A moment of truth...

I am live blogging from the MCN Tech/communciations conference today in Minneapolis. And so, I think my blog's title needs a few caveats.

First, it's not really my organization, Fresh Energy. I'm really the only one contributing. So, it's just Erin.

Secondly, I'm obviously not at the NTEN conference, which concluded last week in NOLA.

So, perhaps the title of the blog should really be "Fresh Energy Erin at Various Nonprofit Technology Conferences." You've been warned.

Currently listening to Beth Kanter give the morning plenary: Nonprofits in an Age of Social Media.

Side note: It is really, really cold in this conference center.

You know, I think part of this presentation was remixed from one I saw at NTEN in NOLA...

Liveblogging notes:
Don't just look at tools without knowing how you're going to use it.

Flickr: photosharing site. Flickr has a Flickr pro account for nonprofits. Creating stream of photos. Can tag content, and creative commons licensing (to allow others to reuse, with some rights reserved.) Can send photos to groups organized around a particular theme... like pets in cones. In nonprofit context,

* Can use for visual petitions.
* Build a community around an event, e.g. Relay for Life, documenting the event.
* Using Flickr group, can easily republish photos (if you've asked folks to publish photos with permissions to republish)
* 50 Million Missing (Women in India disappearing): photos of missing women.
* Contest: The Nature Conservancy -- nature photos. Be clear about how you're going to use photos.
* Community organizing: photo of someone making a statement.

Twitter
Microblogging--or blogging by text message (under 140 characters)
Watch the geeks twittering at the airport!
Twitterpacks wiki to ID other nptech folks.