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Conference

Conference Schedule

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American Public Gardens Association Conference
Philadelphia, PA – June 21-25
Deb Boyer presenting “Augmented Reality as New Technology for Museum Education.”

2011 Esri International User Conference
San Diego, CA – July 11-15
Robert Cheetham presenting OpenDataPhilly at the Sunday news workshop and HunchLab‘s Risk Forecasting; Tamara presenting OMB Watch Equity Mapping; and Dana Bauer presenting PhillyStormwater.org

Scalathon – International Scala Hackathon
Philadelphia, PA – July 16-17
Erik Osheim and Josh Marcus showing off their Scala statistical hacking skills.

Association of Public Safety Communications Officials Conference
Philadelphia, PA – August 7-10
Jeremy Heffner attending.

FOSS4G – Free and Open Source Software For Geospatial
Denver, CO – September 12-16
Jeff Adams, Justin Walgran, Matt McFarland, and David Zwarg attending.

International Association of Crime Analysts Training Conference
Hyannis, MA – September 19-23
Jeremy Heffner presenting HunchLab’s Risk Forecasting.

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Conference Schedule

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Cop Tech Forum
Austin, TX – April 25-27
Robert Cheetham and Jeremy Heffner presenting HunchLab Risk Forecasting.

Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference
Philadelphia, PA – April 27-28
Jeff Adams, Matt McFarland, Justin Walgran, Josh Marcus and Erik Osheim attending.

PA GIS Conference 2011Harrisburg, PA – May 24-25
Robert Cheetham presenting Redistricting and High Performance Geoprocessing, and  Jeremy Heffner presenting HunchLab Risk Forecasting.

Personal Democracy Forum
New York, NY – June 6-7
Abby Fretz and Robert Cheetham attending.

American Public Gardens Association Conference
Philadelphia, PA – June 21-25
Deb Boyer presenting “Augmented Reality as New Technology for Museum Education.”

2011 Esri International User Conference
San Diego, CA – July 11-15
Robert Cheetham presenting PhillyStormwater.org, HunchLab Risk Forecasting, OMB Watch Equity Mapping and Open Data.

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Conference Schedule

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2011 North Carolina GIS Conference
Raleigh, NC – February 17-18
Robert Cheetham presenting on our research work with GPUs, distributed and cloud geoprocessing.

Esri Partner Conference and Developer Summit Palm Springs, CA – March 5-8
Robert Cheetham presenting at the Partner Conference plenary and about local government apps at the Developer Summit.

Cyberlearning Tools for STEM Education Conference Berkeley, CA – March 8-9
Tamara Manik-Perlman co-presenting with Susan Gill of the Stroud Water Research Center on the “Model My Watershed: Using Online, Placed-Based Education to Promote STEM Learning”

OSGeo Code Sprint 2011 Montreal, QC – March 15-18
David Zwarg and Jeff Adams will be working on PostGIS and other projects.

SXSW Interactive
Austin, TX – March 11-15
Deb Boyer part of a panel on Innovating & Developing with Libraries, Archives & Museums

NTEN: 2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference
Washington, DC – March 17-19
Abby Fretz and Jeremy Heffner attending and exhibiting at the Science Fair

2011 VRA+ARLIS/NA
Minneapolis, MN – March 24-28
Deb Boyer presenting “From Filing Cabinet to iPhone: How Collaboration and Technology Can Introduce Photo Collections to New Audiences”

Museums and the Web 2011
Philadelphia, PA – April 6-9
Rachel Cheetham-Richard and Deb Boyer exhibiting Sajara. Deb presenting the PhillyHistory Augmented Reality Mobile Application at a Pecha Kucha session. Tour of Philadelphia landmarks using the app followed by a reception at Azavea, on April 5.

