Non-Profit Tech Blog

I’m tremendously respectful of the work that NTEN does each and every year for getting non-profit techies together but in my first and only time last year, I don’t think I got enough time to meet other IT non-profit workers. I don’t mean to disparage the work that circuit riders and consultants do for the non-profit sector but they’re simply on the other side of the conference table from non-profit workers. I was hoping to learn from my fellow IT workers, the ones who are basically grinding it out with other non-profit staff and whose loyalties are more or less tied to the causes that their org supports. I know they exist but they don’t have the financial support necessary to travel across the country and do the conference thing. Too many small orgs, too many small budgets. Perhaps NTEN NTC is simply the wrong place for the smaller non-profit?

As for me, I was just too busy this year and not enough of the breakout sessions were exciting enough and too many of them tend to be started by vendors. I’ve learned a lot from vendors but there are days when you just have to put your cynic cap on when you’re listening to them at breakout sessions.

Case in point: “Outsourcing for Nonprofits: When is it Appropriate? Where do You Look?” is the title of a March 24, 2006 breakout session at the NTEN NTC. That sounds like a pretty important topic that could shed a lot of light on many non-profit IT practices. If that were me there, I’d probably blurt out the names of the consultants I use and to exchange war stories about them. I’d also love to hear what other outsourced services other IT directors use. However, if you take a look at all the speakers during the session, two of them are from Npower NY and one is from Theikos. They’re all consultants. Putting on my cynic cap, I’m thinking this is equivalent to having the fox not only guard the henhouse but to enclose it in a cyclone fence as well. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve had some good experiences with Npower NY but I don’t know if I’d go 3,000 miles away from New York City just to get pitched to. I get that every time I pick up the phone here.

Confessions

• NTEN NTC is a LOT of fun. Those NTEN folks do throw good parties.
• On the other hand, you learn a lot about which vendors have salespeople who get a little, shall we say scandalous when they get too much to drink…
• If you’re in an exploratory mood, I think it’s perfect for understanding many of the policy positions that the non-profit sector in general should adopt (no silly business method patents, US should maintain neutral stand on control of the Internet, more decentralized control of the airwaves including WiFi and Wimax, etc.) and for understanding much of the ways that you can align IT with business policy.
• Community Day was a bit of a mess for me as it seems the non-profit I visited didn’t quite have its act together when they got visited by roughly 25 non-profit nerds at one time.
• And if you want to be pitched to a lot by vendors — it’s certainly that…