Mark your calendars for TechSoup Global's Digital Storytelling Online Event! This free event will take place across three separate platforms: webinars, forums, and the virtual world of Second Life.

The webinar portion will take place over two days: Wednesday, September 30th and Thursday, October 1st. The Digital Storytelling Online Event discussions will occur in the TechSoup forums with expert hosts from the webinars. You’ll have the opportunity to ask questions and engage on a deeper level with the event hosts.

Register to receive email announcements about the event.

Here's how you can you participate:

You know that we're always trying something new here at NTEN, especially if it means that it will bring our members closer together. We recently launched a couple of roundtable discussions - phone calls with an online chat component - for IT Staff and communications/marketing folks. Today we met up with the marketing folks and had a great discussion about social media policies, facebook, communicating within your organization, and lots more.

Transcript of the chat portion is below. Feel free to join us in September for our next Communications Roundtable or IT Staff Roundtable!

We're undergoing some changes here at nten.org. Specifically, we're looking to make our site easier for you and all of our visitors to use. We've been very lucky to grow our site traffic by about 60 to 70% each of the last two years. Since we're a small organization without a lot of marketing dollars to spend -- or, ahem, any -- we need to make sure we're making the most of this traffic.

According to our web site stats, we're not. Our bounce rate is pretty darn high for folks who find our site through search: about 68%. New visitors also bounce at a high rate: about 67%. Our blog, which gives us the most traffic from search, has a bounce rate above 75%.

Friend of NTEN Avinash Kaushik says that organizations should aim for a bounce rate under 50%. We don't expect our new visitor bounce rate will get THAT low, but there's some work we can do to make sure people find MORE great content and stick around our site.

There are two pieces to that puzzle. Part of making our content more compelling has to do with design. But the first thing we need to focus on is the information architecture, or navigation, of our site. The fine folks at Beaconfire are helping us wade through this process. Lots of you helped us with Phase One: The Card Sort.

This week, we moved on to Phase Two: The Wireframe Test. It's a fascinating process that let's you see right away what exactly you're doing wrong. If you've never seen a wireframe test before, here's how we did it (really cheaply!):

Flickr Photo by Trainer62One of the reasons you're part of NTEN is because we help you stay connected to your nptech colleagues. We help connect you through Affinity Groups, 501 Tech Clubs, and the annual Nonprofit Technology Conference.

Last fall, we experimented with another program that gave you the chance to talk to your peers -- Office Hours -- and it's been running for nearly a year. A few groups have become quite popular, like Maddie and Lindy's Water Cooler Chat, but most have petered out.

Because we try to be nimble and evolve to serve you better, we've been reading comments from the NTEN Community Survey and thinking about things you've told us at other times. Then, it hit us: a RoundTable discussion might be the way to go -- a nonprofit technology twist on King Arthur's great idea to bring all his knights to an equal table.

We'll get NTEN members on the phone, take a few minutes at the beginning to set the agenda, and then let you have at this opportunity to share your latest success or look for advice on what you're currently struggling with. The phone calls will be coupled with an online chat, so even if you don't want to speak up, you can still chat 'I concur'. And if you want to hum a few bars of "Knights of the Round Table", well, that's okay, too.

We're going to divide the calls up into 2 tracks: IT and Communications. You can come to one or to all; just know the agenda will be roughly formed around those audiences.

The Schedule is:

First of all, let's just say Farra's full name: Farra Trompeter (trom-peter, like the guy in front of the pearly gates). I love that name. I've taken to using it as an exclamation in all kinds of situations. For instance: "Well, I'll be Farra Trompetered." Seriously. I love it.

Secondly, Farra lives up to the fun of her name. I had a great time chatting with her about her session at the 2009 NTC, "Your Website as an Experience of Your Brand". I had so much fun, I had to edit out half of the conversation. What's left is a great introduction to a whole new way of thinking about your website -- and how to make it more effective. She may be even smarter than she is fun! Take a listen:

Flickr Photo: craig1blackYes, we're asking you to take another survey.  We can't help it, there's just so much we want to know!  And, well, we'd do anything for Andy Goodman.

> Take the survey

Given the current economic climate, everyone’s looking for ways to cut costs and work smarter. And that means more organizations may turn to teleconferences, videoconferences and webinars instead of in-person meetings. Makes sense in theory, but will this really be a good thing?

You’ve probably endured enough badly-run “long distance meetings” to agree that these can be serious time-wasters. On the other hand, there are some organizations that are learning how to master these technologies. Our colleague Andy Goodman (author of Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes) wants to find and share those best practices (as well as the common mistakes we should all avoid), but first he needs your help.

His online survey takes only about 10 minutes to complete, and in return for your time, he’ll send you a complete report with all the results in April. So give him just a few minutes now, and hopefully he can save you from countless boring hours in the months to come!

> Take the survey

And then send over a colleague and help make this study even more comprehensive. Thanks for your help!

Rational as I wish I were, I know it's not really facts and figures -- or logic -- that does most of my decision-making. In every decision I make, there is some element of emotion at play. Despite what you think, you're the same. Why, then, do most of us feel compelled to list bullet points of facts on our web sites and in our emails?

If our stakeholders are looking for confirmation, not information, it seems to me we need to refocus on the fine art of storytelling.

Somewhere along the way, we became more obsessed with exactly how high Icarus was flying when he fell than with telling the story of Icarus. That's a concept Roger Burks has been putting into practice at Mercy Corps. During his travels, he worries less about how many people are being served than about telling their stories.

The result? Compelling messages that make the work of Mercy Corps seem more real than any list of figures. Roger shared a little of his philosophy, the basis of his session at the 2009 NTC, "Better Online Storytelling", upon his return from a trip to the Congo.

hayduke

I had a great chat with Ted Fickes and Rachel Weidinger on Twitter yesterday. Since it lasted all of 5 tweets of 140 characters each, it was short and to the point. I'll summarize:

It's not about you. It's about your network.

We live in a new world, a world where people aren't looking to authority figures to answer their questions -- they're looking to each other. The best thing you can do as a nonprofit is show off your network.

Chris Brogan had a nice, clear example of how to do this in his latest newsletter. (Do you get his newsletter? You should.) He says: