We very recently took a look at what is and is not getting read on the NetSquared blogs and figured that the information we came upon will be as useful to your content development strategy as it will be to ours.

Here are a few things that jumped right out at us (the bold is straight from the report, followed immediately by my commentary):

A remote funding developer. They work from home, they take up less support costs and they don’t involve supervisory time - what’s not to love? I worked as a remote funding researcher recently, and while I’m not willing to flat out say it doesn’t work (comments welcome from people doing just fine at this job) I am willing to tell you what to watch out for.

Join us at NewsTools2008, April 30-May 3, at Yahoo! Sunnyvale, a three-day conceptual mashup where journalists will work with technologists to create new tools for journalism that matters. The U.S. news media is changing fast. Strip away the legacy platforms, and what remains of journalism that is needed to support participatory democracy and community? At NewsTools2008, we'll ground you on the way news has been manufacturered until now, we'll overview how technology is disrupting the old ways; then we'll ask you to work for up to two days with journalists to build new systems that engage with all the best tools avaiable. The result we seek: The launch of at least a half-dozen new machine-based systems that move journalism outside of the traditional boxes and into our participatory, crowdsource culture.

See: http://www.mediagiraffe.org/wiki/index.php/Jtm-sv
or: http://www.newstools2008.org

Registration discounts and stipends availble for day-trippers . . . email for details: Bill Densmore, the media giraffe project at umass amherst
413-458-8001 / densmore@mediagiraffe.org

The COMMUNITYMATTERS07 conference is coming to Burlington, VT, for three days of collaboration, engagement and innovation with fellow citizens, local elected officials, practitioners and professionals from across the country. Building on the success of PLACEMATTERS06, COMMUNITYMATTERS07 will pack a wide range of stimulating events and activities into three days, while still allowing participants time to connect with colleagues and explore Burlington’s beautiful city streets and surrounding landscapes. Sixteen panels fall into three tracks: Community Heart & Soul, 21st Century Issues, and Decision-Making Tools. Workshops will allow attendees to gain in-depth experience with planning tools and other topics.

Hello! Our last economic sustainability session will be more conversational thanks to our panelist, we will be mixing it up for a bit. This is Evonne Heyning and I will do my best to liveblog this session as it flows.

Panelists:

Anita Figer, Nonprofit Finance Fund, hired by foundations to look at economic sustainaiblity of nonprofits

Susan Walters, California Emerging Technology Fund, broadband technologies in low income communities Panel leader: Ask tough questions! Don't be afraid to share what you think.

TAKING IT GLOBAL

I am looking forward to meeting so many of you next week at N2Y2! Britt Bravo has me wrangled to blog during the event and we'll be taking tons of photos and quotes from the innovation sessions. Thanks for keeping the comments flowing so that we're all on the same page sharing tools and information.

For those of you looking for last minute reservations, the Highland Inn in San Jose still has rooms in the $100 range. Let me know if you're interested in carpooling....I need a ride for two passengers from the conference to the B&B on Tuesday evening and a ride back to the event on Wednesday morning.

This is my first N2 blog post...

We recently had the chance to do an email interview Ian Kennedy a project manager in Yahoo!'s social media group. Ian answered a series of questions about tagging, social media, and data portability. Ian also brainstormed some of the ways Yahoo!'s tools can be used by nonprofits.

NetSquared: Tagging seems to be the must-have feature du jour. Can you give us a quick - two or three sentence description of tagging?

Ian Kennedy: Tagging is a new way of organizing information based on labels that are applied ad hoc by an individual. These labels can cut across established directories or hierarchies. I may tag a photo of my dog "Lucy" and that tag will be familiar to my family and friends. You may tag that same photo "dog." Tagging allows for both the personalized and generalized views to co-exist side by side and be recalled in a way that is familiar and personal to you.

REPOSTED

From: David Geilhufe
Sent: Monday, October 17, 2005 8:05 AM
To: ctcmembers
Subject: Re: [ctcnet] Could Google Earth revolutionize CTC work?

Another factor for CTC's in leveraging GIS for their work is the
release of CiviCRM. CiviCRM is open source, nonprofit-centric
constituent relationship management (CRM) software.  Think of it as
an open source version of Kintera/Convio.

CiviCRM has a nice little google maps integration that could allow a
CTC to easily collect and store their own data and "automagically"