Flickr: Cambodia4Kidsorg: Can you idnetify the NTEN superstars?This is where I give props to announcements and activities about NTEN members. If you're an NTEN member and have nptech news, don't forget to tag your posts "NTEN member" or "nptech" -- and give me a heads-up!

The 1300th submission to the Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Awards is the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations (LANO). You can see their tagline and Nancy Schwartz's comments -- oh, and submit YOUR ORG's tag line -- here!

David Neff's Lights. Camera. Help! is set to kick off its first film festival next week, and they've announced the films and schedule. It's the first film festival dedicated to nonprofit and cause-driven films. Kudos to David and his team for putting this event together.

Laura Norvig (ETR Associates) guest posts on Beth Kanter's blog, writing about Friendfeed for nonprofit use. She was inspired in her thinking by fellow NTEN superstar members Maddie Grant and Lindy Dryer when she dropped in on the Office Hours session they've dubbed the "NTEN Water Cooler."

By the way, have you heard? We're re-thinking the Office Hours format and launching a different type of session to get our members together for sharing best practices, questions, and to talk about the nonprofit tech issues affecting us today: learn more about the NTEN RoundTable Sessions.

Charity Dynamics has been up to some good this year, working with other NTEN member organizations like FreeCause, the Humane Society, and the American Heart Association to leverage social technologies to raise money and awareness for good causes. See their latest press here.

Last but not least for this week, check out all the ways Judy Hallman and her organizing team are getting her local community activated: the Triangle 501 Tech Club, in conjunction with other local groups under the new umbrella title NCTech4Good, is on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Go ahead and connect with them!

We're so excited to announce the first Tech Club event for our friends in Australia, thanks to the hard work of Jeevan Joshi, in Sydney.

Because Jeevan wanted to make sure that folks not able to travel to Sydney could also be involved, he's conducting the event as an online webinar. (He also noted the cold weather in his webinar invitation, which reminded me it's winter down there!)

See more details of their first event. If you're an Aussie with the nptech spirit, please join us online on July 1st!

Folks who've participated in the NTEN community for a while probably know about NTEN 501 Tech Clubs, but chances are even some of our new members aren't too familiar with these affinity groups -- and I want to change that!

Basically, 501 Tech Clubs are a type of Affinity Group defined by geographical region. They provide a local network of nonprofit and tech professionals for the purpose of sharing information, resources, recommendations, and locally-relevent announcements for jobs and nptech events, among other things.

In addition to the online interaction, a key goal of the 501 tech clubs has always been to provide face-to-face networking opportunities. Since NTEN has such a small staff, we can't actually be in several cities at once to organize and convene events for our community (although we sometimes like to think we have super powers).

So, as with so much of the content and programs NTEN provides, our members step in to help out: all of our 501 Tech Clubs are organized by local volunteers.

Traditionally, tech clubs hold monthly "happy hours": informal meet-ups, usually the same day of each month -- like the last Thursday, for example -- where folks are encouraged to get away from their computer screens and get out and be social at a local coffee shop or pub. At these gatherings, you can make valuable professional connections and engage in discussions that may lead to new ideas or solutions for your nonprofit.

In the last couple of years, some tech clubs have also organized round-table topics or even workshops on specific nonprofit technology issues and strategies.

Why am I bringing all of this up right now, you might ask yourself? Well, this is an exciting week because there happen to be eight 501 Tech Club events scheduled in cities across the country!

> See the calendar of events

Check out this video message from the speaker at a recent Missoula 501 Tech Club session, Harold Shinsato, programmer for SAP. Harold talks about early adoption and creating a culture of change at your organization.

If you think this type of talk is exciting, don't forget to join your local NTEN 501 Tech Club (you can connect online with them or at their next meetup).

You may be familiar with the local groups in the Nonprofit Technology Network, called NTEN 501 Tech Clubs (as in, 501c3). These are informal groups for nonprofit technology professionals who want to share information and resources and connect at the local level.

Our newest 501 Tech Club, organized by Jeanette Russell, is in Missoula, Montana. Jeanette is successfully bringing together nonprofit staff and other cause-minded techies to learn about each other's activities and share tips and best practices for incorporating technology into their work. Nice job, Jeanette!

NTEN Member David Neff, from the American Cancer Society in Austin, Texas produced this video to document a recent Tweet Up Blood Drive he helped organize through his local 501 Tech Club and Social Media Club.

Flickr Photo: relentlesstoilYup, we're talking about the best way to communicate again. We figure the only way we'll master it is, well, by keeping the lines open.

Ryan Richards, Asturais Academy of Guatemala, and Karen Matheson, M+R Strategic Services, will be doing just that on July 31 at a Seattle Net Tuesday Event: Communicating at a Distance: Best practices communicating with members and supporters. They will offer real-world advice and research-based best practices for communicating with your membership effectively, maintaining and developing supporters, building relationships, and sharing your story.

Our 501 Tech Club in Austin, nicely organized by Dale Thompson from Austin Free-Net and David Neff from the American Cancer Society, sent in an "i-report" from their last meetup. Check out their speaker, Ben Finklea, giving a great presentation on analyzing and optimizing your Web site for your various audiences:

Earth Day spurred some conversation on NTEN Discuss about how to figure out carbon emissions for every watt a computer uses per hour. Dean Matsueda wrote that he had seen and used carbon-footprint calculators online to gauge household, car, and air travel C02 emissions but would like to drill down to more specifics, like computer use.

Walt Daniels gave this response:

Carbon footprint is a simple multiply if you have the watts/hr and number of hours. watts/hr is what is hard to come by for most computer setups unless you have a meter on it because the usage depends on too many things,like duty cycle and how you have the power savings features on your computer set.

Gavin Clabaugh lets us know that to do it right, you need to meter the machine. He uses a Kill-A-Watt (a simple one costs about $20).

And Dave Shaw, H4 Consulting, added: