Net Tuesday groups are the local, offline component of NetSquared's work.   These groups provide a consistent opportunity for local communities to come together, learn, share, and collaborate.   Net Tuesday events bring together nonprofits and foundations, governement and service providers, designers and developers, entrepreneurs and innovators.   There are now over 52 cities around the world!   Here's some highlights from one of the newest groups: Net Tuesday Warsaw, Poland!

Hear more about the success in Warsaw and how you can start a Net Tuesday group

Update from the field: Warsaw

Krzysztof Lubiniecki and Michal Mach are co-organizers of one of the newest Net Tuesday groups, in Warsaw, Poland.   They have had a great start to their local group and want to share some of the highlights they've seen so far.

Our first meeting was in September. We had 20 people from NGOs and IT specialists discussing what are the possibilities and challenges of funding new technologies in non-profits. The meeting went on for 2.5 hours, there was a great discussion, a lot of energy, and a good beer/coffee/tea at the end.

The second event was this month. This time we had 40 people in the room (the café turned out to be too small to fit the crowd that showed up). The subject was "How non-profits can use social networking websites for promotion". We had two people from Amnesty International Poland talking about how their organization communicates their message on facebook and in the web generally. Their short presentation sparked a series of difficult questions and an interesting discussion. There were people from big NGOs there (Greenpeace, AI, Open Society Institute, Academy for Philanthropy), smaller organizations, open source specialists and IT guys from corporate sector.

Other than the events, other successes include:

• We are taking the discussion online on our own site and on Net Tuesday Warsaw facebook profile.
• The biggest Polish portal on social campaigns wants to write an article about our meetings and send info about it in its newsletter to it's 1500 subscribers.
• MichaÅ‚ wrote an article about the idea of Net Tuesdays and technology for social change to the biggest Polish NGO journal.
• We were invited as Net Tuesday organizers to speak (organize a workshop or panel discussion) about how IT specialists can contribute to the work of non-profits at PLUG (Polish Linux Users Group) conference in February next year.

Kris and Michal already have topics for the next two events:

November we are inviting Marcin Jagodzinski, a creator of blip.pl (a Polish version of Twitter), and we want to spark a discussion about possibility of microblogging for social change (and in NGO communication).

December we are inviting Academy for the Development of Philanthropy to talk about their e-volunteering portal and competition that they are launching in Poland, we also want to invite someone from Volunteer Center and have a discussion about new possibilities that technology brings to idea of volunteering.

If you, colleagues, or friends will be in Warsaw, be sure to check out the Net Tuesday events!

You can see pictures from their first meeting here!

Net Tuesday: Get Connected

Do you have a Net Tuesday group in your city? (Check the map to find out!)

If you do, join in - attend an event, offer to present about your work, or find others to collaborate with.

If you don't, start one - you can let us know that you are interested in becoming an organizer and we'll get you going!