Flickr:bichxaAlthough the Fall season brings to mind soup, cider, and hibernation for many, NTEN Members seems to be energized by the change in season. This week our community is helping with data analysis, social media, and getting otherd organized. Even the Occupy Wall Street movement has found a way to inspire our Members to help others!

A while back, with the generous support of the Knight Foundation, a group of Nonprofit CTOs gathered in Miami to discuss the day-to-day challenges of nonprofit technology, share their success stories, and brainstorm solutions. We'll be posting highlights from this meeting of the minds on the NTEN blog. In today's installment, we tackle the CTOs' top five staffing tips.

By Amy Sample Ward, Membership Director, NTEN

Every campaign, every organization, and really, even every individual engaging with others online has a set of tools and techniques they've learned from and rely on every day. Building community and maintaining engagement is often a full time job – even if it goes unpaid!

Epic Change is no different. The ToMamaWithLove campaign saw them try some new tools as well as some trusted favorites, even with a budget of $0 and a lot of volunteer time.

John Merritt, YMCA of San Diego County

In every successful recipe there are key ingredients. Too much of one ingredient or too little of another can have very interesting effects on the outcome of the dish. It's no different when it comes to technology.

Business is driven by technology; the days of seeing technology merely as a necessary evil have long passed. Networking technologies allow us to move and access information quickly, we analyze our stored data to make sound decisions, websites & eCommerce focus on bringing convenience to our customers, email systems allow us to communicate around the world in the blink of an eye, we track vehicles via satellite, cell phones keep us in touch -- the list goes on and on.

The recipe for technology contains 3 key ingredients: Alignment, Relationship, and Transparency. Each of these, in balance, can assist in making technology a useful, functional, and invisible tool within our organizations. The ART of technology is not about the PC on your desk or the server in the backroom. The ART of technology is about our interaction with systems, processes and one another as we work toward efficient business operations and fully meeting the mission.

When the Framers met in Philadelphia in 1787, they bravely conjured a new form of self-government. But they couldn’t have imagined a mass society with instantaneous, many-to-many communications or many of the other innovations of modernity. So, replacing that quill pen with a mouse, imagine that you have to power to redesign American democracy for the Internet Age. What would you do?

This is the challenge posed by Personal Democracy Forum for its new book project, Rebooting America: Democracy in the 21st Century. It is an anthology of essays from leading thinkers and activists -- check out the impressive list here -- that they will publish to coincide with this year's Personal Democracy Forum conference, June 23-24 in New York City. Folks from the NTEN community are featured in this list, including Alan Rosenblatt, Center for American Progress Action Fund, Craig Newmark, craigslist.org, Nancy Tate, League of Women Voters, Ellen Miller, Executive Director, Sunlight Foundation, and Robert Sherman, Surdna Foundation.

The best part is that they are inviting their readers to submit essays answering how to make America better, stronger, more inclusive, and participatory, and to vote on their favorite essays. Up to three winning essays will be included in the anthology.

WikiWebAnalyticsBy way of Avinash Kaushik's blog...

A new wiki, WikiWebAnalytics, has been set up for folks interested in web analytics. They are looking for a few good people to start write articles and help make it a good resource for those of us interested in the field of web analytics.

Check it out and make your contribution!

(And if you're into web analytics, Avinash's blog is a must read!)

Lots of us use surveys to collect data about our field and our clients. But if you're using paper, you're doing it the hard way! Join us for this webinar to learn how a very small investment in technology can revolutionize your survey collection:

> Survey Says: Data Collection in the Field with Wireless Handhelds

Does PDA = Public Displays of Affection? In this instance, yes! STOP AIDS Project has converted it's paper-based Behavioral Risk Assessment to WiFi Palm devices. Data can be instantly recorded and updated via WiFi, or uploaded later when in range of a WiFi connection. Entry that used to take weeks, and reporting that took months is now instantly accessible via web reports. The best part? It's all affordable. We'll demo the technology and walk through the associated tools and costs. When you leave this webinar, you'll be ready to run your own wireless community survey.

Presented by Jamey Frank of STOP AIDS Project

Join us on June 7 at 11:am Pacific:

> Register Now!