your Website" that I thought was pretty good. I also have a link to it on my business blog: http://www.legadesigngroup.com.

Emira Mears was at the conference, so you can check out her blog for some recaps as well: http://blog.raisedeyebrow.com/category/nonprofit-tech/ — Usability Testing on the Cheap for Non Profit Websites and Measuring User Satisfaction.

Judy Hallman's notes

CiviCRM activites are in a separate post.

Net Tuesday/501 Tech Club affinity group meeting. There was an affinity group meeting for local organizers of these group. Amy Sample Ward (Community Builder for NetSquared) described Net Tuesday groups as focused on innovation and organizing, while 501 Tech Clubs are focused on education and hands-on training. Net Tuesdays are vibrant and changing, while 501 Tech Clubs are more consistent. There were people from San Francisco, Missoula Montana, Philly, Los Angeles, Taiwan, Denver, Vancouver, and London.

Some areas have combined the two groups. Triangle NC folks don't like the name, Traingle Net Tuesday/501 Tech Club -- especially now that they meet on Wednesdays. Groups can chose a name they like -- for example, "NYC Tech4Good (A NetSquared group)" -- but should include NetSquared and/or NTEN, so Triangle Tech Do-gooders sponsored by RTPnet, NTEN, NetSquare, Triangle United Way, the NC Center for Nonprofits would work. Some areas, like Chicago, have both. Chicago encourages "adopt a nonprofit" -- working with a nonprofit during the month and reporting back at the next meeting.

Guidelines were encouraged addressing areas such as vendor presentations and behavior during meetings (some folks try to dominate the conversation). Annual surveys were encouraged to get ideas for meeting time and places, and topics, and generally find out what people are interested in. Some groups have regular meeting places, some move from place to place. Finding free space is a problem. Some meet at libraries.

Conversation with Annaliese Hoehling, NTEN Membership and Outreach Manager, who works with 501 Tech Club ogranizers but couldn't make it to the affinity group meeting. Perhaps the Triangle group could expand its purpose beyond monthly meetings -- have projects similar to NTEN's day of service and workshops. Perhaps we could get more college students involved and perhaps even high school students.

Social Actions' Change the Web Challenge: This is something to watch. Social Actions helps people find and share opportunities to make a difference. The opportunities are collected from 40+ action sources, including Kiva, GlobalGiving, DonorsChoose.org, Change.org, DemocracyinAction, Idealist, and VolunteerMatch. Search is version 0.1. Wiki for the Open Actions XML schema and Brainstorming Fields to add to Open Actions. Search remembers filters. Have an API. RSS feeds. Share actions. The session was lead by Joe Solomon, organizer of Vancouver NetSquared.

This is Iron Chef...Battle Nonprofit: Perhaps we could do something similar in NC. Good description of this session by Kivi Leroux Miller in her blog at NonprofitMarketingGuide.com.

Website Usability Testing for Small Orgs: Who are your 3 major audiences? What do you want them to learn? What do you want them to do? Navigation, feeback, suggestions. Articulate goals. Map content. Web pages have a visual hierarchy -- the eye moves from top left. Draft usability testing instrument. Refine with team. SurveyMonkey is good -- SurveyGizmo is similar but allows pictures. Have testers sign up for newsletters, donate $1. Have a deadline. Look at analytics -- what are your top 5 pages. Figure 30 seconds to present credibility. Donate/Newsletter should be on every page -- you don't know which page they'll land on. Testers should be using two windows -- one for the questions and one for your website. People love to click pictures. Good book -- "Don't Make Me Think!"

Building and Sustaining Vibrant Online Communities:

• Who is the site for -- clients, donors, volunteers, age, profession, social technographics, who NOT served?
• Where -- online + offline
• Why are we doing this -- mission, vision, purpose, focus, goals.
• What are we trying to change? What values do we hold? What is the value of our community members building relationships with each other? What does success look like? How is the organization limited?
• How involved are we with the community?
• Welcome community members
• Reward your power users

Evolution of Online Communities : Social Networking for Good

• Arthritis Foundation, community.arthritis.org. Content = Education. Multiple communities share profile.
• Equality California, EQCA -- Facebook. Groups are too limiting. Pages provide profiles for nonprofits (recent change), can message supporters. Make Wall public so supporters can post. Put your page on friends wall. Your Facebook content is based on your friends -- not about your organization (which is on your website).
• Use of color to highlight content areas. Coming soon -- abilitypath.org.

Ignite sessions: There were 26 "Ignite Sessions" (during the receptions Monday and Tuesday)

• Participants have five minutes to speak on a subject, accompanied by 20 slides.
• Each slide is displayed for 15 seconds.
• Slides are automatically advanced.

Other:

• Holly's Remake of Beyonce's "Single Ladies", started the opening plenary.
• NTEN has a book, Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission: A Strategic Guide for Nonprofit Leaders.
• NTC Awards
• I got to talk briefly with lots of old friends, particularly CTCnet folks.
• With so many people there (1,450) and the meeting rooms spread across the large hotel, it was hard to find a particular person.
• I met Kivi Leroux Miller at the breakfast table Monday for NC folks (she's from Lexington, NC). Besides the Iron Chef post, Kivi has good blog posts for Branding Your Org in Social Media - Tips from #09NTC, Freud, Buddha, and Online Outreach at #09NTC, and Here Comes Everybody - Lessons from Clay Shirky at #09NTC and a related post, When Trying to Fundraise from Friends of Friends is a Complete Waste of Time.
• The conference food was especially good.
• The days were solid packed with things to do and learn about, from 8:00 am to 7:00 pm.
• Next year's conference is in Atlanta, April 8-10, 2010.
• NTEN puts session materials online. They aren't all done yet.
• Folks used "09ntc" as the primary tag when publishing information and media about the conference online. Here are a few of those contributions you might want to check out. (Posted in the NTEN blog.)
• The conference has fantastic support from sponsors.
• See nten.org/ntc for more info -- sessions by Date & Time, Title, Track, or Tag. Session materials will be included in the session description.
• Best of NTC 2009, has some video highlights, by Convio.