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.

This article announces the beta release of the NPTech Pipe - a focused and vetted content stream for nonprofit staff and technology providers to efficiently search, browse, and subscribe to technology-specific content relevant to the nonprofit sector.

Being prone to gratuitous roamings down memory lane, I find myself on this eve of the 2007 Nonprofit Technology Conference in DC - which is turning out to be perhaps the largest coming together of geeky do-gooders ever assembled - remembering my first NTC way back in 2004. While much has changed at NTC in these three years (reliable wifi, pre-conference social networking, better targeted tracks, much better parties), it still brings together the most impassioned and brilliant people in our field. It's inspiring and overwhelming all at the same time.

Jason Z over at Democracy in Action has a great post today about RSS and how it works. (If you're loking for more info, we just did a great webinar with Alex Samuels of Social Signal.) Jason says in his post:

It's come to the point where nonprofit staff who aren't using RSS aren't really doing all of their job.

Jason - I agree wholeheartedly.

But what I think goes unsaid in his post is this: organizations that aren't using RSS are operating on the old model. The old model works like this. I will call this the "Let them Eat Cake" model:

NTEN is presenting two webinars next week about tools and trends in Nonprofit communications.

First up, on Wednesday, February 7th at 11 am PT/ 2 pm ET

> Getting Started with Blogging Software

And on Thursday, February 8th at 11 am PT/ 2 pm ET:

> How RSS is Changing How We Send and Receive Electronic Communications

Read more about these webinars here. And check out all upcoming webinars here.