Thank you for the warm welcome that so many of you have extended to me in the last week. I am thrilled to see how vibrant this community is, how creative you are in your ideas and innovations, and how much technical wizardry you do every day - all to make the world better and more just. It is truly a pleasure and a privilege to be working with you all.

I have this space to talk about N-TEN, but to be frank, I much rather want to hear from YOU. After all, you ARE N-TEN. So, I hope you can join me and Holly on one of the whistle stops of the N-TEN Summer tour so we have a chance to hear from you. I have also enjoyed the many conversations via email, on blogs, and in the N-TEN affinity groups.

There are two things I saw this week that struck me as examples of what N-TEN is all about.

I have been involved with MobileActive, an affinity group and global network of NGOs, activists, and technologists using mobile phones for social change. We are compiling stories of innovative use of mobile phones from around the world and received a grant to begin looking at what these campaigns had in common. We put out a call for stories on the various lists, and the stories poured in. Two struck me as particularly poignant: We heard from a human rights activist and colleague in Zimbabwe who, for security reasons, needs to remain anonymous, and who, with the help of people in this network, has been able to use text messaging and radio to raise the profile of an independent radio station that broadcasts into the country from outside Zimbabwe. The underground democracy group used SMS text messaging to advertise the radio station and to provide a way through which listeners, many in deeply rural areas, could communicate back to the radio station. Thousands of Zimbabweans did.

Our colleague writes: "In Zimbabwe it is difficult to disseminate or distribute pro-democracy information materials in print format in both urban and rural environments. Currently all forms of broadcast media are controlled by the state - there is no licensed community radio. Any government-independent radio initiative specifically targeting Zimbabweans and broadcast into the country is deemed illegal by the authorities. The Zimbabwe Government's response to these radio stations has been to jam their broadcast frequencies and harass their stringers and trustees. The Zimbabwe Government controls all daily newspapers in the country, censoring any content or advertising it disapproves of. The low circulation figures and high cost of independent weekly papers limits their usefulness in communicating with the public at large. Thus it is important that information and media activists, in an effort to counter government propaganda, explore the use of new media such as text messaging to reach people and begin to build a democracy movement."

Chris Spence from the National Democracy Institute blogged about using mobile phones and sms/texting for election monitoring. He writes: "We assisted a Montegrin NGO called the Center for Democratic Transition (CDT) that successfully monitored their country's independence referendum using SMS as the primary observer reporting tool. We believe this is the first time an election monitoring group has employed text messaging to meet all election day reporting requirements."

And while mobile phones are personally interesting to me, I think these stories exemplify a larger point about what N-TEN is all about: To connect, to learn, and to advocate. N-TEN is connecting a peer community of people passionate and curious about the role of technology in their social change work with each other. Lessons and experiences are shared in this community, people support and help each other on lists, online, and at conferences and get-togethers. There is constant learning that happens here as a result so that wheels are not reinvented, skills are increased, and the good work in one place (or sometimes the failures) is used in another. Finally, N-TEN is increasingly becoming a platform where issues affecting the entire sector are explained and debated.

Just this week, Net Neutrality, certified email delivery, and communicating with Congress via web forms were explained, argued about, and hopefully clarified a bit in the various N-TEN fora. We are looking forward to expanding on these issues, as they pertain to the work of nonprofits here and NGOs internationally.

N-TEN is a community of practice of people, organizations, and businesses who are exploring the role of technology in making the world a better place. It is a journey, no doubt, and sometimes a circuitous one, but one where I have, over the course of the last ten years in this field, met more inspired and inspiring people and examples of what is possible than I can count. It makes me hopeful that we all take this a lot further and really move the field ahead in sophistication, collaboration, and skill. I am looking forward to working with you.

Katrin Verclas
Executive Director
N-TEN