National Institute of Justice: The 11th Crime Mapping Research Conference
Miami, FL – April 13-15
Robert Cheetham presenting HunchLab’s latest risk forecasting tools

American Public Gardens Association Conference
Philadelphia, PA – June 21-25
Deb Boyer presenting on “Augmented Reality as New Technology for Museum Education”

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Conference Schedule

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Philadelphia Leadership Exchange
San Francisco, CA – September 12 – 15
Robert Cheetham attending

International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) 117th Annual Conference
Orlando, FL – October 23 – 27
Jeremy Heffner and David Middlecamp presenting: HunchLab

38th Annual Museum Computer Network Conference
Austin, TX – October 27 – 30
Deb Boyer presenting:  “Museums Without Walls”, Sajara

2010 AWRA Annual Water Resources Conference
Philadelphia, PA -  November 1 – 4
Sean McGinnis presenting: Philadelphia Water Department Project, “Equitable Stormwater Billing and Urban Stormwater Management”

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Conference Schedule

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Law Enforcement Information Management (LEIM) Conference
Atlanta, GA – May 24-27
Sean McGinnis exhibiting HunchLab at the ESRI Booth

Personal Democracy Forum
New York, NY – June 3-4
Robert Cheetham and Abby Fretz attending

ESRI Homeland Security GIS Summit
San Diego, CA – July 10-13
Robert Cheetham presenting HunchLab and the Firearms Analysis System

ESRI User Conference
San Diego, CA – July 12-16
Robert Cheetham and Tamara Manik-Perlman presenting: Walkshed, HunchLab, and a Sea Level Rise application


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Conference Schedule

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2010 ESRI Worldwide Business Partner Conference and Developer Summit
Palm Springs, CA – March 21 – 23
Sean McGinnis and Robert Cheetham attending

NJAEO – New Jersey Association of Election Officials
Atlantic City, NJ – March 22 – 24
Dana Bauer exhibiting Redistricting the Nation, online Redistricting Tools and Cicero

AWRA: American Water Resources Association Conference
Orlando, FL – March 29 – 31
Mary Johnson exhibiting Sajara for Water, Sewer and Stormwater Infrastructure Management

NTEN Non Profit Technology Conference 2010
Atlanta, GA – April 8 – 10
Jeremy Heffner and Robert Cheetham attending and exhibiting at the Science Fair Expo
Robert presenting on Advanced GIS for Non-Profits

Museums and the Web 2010
Denver, CO – April 13 – 17
Deb Boyer and Carissa Brittain exhibiting Sajara

Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting
Washington, DC – April 14 – 18
Dana Bauer presenting: “A Geographically-Weighted Regression Analysis of Green Space and Socioeconomic Character in the Delaware Valley”
Robert Cheetham presenting “HunchLab:  Spatial Data Mining for Intelligence-driven Policing”

Int’l Assoc. Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts Conf. (IALEIA)
Orlando, FL – May 3 – 7
Sean McGinnis exhibiting HunchLab at the ESRI Booth

Pennsylvania GIS Conference 2010
Johnstown, PA – May 11 – 12
Dana Bauer presenting on Walkshed
Tamara Manik-Perlman presenting:  “CommonSpace: A Shared Transit Space Collaboration Platform” and “Using Geospatial Technologies to Site Sustainable Business”

Law Enforcement Information Management (LEIM) Conf.
Atlanta, GA – May 24-27
Sean McGinnis exhibiting HunchLab at the ESRI Booth

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Conference Schedule

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Drexel University,  Department of Culture & Communication
Special Topics in Sociology: “Mobilities: Cities on the Move”,  Dr. Mimi Sheller
Drexel University, PSA 114 – February 3, 5-7pm
Robert Cheetham invited as guest speaker to talk about our projects related to transportation and mobile apps

ESRI Federal User Conference 2010
Washington, DC – February 17 – 19
We’ve submitted some abstracts, but aren’t sure what we’re presenting.  It’ll be good, though

Space-Time Modeling and Analysis Conference
Redlands, CA – February 22 – 23
Robert Cheetham submitted a presentation on HunchLab

CSIN: Canadian Sustainability Indicators Network
Toronto, ON – March 2 – 5
Robert Cheetham presenting on siting businesses based on geographic sustainability factors

2010 ESRI Worldwide Business Partner Conference and Developer Summit
Palm Springs, CA – March 21 – 23
Sean McGinnis and Robert Cheetham attending

NJAEO – New Jersey Association of Election Officials
Atlantic City, NJ – March 22 – 24
Waiting for paperwork so we can attend

