Flickr Photo: not waltonSince I became Executive Director of NTEN last November, the number of things I've needed to stay on top of has exploded. On any given day, I need to be an expert in:

• Social Media tools and strategies
• DNS settings
• Nonprofit and Board Governance
• How innovative nonprofits are using technology
• The state of municipal wireless
• Email open rates
• Human resources laws
• Anything and everything NTEN members are up to
• And everything anyone is saying about NTEN

My old way of managing information was not cutting it. Although I use a lot of social media tools, I was very email-inbox centric. My inbox was the place I kept articles I wanted to read later, ideas I wanted to follow up on, and all of my to-do items.

The result? If you emailed me in the last three months, I probably didn't respond very quickly, if at all. That's no way to lead a membership organization.

I knew it wasn't working, but was afraid to try anything new. I know myself: if it isn't stupidly simple, and if it requires more than 3 steps, I'm not doing it. I simply WON'T make it part of my work routine. So I decided to take stock of the tools that I'm already using, and figure out how to use them better, rather than try to learn something new. Here's how I get my information every day:

• Blogs/RSS Feeds: I used an RSS reader called WizzRSS that embeds right in Firefox. I liked that I could keep it open in my browser, which encouraged spontaneous blog browsing (read: procrastination), and that it was so easy to add new feeds. Problem: No way to organize the feeds so my celebrity gossip was totally mixed in with my NPTech.
• Twitter: That's the pulse for me. I commented on Beth's Blog the other day about how I use it to hear what's really up with my peeps and find lots of fascinating news. There's no problem with Twitter, but I can say that because I'm addicted!
• Facebook and LinkedIn: Again, great places to see what folks are talking about and get breaking news. The bad news is that I have to remember to go to the sites, OR set them to email me updates -- so I will either forget to go, or clog my inbox up with MORE email.
• Google Alerts: For key issue areas, like muni wireless, as well as for general topics like nonprofit technology, I use Google alerts to catch news and ideas that aren't part of my RSS universe. These come to my email inbox though.
• Del.icio.us: I subscribe to search feeds in del.icio.us to see what folks are bookmarking about the world of nptech, nten, and social media.

Somewhere in the back of my brain, I began to have a sneaking suspicion that someone had, in fact, told me how to solve my problem. I could keep all the data source I love, but use them better. The answer, via the amazing MarshallK, was NetVibes.

I set up a NetVibes account that let's me see all those data sources in one place, and organize them any way I see fit. You can see a bit of that on my Public NetVibes page. So now I have one site where I can see all of the above resources. And I can organize all that info by topic. I have a page for general NPTech, one for online marketing, one for social media, etc. After one week, the results are:

• A little less email. I was able to tell a lot of services to stop emailing me updates (like Facebook and LinkedIn). I just watch NetVibes for updates and go to the sites when I see them.
• I FEEL less fragmented. Because I'm not scurrying from one application or browser tab to another every 15 seconds, I feel less harried, more focused. Is it true? I don't know. But I'm feeling good, and I'll take that.
• I see more/know more. Organizing my RSS feeds by topic, and being able to see the first few posts in each feed simultaneously has allowed me to scan many more feeds than I could before.

The ultimate test will be when I finally get my email inbox down to zero and kinda sorta keep it there. I'm at 23 messages today (nearly a record for me: I once got it down to 17).

How do you keep yourself organized? Got any tips for me?