This is the first part of a rant I have been mulling over for about 3 years now. I want to get it up before the end of the event, so I will save my proposal for a second post.

Advanced nonprofit technology practitioners need a place to connect and learn from each other. Who will fill this gap?

For years this was the collective whine from the hundreds of NTAPs who attend the Nonprofit Technology Conference to help other colleagues in the sector. When NetSquared was announced in 2005, I was excited to hear they would be bringing together the best minds from the nonprofit world with the leading technologists. Would this be the long-awaited venue for advanced "NPTECH" conversation?

Photo by Beth Kanter


As the Boston N-TEN regional conference approached, I did a lot of agonizing about how to design a session on advocating for new technology in nonprofit organizations. 

I'd like to report that it went pretty well, mostly because some top-notch colleagues agreed to help, and a fellow member of the Berkman bloggers' group agreed to present a case study.

The moral of this story probably turns out to be "when in doubt, pass the buck!" 

Naava Frank deployed her considerable expertise as a facilitator and expert on communities of practice, Steve Backman and Eric Segal contributed the fruits of many years of experience as successful nonprofit technology advocates, and J Baumgart gave us a very frank and fascinating account of her adventures as an in-house advocate for RSS feeds within a department where making the case was mysteriously difficult.

Advocating for technology in the nonprofit sector is not an exact science:  it's not the sort of topic that lends itself well to a straightforward PowerPoint presentation by an expert.  Everyone is working with a different set of obstacles, unknowns, allies, resources, and strategies.

As session designers, we decided that the best approach would be to encourage brainstorming and mutual education. I hope that we succeeded to some degree, and that those who participated in the session will not only continue the discussion via the Boston 501 Tech Club email distribution list, but also post comments to my blog about other possibilities for enhancing the learning experience.