2009/06/10: New name, statement of purpose

Meeting announcement: Location - United Way of the Greater Triangle, 2400 Perimeter Park Drive, Suite 150, Morrisville, NC 27560

Several of us will gather for a brown-bag lunch in the Dogwood Room, Triangle United Way, Morrisville, Wednesday, June 10, 12:00-1:00, (we have the room 11:30-1:30) to work on a statement of purpose for this group and proposals for a new name. Some of us are fresh from the NTEN conference where there was an affinity group for Net Tuesday/501 Tech Club organizers, and at least one person from our group will attend the NetSquared Conference the last week in May.

You are welcome to join us. The room is small. Please RSVP so folks will know if we've run out of space.

Nine attended: Shelly Bowers (and daughter Lucy), Dawn Douglass, Marjorie Fowler, Leandra Ganko, Judy Hallman, Justis Peters, Saroj Primlani, Nancy Shoemaker, and Sean Watson. Paula Jones sent her regrets.

Notes are included in the Agenda, below.

1. Review feedback on why people joined the group.

   We had 5 responses to the question "Why did you join this group?" Most prefer topics that are not too technical. We should aim toward overviews but provide opportunities for indepth coverage -- deep dives based on interest, perhaps using online web conferencing.

2. What is the purpose of the group? What are our goals? What do we do?
   • Focus for meeting topics
   • Hands-on training?
   • Day of service?
   • Other ways to work with nonprofits during the month?
   • Gatherings not always on the third Wednesday evening?
   • Recruit college students – high school?

   Facilitate the social side of nonprofits.

   Help people find technology and use it.

   Have a job/need a job, volunteer, what can I bring to the table, what are the immediate needs of nonprofits, what am I willing to put time in on? We could have a list of projects for nonprofits, folks could vote on them, and we'd bring together volunteers to work on those we can do. Sean and Judy will work on this.

   Support subgroups of common interests (Special Interest Groups) -- for example one group might be the IT support staff for nonprofits, another group might be accidental techies, and another might be representatives of organizations that provide tech support for nonprofits (something like TechCoop, 2003-2005). Something similar to the Tracks at a conference.

   Help people find people with similar interests, specific events, and promote collaboration. Need a hub -- a centralized group for nonprofit technology -- a local NTEN.

   Have a regular, face-to-face time.

   Perhaps have a day-long conference.

   Start a list of goals.

   We can develop working materials on NCCommunities.org -- if you register, you can edit materials and comment.

3. What should we name the group?

   We want a Brand -- something that people will come to when they want information about nonprofit technology. Hub for Good. Technology to advance your mission. Looked at THINK or THINC -- Technology H Information NC. NC Good Tech. We all liked NCTech4Good -- Where tech meets social change.

   T-Shirts would be useful and fun. Leandra will design.

4. Topics for future meetings – especially July

   For July 15, Saroj Primlani will present on Universal design on the Web. She'll send Judy a blurb for the Web site. Justis Peters will lead/facilitate the meeting.

   Shelly will be gone in August but will try to find someone else from United Way to host the meeting. Dawn offered Triangle Community Foundation. They have meeting rooms for use 8-5, but Dawn would be willing to host our meetings in the evening.

   Judy started a list of topics at http://nccommunities.org/meeting-topics linked from http://nccommunities.org/meetings.

5. Make the organizers group public.

   Judy is working on making the group public. Once that's done, to join the group, people will need to go to http://groups.nten.org/profile.htm?mode=getagreement and register. Then they should be able to see the group "Organizers - Triangle" at http://groups.nten.org/group.htm?mode=home&igid=90445 and join that group.
   DONE: Let me know if you have any problems joining the group -- hallman at email.unc.edu.

6. Guidelines.

   Are vendor presentations OK? Under what circumstances.

   Although speakers can set their own rules for questions/comments during presentations, there need to be some rules for not allowing attendees to take over.

   Need a clear statement of when a meeting is over and we're moving into socializing.

   Sean and Judy will work on guidelines.

7. Have a job/need a job

   Do this as part of the introductions at the beginning of the meeting. Also capture this information online. See discussion under 2. above.

8. Survey.

   We should do a couple of surveys -- one of member interests, one of nonprofit interests and needs.

   Sean is working on a survey of some nonproftis for netCorps and will include a couple of questions for our group.