Resources for organizers

This section is for the organizers.

Topics for future face-to-face meetings

Ideas from Net Tuesday conference call August 20, 2009 , http://n2tuesdayorganizers.pbworks.com/Monthly-Organizer-Discussion-Calls:

  • Promote interaction. Meetings are more than a presenter and slides.
  • Focus on an issue and wrap tech around it. Perhaps we could have some meetings focused on a service area. For example, a few people who work with health oriented nonprofits. What are they doing with technology? What are they doing well? What do they want to do better? Other meetings on nonprofits and the arts, environmental nonprofits, churches, crisis response.... A positive side benefit would be putting people in touch with others who have very similar interests.

Possible topics:

  • Recap of the 2009 NetSquared Conference: Justis Peters -- August 19 -- reschedule to September 16
  • Constructing sites with WordPress: Leandra (volunteered), Nancy, Sean (NetCorps newsletters, Winter 2009, http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=49970442374&h=kCVD7&u=N5Pxg)
  • Payment Processors -- how do you chose between Google Checkout, PayPal, Network for Good, ...  Can you use more than one?
  • How to publicize events What a news release should look like and where and how it should be sent. Post on LinkedIn, Facebook, NTEN's events calendar, Carolina Newswire: http://carolinanewswire.com/submitnews.php, dbusinessnews: http://www.dbusinessnews.com/, triangle.com, Independent Weekly (by Wednesday of the preceding week), http://www.SocialCarolina.org. http://nccommunities.org/media-list-triangle. Perhaps include something about ical/icalendar. Is there a way to feed one post into multiple sites? Perhaps also include places to hold meetings -- http://nccommunities.org/meeting-places.
  • Google Wave: From UNC Support list 6/2/2009: "Wave is a complete collaboration tool that integrates email, instant messaging, web discussion boards, document management, wiki-like document editing, and social networking all in real-time, even on your iPhone and Android phones. Google is also releasing the Wave platform as open source so that anyone can run a Wave server much like we run email systems now. There is also a Wave API for building extensions like those for Firefox, and a protocol for interfacing with Wave servers so that you can write your own client. I haven't seen a technology with quite this much potential in some time and I highly encourage everyone to check it out. It is well-thought-out and quite intuitive (particularly for those users of Gmail right now). Watching the video last night, I had quite a few "that's so awesome" and "wish I had thought of that" moments. Wave is expected to be released sometime later this year.
  • What resources do you use to keep informed? We could compile useful email lists, blogs, Web sites. Based on conversation about Idealware -- http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Information_Systems_Forum/message/10480 is about the third message in. In email to the organizers list 2/24/09, Sean Watson said: "You might want to also include what mailing lists are people on/should they be on. I know in Greensboro the non-profit coalition has a wonderful listserv that is highly active. Do we have one in the triangle? And what other ones might be good as well that people know about?"
  • CSS: Leandra  Ganko has offered to do in October or later (email message to Judy 2/10/2009)
  • Overview of IT management issues
  • Social Networking 101
  • Sprout -- bringing widgets to the masses (reference: http://nten.org/uploads/newsletter_archive/december_2008.htm#like #14)
  • Email from Trish Perkins 3/19/200:
    We can think up some other stuff I can do, too. I do a blogging/keeping the folks back home prez every year for the Rotary Club's Ambassadorial Scholar program. I woundn't call it "Social Media" or "Web 2.0" or anything, but I do know quite a bit about blogging, blogging platforms, links with Flickr, links with video sites, YouTube and others.
    And I've just finished giving a digital storytelling course for low-income and disabled folks.
    And I like coming down to "the big city."
  • Cloud computing -- what is it?
  • Open source -- perhaps focused on http://www.opensourceforamerica.org/. Perhaps a panel of experts, attendees ask questions. We should be able to get panelists from Triangle Linux Users group, Red Hat, ibiblio.org -- lots of places.
  • Semantic Web: Phillip Rhodes gave a presentation for TriLUG July 9, 2009. There's a description of Semantic Web and links to his slides and other resources at http://www.fogbeam.com/semantic_web.html. Also see Terry's new member comment at http://www.meetup.com/NCTech4Good/members/8547230/
  • Lightning Talks: Saving Time and Money: Some tools you may have missed or forgotten. TriLUG topic for April 9, 2009
  • Using a Wiki internally for documenting procedures, release documents, test plans, ... Suggested by Mike Rulison from email from David Spaulding, Sat, 24 Mar 2007.
  • A source of ideas for meetings:  www.p2pfoundation.net/Main_Page particularly www.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Movements which is a directory containing organizations and people like Creative Commons, NetSquared, Internet for Everone, OpenID Foundation, and many, many more.

