Flickr photos by Beth Kanter, Picnetinc, and Jon Stahl



Now that the 2007 Nonprofit Technology Conference is over, I'm sorting out my impressions.

I had a wonderful time, seeing lots of colleagues and friends.  And I even attended a few sessions!

My two main challenges at NTC pertained to information management.

The first challenge was in comprehending the schedule. There were a lot of events of various kinds going on simultaneously, and although the program book contained plenty of information, I had to keep cross-checking several different sections, in my continual attempts to understand all the options that were available during a specific timeslot.  We needed one really well-formatted list that spelled out all the options for every hour of the day, along with information about where each event was located.  Fortunately, once I made a decision, I had many exciting choices, and was able to follow the NTEN signage.

The second challenge was in finding the people I wanted to talk to.  There were any number of folks in this category - some of whom I had never met in person.  It wasn't easy to locate them, even with the Twitter backchannel.  My one real Twitter success was in putting out an APB for David Geilhufe; he actually showed up in my corner of the plenary session room within ten minutes of my expressing a desire to find him.  In many other cases, I merely heard vague rumors that someone I longed to meet had been sighted.  Fortunately, everyone I chatted with turned out to be fascinating - regardless of whether they happened to be on my list of people I wanted to see.  However, the NTC is now attracting something like 1,200 attendees, and the problem is growing.   We need a set of clearly labelled lounges in the conference hotel that are reserved for attendees who want to meet, so that we can say (for example) "I'll be in the Blue Room at 3:00."

I have a few other grievances - about having to listen to plenary speakers during meals instead of being able to talk with others at the table, about "affinity group" sessions that featured a talking head with a PowerPoint presentation, about long lines at the buffet tables, and about the lack of orange juice at breakfast - but please don't get me wrong.  The conference team took on an overwhelming task and did a great job. 




I also want to mention that one of the things that makes my experience of a conference even better is a terrific roommate.  This year I split a room with Deborah Strauss of the I.T. Resource Center (now known as "Lumity"), and thoroughly enjoyed her company.  By the way, if you haven't seen her blog, be sure to check it out!