On January 10, Craig Newmark will be joining San Francisco NetSquared to talk about using technology for the common good. Craig, the founder of craigconnects.org and Craigslist, will be sharing his experiences and leading a discussion with the community.

After a night of staying up late and sleeping in pup tents, I saw a lot of campuseros early this morning with half-closed eyes desperately trying to find some coffee at Campus Party. They have put themselves together though, and by the time the grand opening took place later this morning, everyone gathered in the main hall taking pictures of the prince and princess of Asturias and mingling with the crowd of political officials, military officers, and security guards.

Sektor 3.0, a conference for Polish NGOs interested in technology-driven social change, was an unusual event. For two days in May (5/23 – 5/24) contributors, participants, and organizers met in the local Warsaw venue to share experiences, listen, and collaborate. The event was actually created by participants themselves within the framework previously set by the Polish NGO Stocznia — The Unit for Social Innovation and Research. This framework is described in their sociological report on the state of IT, third sector, and local communities in Poland. The second-day conference agenda was created using ideas suggested by first-day participants and volunteers.

Aspiration is partnering with the Department of Media Studies at the University of San Francisco to deliver a day of social media and new technology trainings at the San Francisco Interactive Media Summit, 5 March at USF.

The Aspiration team will facilitate sessions that include “Facebook and Twitter 101”, “Intro to blogging”, Beginning and Intermediate WordPress”, “Listening Online with a Social Media Dashboard”, “Managing Online Channels with a Publishing Matrix”, and “How to Build a Good Nonprofit Web Site for Almost Nothing.”

For 23 years, TechSoup Global has been working to build networks—networks of organizations that need technology support, networks of corporations that are willing to donate their products, networks of funders interested in building the capacity of civil society, and networks of technical volunteers. In the last six years, we have built two formal networks—one of more than 24,000 on-the-ground technology activists via our NetSquared initiative; and the other of capacity-building organizations, capable of delivering technology solutions to other NGOs in 35 countries around the world.

Do you like to build cool things with cool people based on cool ideas that help the world? If the answer is yes, then you need to check out the upcoming Open Data Hackathon. It's a grassroots and distributed network of events across the world all with the same goal in mind: to write applications using open public data to show support for and encourage the adoption open data policies by the world's local, regional and national governments.

Sound like something you want to get involved with? Here are the details:

Later this year, 200 African thought leaders will gather to discuss how to accelerate the building of innovative societies at the Open Innovation Africa Summit. Contribute your opinions on how to best implement solutions and you could get yourself a free ticket to contribute at the event in person.

The monthly Community Builder chat series is part of the #4Change community of regularly scheduled chats, bringing together people from around the world to talk about examples, practices, tips and more as we all explore the way technology can be used for social change.  This is the second in what will be a monthly series of chats specifically focused on Community Building.

When:

• Date: September 16th
• Time: 4 pm Eastern, 9 pm UK (duration: 1 hour)
• Visit: Launch the Chat (not active until the 16th)

Topics:

For our September MeetUp, we are thrilled to have longtime online community expert, Randall Farmer, as our guest speaker. We'll also be joined by Bill Johnston, Head of Global Community at Dell, who will be facilitating the event.

Randy will be speaking about managing reputation systems in online communities. His talk will lead into an informal discussion moderated by Bill. Come join us for an evening of online community strategy and in-person networking with fellow online community enthusiasts.

On September 15, the Women Who Tech Telesummit will bring together talented women breaking new ground in technology who use their tech savvy to transform the world and inspire change. Hundreds of women from across the US and abroad in the non-profit, political and business world will be participating and Panelists include women on the forefront of social change and technology.