I love my home state, and I love NTEN's annual Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC). This year, the conference will be in San Francisco, one of my favorite cities - however, I'm facing budgetary constraints, and won't be able to attend.*
However, I do want to urge encourage those who can to go! If you're interested in information and communication technologies for the nonprofit sector, this is the place to be. If you have the time, the money, and the opportunity - just go!
The most important thing you can do at the Nonprofit Technology Conference is to engage in conversation. The best ones will be unscheduled and introduce you to ideas, images, professional relationships, products, and services that you didn't even have on your wish list. You might also enjoy the formal sessions and plenary talks.
I always think the best event of the entire conference is the science fair and opening reception, when almost all the attendees are in the same room, talking and showing each other their latest projects. It's heaven for me; I usually spend it introducing people to each other and exhorting them to brainstorm together. Come to think of it, that's how I usually spend the entire three days. But the science fair is the setting most conducive to connecting folks who ought to be collaborating with each other.
And this year, I'll have to miss the whole thing! Dang!
If you go - and you really should go if you can - please be sure to post plenty of 09NTC blog articles, tweets, photos, and videos, for the sake of those of us who are languishing at home.
* It's been a very strange six months or so. I have wonderful clients and a full docket of fascinating projects, but my beloved clients have not all been able to pay me on time. This, combined with the possibility of some considerable medical expenses, means that I can't afford to travel right now.
A special note to those of you who have expressed concern about my health: thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers! I've been through five rounds of medical tests, and it's still not clear whether this is a recurrence of the thyroid cancer I had ten years ago. Whatever it is, it's very small, and not growing. I'm on track to have a second opinion, and perhaps another round of tests, but the consensus seems to be that even the worst case scenario is not life-threatening.