Yesterday, NTEN Community Members joined us for the beginning of the planning for 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference. We had some good laughs remembering the fun we had at the 09NTC. We also talked over a few things that we can do better:
- Program Book: We hear you - less paper! Even though it's recycled paper and soy ink, it's still a lot and heavy to tote around. You said we can cut speaker and attendee info as long as we have it online. We could also only hand them out to folks who want them and chain copies to tables (and to the penguins).
- Community Site: Some folks didn't find NTConnect very intuitive and experienced a hard time with the site. We hoped to give you a way to connect prior to the conference to form groups and create social events. You said that you'd prefer to use systems that are already in place without all the bells and whistles. We talked about Facebook groups, LinkedIn, and the NTEN Affinity Groups. Oh, and that we should do some socal planning for you to connect with new folks.
- Agenda: One of the other motivators for the conference community was so that you could create a personalized agenda. You suggested that we can do an 'Add to iCal or gCal' functionality to our current agenda layout and that would be useful. An aganda spreadsheet and/or pdf (like the one that CivicActions created) would be useful.
- Conference Totebags: You don't like all the paper stuff that we put into the totebags. Perhaps, carbon offsets or plant a tree in the sponsor's name. We'll see what the sponsors say :).
- Unconference: You want to learn more from your colleagues, have a chance to play with the latest ideas that we haven't included in the conference agenda, and have more chances than the pre-planned Affinity Groups to connect. We're looking a an unconference track or on the first day of the conference.
- Social Media: You cleary loved Beyonce! And the community excitement that it generated pre-conference. You would be supportive of another scholarship fundraising campaign. We just need to a special brainstorm on what the community award should be. Beyonce will be tough to top. You think we did a pretty good job of integrating social media but would like to start brainstorming ways that we can streamline the noise in a more cohesive way.
- Science Fair: One day, 2 days, 3 days. The debate goes on. There are some compelling arguements for spanning it over the course of the conference but we really like integrating the exhbiitors in the rest of the show and not leaving them in the hall to listen to crickets. And money and space. It's more costly to have an exhibit hall for the whole show and takes up precious hotel space.
- More power: You like your trees but you don't care about the energy to power your gadgets! More power strips and a great idea to have electronic check station to have your gadgets charged during lunch or sessions will help to keep you charged.