 

Media Contact List (Triangle Area Counties)

This media list includes contacts in:

  • Chatham
  • Durham
  • Franklin
  • Granville
  • Orange
  • Person
  • Vance
  • Wake
AttachmentSize
medialist_Triangle.xls100.5 KB

Meeting preparation and followup

The basic steps are:

 

Project management

  • Benefits of NCTech4Good project management
    • Our purpose is to bring together technology needs of nonprofit organizations and resources to help nonprofits achieve their missions.
    • Connect volunteers, sponsors, and businesses with nonprofit organizations.
    • People want to help, but they don't always know how. NCTech4Good helps people help each other.
    • Participating community organizations describe their needs and learn about what other organizations are doing.
    • Volunteers learn about current needs, and organizations learn about the volunteers.
    • Sponsors and businesses learn what organizations' needs are.
    • Organizations learn what resources the sponsors and businesses have to offer.
  • Initiating projects
    • Describe how the project affects the mission of the organization.
  • Promoting projects to find volunteers and financial support
  • Project leaders
    • Each project needs a leader/coordinator
    • A large project may need a project champion to get friends, volunteers, and funding for the project.
  • Break large projects into small tasks.
  • Financial support
    • Cost analysis
  • Task assignments.
  • Track work done.
  • Track satisfaction.
    • Nonprofit with the work done.
    • Volunteers with working with the nonprofit.
  • Task completion
  • Project completion
  • Voting for projects
  • Bidding system
    • I could do it for ...
  • Tools in place
  • Tools needed now
  • Tools wish list
  • Possible collaborators and funders to help develop this service

From organizers meeting June 10, 2009, Watson/Hallman meeting July 2, 2009, and Tech LinkUp

Sign-in/Evaluation form

NCTech4Good Sign-In and Evaluation Form

Date: Subject: Speaker

Name:

Email:

Nonprofit organizations you work with:

How did you hear about this meeting:

  • NCTech4Good Meetup.com site/email list:
  • 501 Tech Club site/email list:
  • Another email list (please specify:
  • A friend/colleague:
  • Other (please specify):

Suggestions for future meetings:

  • Topics I Could Present On:
  • Topics I'm Interested In:
  • I'd like to join the organizers group to help plan meetings:
  • Good meeting places:
  • Other suggestions:

Evaluation of this meeting:

  • Previous knowledge of the topic:
    • I was unaware of this technology before hearing about this meeting.
    • I've heard of the technology, but don't use it yet.
    • I use this technology.
    • I could give this talk.
    • Other
  • Was the meeting what you expected?
  • Was the meeting worth your time?
  • Do you expect to use the info from this meeting: immediately?       within six months?
  • Do you want to learn more on this topic?
  • Comments:

Personal section: This section is optional, but if this is your first meeting or your info has changed, we'll use it to add it to our contact list:

  • Address:
  • Phone daytime:
  • Phone evening:
  • Employer:
  • Employment position:
  • Skills, areas of interest:

Revised 3/17/2010

NTEN (501 Tech Club), NetSquared (Net Tuesday), and Meetup resources