AWRA: American Water Resources Association Conference
Orlando, FL – March 29 – 31
Mary Johnson exhibiting Sajara for Water, Sewer and Stormwater Infrastructure Management

NTEN Non Profit Technology Conference 2010
Atlanta, GA – April 8 – 10
Jeremy Heffner and Robert Cheetham attending and exhibiting at the Science Fair Expo
Robert presenting on Advanced GIS for Non-Profits

Museums and the Web 2010
Denver, CO – April 13 – 17
Deb Boyer and Carissa Brittain exhibiting Sajara

Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting
Washington, DC – April 14 – 18
Dana Bauer presenting “A Geographically-Weighted Regression Analysis of Green Space and Socioeconomic Character in the Delaware Valley”
Robert Cheetham presenting HunchLab:  Spatial Data Mining for Intelligence-driven Policing

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Conference Report: 10th Crime Mapping Research Conference (CMRC)

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CrimeMappingConferenceLogoThe 10th Crime Mapping Research Conference was held August 19 – 22, 2009 in New Orleans.  The CMRC is organized every one to two years by the Mapping and Analysis for Public Safety (MAPS) office in the National Institute of Justice.  The CMRC brings together academic researchers, crime analysts and command staff to review the state of the art in geographic analysis and visualization of crime.  This was a lively group with a number of high quality talks and workshops, and a strong series of research-oriented presentations.  While sponsored by the NIJ in the U.S. Dept. of Justice, attendees included folks from Japan, Turkey, Canada, and the UK.

While there were several interesting presentations, I would like to highlight four that I particularly enjoyed:

I attended two presentations by Dr. Elizabeth Groff, a Professor of Criminal Justice at Temple University.  In her keynote address, she suggested that while our ability to visualize crime patterns has steadily improved, there is a difference between information and “actionable” information, and, as a community, we need to be creating more tools that are aimed at generating actionable intelligence.  She set out several examples of what this might look like in different operational contexts.  I was very proud that one of her examples was Azavea’s prototype for HunchLab, the Crime Spike Detector currently in use at the Philadelphia Police Department.  Dr. Groff also did a fascinating presentation introducing the use of Agent-based Modeling and how this simulation technique can be applied to modeling geographic patterns of criminal behavior.

Hunchlab_points_heatmap

Dr. Wilpen Gorr, from Carnegie Mellon University, presented a paper on Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) for Hot Spot Analysis.  ROC was a technique originally developed for analyzing radar signals and has since been used in medical imaging, but crime analysis is a novel application.  He has been working with the technique to calibrate kernel density smoothing as well as to use leading indicators to create predictive analytics for particular classes of crime.

Jerry Ratcliffe, a colleague of Liz Goff at Temple University, also did multiple presentations.  The one I attended was on a pattern his team has been researching, called the “near repeat” effect.  He has demonstrated that for some crimes, like burglary, there is a “contagion” effect that raises the likelihood of a repeat crime occurring near the original crime within a short period of time after the event.  His work does not end with a research paper – he has built some helpful software tools to help calculate the extent of the effect.

In summary, this was a terrific event, and I have to commend the Director of MAPS, Ron Wilson, and his colleagues for creating an excellent forum for exchanging ideas.

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Conference Schedule

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URISA Annual Conference, 2009
Anaheim, CA – September 29 – October 2
Megan Heckert presenting on Muralfarm, LandStat

Community Indicators Consortium 2009 International Conference
Bellevue, WA – October 1 – 2
Robert Cheetham attending and exhibiting Kaleidocade Indicators Framework (KIF)

IACP 2009 Annual Conference
Denver, CO – October 3 – 7
Robert Cheetham and Sean McGinnis exhibiting HunchLab at the ESRI Pavilion

International Economic Development Council 2009 Annual Conference
Reno, NV – October 4 – 7
Rachel Cheetham-Richard and Tamara Manik-Perlman exhibiting DecisionTree at the ESRI Pavilion

Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit
Philadelphia, PA – October 5
Aaron Ogle presenting Walkshed in a pecha kucha session.

