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: Matt Stempeck!

Matt is a co-organizer of the Net Tuesday group in Washington, DC.   You can check out his profile and ways to connect on the Net Tuesday Organizer Team page.   Are you in Washington?   Connect to the Net Tuesday group here!

Tell us who you are in less than 140 characters:

Always balancing the desire to save the world and desire to savor it. In love with my surroundings and the opportunities life has delivered.

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

Working for citizen funding of federal elections because I believe it's at the root of every challenge we face today. In that other time, I enjoy being out and about in DC, exploring our city and its inhabitants.

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

Our members. I am inspired anew each month when I get to meet the wide range of people who show up and learn about the amazing, important work they are doing. It's a great buzz.

What's the hardest part of the job?

We've been fortunate to have reliable sponsors and consistently great speakers and topics to discuss. The toughest part for me has been empowering attendees to take a more active role in the group.

How do you measure the success of your events?

Attendees have been kind to us with Meetup.com's star rating system. The number of attendees is exciting, too -- I love when we sell out weeks in advance of the event.

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

We've had some amazing events on cutting edge topics well ahead of more established groups (http://www.net2dc.com). I also take pride in offering professional trainings, like a free day-long workshop on how to tell your story with video, that other groups charge a lot of money for. But the events I get the most out of are "Pimp My Nonprofit" events, where we feature a nonprofit's online work and crowdsource the audience for feedback and advice. I always leave with pages of links, contacts, ideas, and best practices.

What is the local social-web-tech scene like in DC?

It's coalescing like nothing I've ever seen. DC gets a bad rap as a town full of lawyers, but we also have a vibrant creative class. NetSquared DC is lucky to be based out of Affinity Lab, which is the hub of a lot of creative activity and a launchpad for entrepreneurs, social or otherwise.  

What I love about DC is that most of the people are here for a particular reason, to do some good in the world. We're not just building widgets. We also have significant overlap and cross-pollinating between the tech, social media marketing, government and nonprofit circles.

How do you envision Net Tuesday events evolving over time?

I love seeing Net Tuesday spread to other cities and countries, and know that anytime I'm in one of those cities there is a strong community to tap right into. Along with technology in general, Net Tuesday events make geographic location less of a barrier to getting up and running. I'd love to see our events evolve into ad-hoc organizing whenever there's a critical threshold of interest.

What's your change-the-world philosophy?

1. Do stuff that matters - If you look through the history of mankind, you quickly realize that we're incredibly fortunate to live in a time and place where shelter and food are a given for many of us. We need to do something with that gift. Don't leave it to volunteering a few hours a month. Make it the center of your life.
2. Don't duplicate existing efforts - help improve them.
3. Make sure it's fun or it won't last.

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

http://www.WOXY.com  - fantastic indie rock streaming all day in iTunes. I still haven't gotten used to the fact that they never cut to commercial.

Learn more:

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