Every month, the NetSquared Community comes together offline at Net Tuesday events around the world to mix, swap stories and ideas, build new relationships, and collaborate to help the local community. Our local organizers are volunteers dedicated to helping create local opportunities for learning, sharing and using technology to make a difference. In this Organizer Spotlight series we bring you interviews with organizers from around the world.

We're happy to introduce: Alex Steed!

Alex is the organizer of the Net Tuesday group in Portland, ME, USA. You can check out his profile and ways to connect on the Net Tuesday Organizer Team page. Are you in Portland? Connect to the Net Tuesday group here!

Tell us who you are in less than 140 characters:

As my Twitter bio suggests, "I'm simply [a guy] trying to understand my (and your) place in the supposedly emerging Utopia of digital communitarianism."

How do you spend your time when you're not organizing Net Tuesdays?

I am preparing and fundraising for a media literacy class for high school sophomores. I already volunteer as a staff member at Maine Youth Leadership, a leadership seminar for high school students the same age, and I look forward to exploring the question "What is the media?" with students. Further, I am also working on a class on the methodologies of Internet activism, so I am doing a lot of reading in preparation for that.

I also work as a nonprofit tech consultant based in Portland, Maine.

Also - relatively unexciting comparatively - I recently inherited a house so I spend a lot of time working on it and cleaning it out.

What inspired you to organize local Net Tuesday events in your community?

It wasn't being done and I talked with Brit Bravo at last year's N2 conference and she sold me on the idea. It's been a pretty rocky start, largely because I've been trying to figure out N2's place in Portland, especially since NTEN, a really great organization, has a pretty solid base here. I've recently decided that our focus in Portland will be more of the technical / tinkerer aspect of NPTech whereas the local NTEN is focused on helping nonprofits figure out how to use the technology. For that reason, things are sort of back at a starting point, which I think is good.

What's the hardest part of the job?

The hardest part of the job is finding time. It requires a lot of time and organization to be a good organizer.

How do you measure the success of your events?

Until recently, whether or not the events happen. My schedule, until very recently, was relatively sporadic and it was difficult to find a uniform date for events.

Tell us about the best Net Tuesday event. What did you learn from that experience?

We've had a couple of great events, but the one that sticks out the most in my mind was one where there was a crazy snow storm and no one who had RSVP'ed showed up except for one guy who had a pretty big interest in architecture. We ended up having drinks all evening and talking forever about various methods by which he could create new plans for green development. That was a fun evening.

What's the local social-web-tech scene like in Portland?

As I mentioned before, there is a pretty good, but small, NTEN crew here. They're very dedicated, and it's been great hitting their meetings up. Right now, there's not very much of a center of folks doing tech-for-good stuff here. It's not to say not a lot of people are doing it - they're just all over the place. A lot of the social web stuff here is happening for-business at the moment, but there's woman named Chelsea Holden Baker who is working with SPACE Gallery to put on co-working events, which are really bringing folks out of the woodwork. Another guy named Rob Landry from Pemaquid Communications is also doing a lot of co-working promotion. These sorts of events are great rallying points for finding and organizing tech-for-good folks.

How do you envision Net Tuesday events evolving over time?

I really like this idea of putting together local challenges/conferences. I have talked with some folks and some organizations about doing this, and there is a lot of excitement around that. I anticipate moving forward with doing this in Maine at some point soon.

What's your change-the-world philosophy?

Everything we do changes the world, and some people will be judged negatively for their change and others will be judged positively. I'd prefer to be in the later camp, especially through the lens of my own judgement.

What music are you listening to now-a-days?

Oh, that's a good question. I recently began listening to the KEXP song of the day podcasts, through which I heard The Redwood Plan. They're pretty fantastic, and seemingly positive. I also recently got back into Bikini Kill, which I've been listening to a lot, and a lot of the punk that got me into doing all of the shit that I do. I ultimately got into this tech-for-change world by way of being into punk rock and doing zines and all of that.

I'm also a faithful Bill Moyers podcast listener, and I try to listen to Democracy Now every day.

Learn more:

• Find Net Tuesday in your city
• Learn more about the Net Tuesday Organizers
• Start a group in your city