ESRI Mid-Atlantic User Conference
Philadelphia, PA – December 9
We’ve submitted some abstracts, but aren’t sure what we’re presenting.  It’ll be good, though.

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“Greening the Post-Industrial City” Conference Review

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"The conference... brought together stakeholders from the government, academic, nonprofit, and business worlds to discuss the future of Philadelphia's landscape."

Manufacturing decline and population loss have saddled many post-industrial American cities with massive amounts of vacant land. In Philadelphia, once a hub of industrial activity, tens of thousands of abandoned and underused parcels are scattered throughout the city. Maps of this vacant land reveal the extent and spatial patterning of the problem.

Azavea’s Megan Heckert and I participated in a re-imagining of Philadelphia’s vacant land during the Greening the Post-Industrial City conference, held at the Academy of Natural Sciences in late April. The conference, sponsored by Drexel University’s Engineering Cities Initiative, brought together stakeholders from the government, academic, nonprofit, and business worlds to discuss the future of Philadelphia’s landscape.

The topics of conversation ranged from reclaiming brownfields for industrial reuse, to transforming vacant residential lots into community gardens and farms, to rediscovering and redeveloping underused transit hubs throughout the city. A great many attendees were also extremely interested in one of our colleagues’ — Aaron Ogle — research project on mapping walkability in the city.

Left: Palmer Park. Right: Southwark Gardens. Beneath:
Vacant Lot. Photos by Dana Bauer

Nearly all the speakers and panelists emphasized the importance of finding sustainable solutions to the problem of vacant land — solutions that are eco-friendly, promote economic growth, and address the concerns and interests of community members. A crucial part of the process, said keynote speaker Mark Alan Hughes, the Mayor’s (former) Director of Sustainability, is developing mechanisms for accountability, including web-based tools that allow citizens to view and track public investment in redevelopment.

Throughout the conference, Megan and I listened to the ideas and goals of the stakeholders and explored ways GIS, mapping technologies, and data visualization could facilitate the re-imaging of idle lands and make Philadelphia a better, greener place.

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ESRI Business Partner Conference and Developer Summit Review

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"As a business partner that primarily does web-based software development, these events [ESRI Business Partner Conference and Developer Summit] are pretty important to us"


Every year, Azavea makes the trip out to Palm Springs, California to attend the ESRI Business Partner Conference and Developer Summit. As a business partner that primarily does web-based software development, we consider these events pretty important for us, so I wanted to outline what we regard as some of the highlights of the event.

These two conferences were primarily about the forthcoming release of ArcGIS 9.3.1. While this is an interim release before version 9.4 goes into beta testing this fall, it incorporates a number of features that we think are important:

ArcGIS Server
ArcGIS Server will receive several improvements, most of which are focused on performance and developer tools. They include:

  • Performance – Dramatically improved performance for dynamic mapping services. Cached map services will still be the faster way to provide maps on the web, but a new, optimized rendering engine as well as several tools for troubleshooting and resolving performance issues should have a substantial impact.
  • Licensing
    • Map editing features will now be included in ArcGIS Server Standard edition as well as in the Advanced edition.
    • Analytical extensions (Spatial Analyst, 3D Analyst and Network Analyst) will now be included in the Advanced edition without having to purchase separate licenses.
    • The Web ADF will no longer require a separate license if it is hosted on a separate server.
  • Developer API’s – New versions of the Javascript API and Flex API will be joined by a new Silverlight API, which is already in beta testing.
  • Templates – ESRI will released updated versions and a broader range of templates to help people get started more quickly with the various API’s

ArcGIS Online
The ArcGIS Online system will see several substantial extensions to its functionality including:

  • Upload your own data – ArcMap will be able to export ‘Layer Packages’ that combine data and cartography and can be uploaded to ArcGIS Online and used in conjunction with cached base maps hosted there. You will also have the option of setting limits on who can find and use the data you store on ArcGIS Online.
  • Low cost Web Map API – Will provide a set of base maps and basic geoprocessing capabilities for organizations that do not need all of the functionality in ArcGIS Server.
  • Personalization – Save favorite data sets, create your own mashups, upload layer packages, share data, and perform other activities from your account.
  • More data and services – ESRI has negotiated some new agreements to provide data sets from Microsoft Virtual Earth, DeLorme, and other providers. It will also be rolling out commercial versions of its geocoding and routing services.

