On Tuesday I went to the Netsquared NetTuesday event. I’m not sure about the spaces and capitalization with these, but I’ll just roll with it.
Netsquared in their own words:
“Today, we recognize a turning point in nonprofit technology adoption. Through the immense possibilities of the Internet, nonprofits can turn hundreds of supporters into thousands, access new reserves of volunteerism, and give their constituencies tools to take charge of change.
This site is the online home of our effort to highlight projects around the world that succeed at the intersection of pervasive access, new tools, and new audiences.”
I hope to really dig in and learn how to better utilize tagging, RSS and other web 2.0ish things that I keep hearing about and can only semi-intelligently talk about. But for anyone out there who is interested in how these emerging technologies can help nonprofits expand their message and tap into widespread grassroots networks might want to give them a shot.
At NetTuesday (it happens on the second tuesday of each month) I met some interesting people who have had a lot of experiences at nonprofits, for-profit companies that do cool stuff and just cool people in general. They also had a huge platter of these mini-quiches that weren’t very good but just tractor-beamed me into eating them. Everyone there seemed to already know each other, so it seemed a lot easier to hang out with my trusty friend Food than to mingle. But I left Mr. Food to go hang out, and got a lot more out of the evening.
One of the things that struck me most was how the folks I talked to there admitted that they didn’t know any of the answers. They just seem to be trying like all the rest of us to make sense of it all. I think that the geek world makes a habit of using intimidating and confusing language that scares off normal folks who don’t inherently know what “CMS” stands for. Netsquared attempts to make complex concepts like Web 2.0 and RSS (simple my ass) understandable for the people who are actively working to change the world. We need more groups like them, and I highly encourage anyone to poke around their site.
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Non-Governmental Imagination 
i think we got the mini-quiches at costco, though i also ate too many of them. glad you enjoyed eff & meetup, & hope to see you at the next one. i’ll probably be camped out by the food too, so you’ll have company 🙂
Comment by gina January 17, 2006 @ 10:38 am