Flickr: Craving Creativity

We're entering uncharted territory as a species, particularly in the United States. Americans consume 3.6 zettabytes of information every day. It's an unfathomably huge number (especially to those of us who remember playing Ultima IV on a 64 kilobyte computer). One billion trillion bytes worth of television and radio broadcasts, YouTube videos, e-mails, tweets, Facebook updates, and yes, even print. Every day.

I'm (pretty) sure you'd agree that your work is more important than the average episode of Jersey Shore or Desperate Housewives. But how can you collect the data you need to tell your organization's stories -- and then make them compelling enough to cut through the noise? That's a question we'll help you answer at our upcoming workshop, "Taming the Data Monster".

You can register for this online workshop right here.

Agenda (Pacific Time):

10:00 - 10:45 AM - Opening Plenary with Lucy Bernholz: 45 minutes
10:45 - 11:00 AM - Q&A & Backchannel: 15 minutes
11:00 - 11:10 AM - Break: 10 minutes
11:10 - 12:10 PM - Choice of Breakout Sessions: 60 minutes
12:10 - 12:30 PM - Final Q&A: 20 minutes

• Capturing Metrics to Measure Your Mission: Introduction to Data Analysis: How can you use software to help you gather the information you need to assess the health and progress of your organization? We'll talk through what metrics are possible to gather from commonly used types of software and discuss a framework to help you analyze what's likely to be useful to you. Presented by Laura Quinn, Idealware.
• Storytelling & Data: Data is so much more than a stack of numbers or a server filled with client outputs. It can justify the work that your nonprofit is doing, help explain why it is critical, and even offer exciting new ways to motivate others to help solve the problems your organization is working on. This information needs to be understandable and shareable. Data can be shaped into a story that supports your work and makes it more accessible to your supporters. Presented by Kurt Voelker, Forum One Communications.
• Creating Dashboards: An organization's dashboard is one of its most important internal communications tools, giving you a birds-eye view of your organizations overall progress. But an organization's dashboard is so much more than exporting a few PDFs and spreadsheets from your analytics and CRM programs. It's about organizing your data in a way to communicate where you have been, what you are doing, and most importantly what you need to do to move forward. We'll talk about determining what should be on your dashboard (the answer may surprise you), how to present the data for the dashboard in a clear and concise manner, and how to make less onerous the task of gathering data. Presented by: Marissa Goldsmith, Beaconfire Consulting.

You'll receive recordings of every breakout session, so don't worry about missing anything.

When: Thursday, July 29th, 10:00 am Pacific Time / 1:00 Eastern Time

Cost: $50 for NTEN Members, $100 for non-members

3.6 zettabyes! And that was before ESPN and Univision streamed 25 million hours of World Cup soccer.