While not a "major" release, the focus on performance and flexibility will make this a compelling upgrade for many organizations. If you have any questions about how you might be able to leverage these new capabilities, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

ESRI will be holding a series of half-day seminars on Creating Effective Web Maps through June 9. These events are a great way to learn more about the new capabilities in the ArcGIS Server 9.3.1 release.

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Conference Review – O’Reilly’s Open Source Conference

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"David's duty at the Open Source conference was to learn about the state-of-the-art in Open Source software, and bring back tasty nuggets of Open Knowledge."

OSCON 2008

In late July, Azavea sent David Zwarg to O’Reilly’s Open Source Conference in Portland, Oregon. While ‘Open Source’ has long been a buzzword in the information technology community, there is still some confusion about what it really means. For the loyal readers out there, you may remember Robert’s article in January of last year, describing what the heck ‘Open Source’ is, and how we’ve incorporated it into our workflow. For the rest of the readers, Open Source software is software that you can download, and build yourself, for free. Some have likened it to purchasing a car without the hood welded shut. This applies to the whole menagerie of software, from calculators to visualization toolkits.

David’s mission at the Open Source conference was to learn about the state-of-the-art in Open Source software, and bring back tasty nuggets of Open Knowledge. In particular, David attended a presentation by John Resig, the author of jQuery, and picked up a lot of great tips on creating robust JavaScript libraries, as well as a handful of other tricks that help along the way. He also picked up information on A/B testing as a way to hone website traffic conversions in a large-scale production site.

Some unexpected talks also included an Arduino workshop, and an Erlang workshop. In the former, participants turned their fancy laptops into etch-a-sketches, with the aid of microcontrollers and sensors. In the latter, a seasoned Erlang developer introduced the language, and discussed how it was used in massively parallel and robust applications.

All in all, it was an exciting conference, chock full of presentations and workshops relating to the myriad Open Source projects in software and hardware. The most exciting part of the conference was simply being in a community that was (and continues to be) so passionate and invested in making Open Source software world-class and accessible to everyone.

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ESRI President’s Award 2008 Awarded to City of Philadelphia’s MOIS GIS Applications

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"The President's Award ... is a special recognition to an organization that is "a model for others to follow in implementing GIS successfully as well as making a positive impact on the environment and society."

Jim Querry of Division of Technology accepts award from President Jack Dangermond

At the ESRI User Conference earlier this month, the City of Philadelphia was presented with the President’s Award by Jack Dangermond, President of ESRI. The President’s Award is given to one organization each year and is a special recognition by Mr. Dangermond to an organization that is “a model for others to follow in implementing GIS successfully as well as making a positive impact on the environment and society.” Previous winners have included the U.S. Department of the Interior, the City of New York, the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development, and the Hong Kong Information Center. Though the award is seldom given to the same recipient twice, this is the second time the City of Philadelphia has received the award (the last time was in 2000).

The award was accepted by Jim Querry, the Director of Enterprise GIS for the City. The award was presented in the Plenary Session of the annual ESRI User Conference in San Diego before a crowd of more than 12,000. Several efforts were cited including: the public crime mapping web site, PhillyHistory, the work order management system at the Streets Department, a new mobile GIS system at the Airport, the Unified Land Record System, CityMaps and ParcelExplorer. We’re happy and proud that some of Azavea’s work was part of this recognition for the innovative GIS work being done by the City of Philadelphia.


To read more about the award ceremony visit the ESRI User Conference blog here.

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Conference Highlights

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Early in the morning on August 4th, Robert and Megan happily joined the throngs of people descending on the San Diego Conference Center for the 2008 ESRI International User Conference. The annual event, with over 14,000 attendees, is chock full of presentations, technical workshops, and good times. We were particularly pleased to cheer for the City of Philadelphia, recipient of the 2008 President’s Award in recognition of its groundbreaking enterprise GIS applications.

