Screen capture from Integration Proclamation

Thanks to Allan Benamer for giving a shout about the broken NpTech Meta RSS Feed.   I rolled up my sleeves, held my nose, closed my eyes, and mixed a new one.  You can find new NpTechTag Meta Feed: 2007 Version 1 -  here.  So, update your feed subscriptions if you want to read everything or just following the summaries.

There's been some terrific advice and forecasting in the NpTech space this week (see below), but reflecting on some of the points made about the pros/cons of NpTech Tag has given me an idea. 

I scan the tagged items every week and do a pattern analysis and summary of these undifferentiated items.  It's made me wonder how could the NpTech Tag provide a better zeitgeist of our connected conversations and resource finds.  Is better to be proactive with some structure or reactive with no structure or organization?
 
What if we thought of the NPTech Tag as a way to aggregate and facilitate a more focused distributed conversation and the summary is, well, a summary.  For an experiment, I'm going to throw out some conversation questions about the NpTech Tag.  Write a blog post reflecting on these questions and tag it with NpTech and we will summarize the key points.

• How are you using the NpTech Tag? 
• Do you subscribe to the feed to find resources? 
• Do you read the summaries? 
• Do you tag items with the NpTech as a form of promotion or outreach? 

Predictions, Proclaimations, Trend Watching, and Advice

Jon Stahl and his colleagues at ONE/Northwest have signed onto the Integration Proclamation, a first step towards encouraging funders, software developers, and technology providers to invest in making tools that play together better.  More commentary here and here.  Shouldn't we all be blogging about this too?

Steve Bridger of the nfp2.0 blog in the UK sticks his neck out with some predictions on trends that will drive charities in 2007!

Nonprofittech blog has some predictions about two emerging social networking platforms specifically designed for nonprofit causes.  Allison Fine offers some constructive advice for platform designers.

Fight Hunger announces the winner of its viral video contest and shares some advice about user-generated content.

Michelle Murrain suggests some Open Source Database solutions.

CraigsList Foundation is offering free online access to materials from its highly successful Nonprofit BootCamp.

Reed Stockman at the AFP Blog points to the NTEN Blog's 10 Easy Steps to Improve Email Delivery.  Keep an eye out for more of terrific roundups of best practices harvested from the wisdom of participants of NTEN's many affinity groups.  (I'm on the NpTech Consultant's list and there were some fabulous advice posts that I suspect will be summarized soon.)

In her recent post on the NTEN Blog, Holly Ross disagrees that being "The Accidental Techie" is a lonely and thankles job as described in a recent CIO Insight article.  That term is one that many of us in the nonproift technology sector know all too well.  (There a book published by CompassPoint with the same title and is must reading in our field.)

If want of your New Year's resolutions was to get organized, the Social Signal blog offers a review a "Remember the Milk," a free web-based to-do list service.  I wonder if they used it to organize tasks for recent open house in Second Life (some photos here)?  Check out their white paper on Second Life:  What it is and why it matters

An interesting fundraising approach to micro-fundraising. I think it would be more effective with photographs of some of the victims or their stories.  These could benefit from some the successful implementations of micro-sponsorship such as ZeFrank.

Katya Andresen writes about effectiveness of the personal fundraising approach

A few new (to me) blogs and Web sites

Blackbaud has launched a corporate blog called BlogBaud.  The nonprofittechblog wonders whether this blog will host naked conversations about the software?  The first post of the year offers Ten Social Web New Year's Resolutions for Nonprofits.

Judi Sohn writes the "A View from Home" blog - a must read nptech blog.

Participate Online Blog is a consortium research effort in the UK developing tools for the public to author, share and discuss content.

Photo by Powerbooktrance from flickr with creative commons "by" license

It's been a very quiet week in the NpTech Tag Stream, giving us a little quiet time for reflection on year-end posts as well as scan for the "best of" resources, predictions, and resolutions for 2007. 

If you thinking of getting your crystal ball out and making few predictions for the nonprofit tech field, beware, Jason is keeping score.  Hint: If you want score higher, ditch any fear of failure and don't hedge your bets!