Over the course of the week-long conference, we presented five of our clients’ projects including Asheville, NC’s Priority Places, the LandStat and Property Fraud applications for the Philadelphia Department of Records, an election incident mapping system designed for the Committee of Seventy, and lead a discussion of automated map development for analysis of campaign contribution origins, which touched on research by both Common Cause New York and MapLight.org.

As always, we enjoyed the opportunity to see the latest and greatest that ESRI and GIS users around the world have to offer, and look forward to applying what we’ve learned to future projects.

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Azavea at ESRI Business Partner Conference: Some Great Highlights of Our Work

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Among some of the Azavea projects highlighted at the ESRI Business Partner Conference: Cicero, Committee of Seventy’s Election Day Incident Mapping, ParcelExplorer, and DecisionMaps.

What better way to spend St. Patrick’s Day than sipping a cool and delicious martini on the beach in sunny California? Well … we decided to spend our time in a more productive way and attended the ESRI Business Partner Conference. A much more intimate conference than the International User Conference, the Business Partner Conference is a terrific setting for networking, seeing colleagues and old friends, checking what other companies are doing in the field and what innovative solutions are being developed, hearing about ESRI’s software developments and company’s direction, learning how, as ESRI Business Partners, we can leverage ESRI’s marketing and Business Partnership program’s benefits, and getting exclusive insider information, sales strategies, and trends about specific industries.

In the process, we were really proud to see some of our current work being highlighted on large video screens during the conference plenary and on the map wall: Cicero, our address-based legislative district boundary and elected official lookup, which is at the heart of some pretty interesting election-based projects right now; and ParcelExplorer, the web-based parcel data search and mapping system we built for the Philadelphia Department of Records. During the plenary, we were also happily surprised and pleased when the ESRI team highlighted the Philadelphia Mayor’s Office of Information Services (MOIS) and Azavea as an example of successful partnership between a Local Government agency and an ESRI Business Partner. This is not the first time ESRI recognized the excellent GIS work that Philadelphia has been doing. In 2006, MOIS had won ESRI’s Special Achievement in GIS for the DecisionMaps application we helped them build.

All in all, even if we didn’t end up on the beach sipping martinis, we had a really productive trip and are certainly looking forward to the ESRI User Conference in August.

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ESRI MUG 2007 Conference Held on the Avenue of the Arts

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The ESRI Mid-Atlantic User Group held its 2007 conference in late November at the Union League of Philadelphia. We were pleased to present four Azavea projects – PhillyHistory.org, ParcelExplorer, a Property Conveyance Fraud application for the Philadelphia Department of Records, and Temple University’s Metropolitan Philadelphia Indicators Project, that will (in the New Year) leverage our Kaleidocade Indicators Framework, enabling users to map and analyze aggregated community data.

The ESRI Mid-Atlantic User group is committed to assisting members within our region (PA, DE, NJ, MD, DC, VA, WV) to identify and educate users regarding GIS.  It’s run entirely by volunteers seeking to build a local community of ESRI users who support each other and share our experiences.  This mission is accomplished through local meetings and the annual conference, which draws participants from throughout the region. This year featured none other than Jack Dangermond himself as keynote speaker.

The Union League was a beautiful venue for a conference, with by far the most grand presentation rooms (It’s not often that we get to make a presentation while standing in front of a statue of Abraham Lincoln), and an exhibit hall complete with crystal chandelier. We enjoyed the opportunity to re-connect with old friends and make new ones in the regional GIS community.

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Azavea attends the ESRI User Conference

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"It was...quite thrilling to get to see more of the breadth and range of projects now being carried out using geographic technologies."

More than 14,000 GIS enthusiasts descended on San Diego in mid-June for ESRI’s annual User Conference, and three Azavea staff members were among them. Robert, Rachel, and Megan attended the conference where they made presentations on Azavea projects, shared a booth promoting the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s (OJJDP) SMART application (profiled in our last edition), attended workshops and technical sessions, and met other GIS practitioners from all over the world.

During the 5-day conference (June 18th – 22nd), we had the opportunity to present six projects on behalf of our clients: PhillyHistory.org and ParcelExplorer for the Philadelphia Department of Records, ConnectServices for the Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children, the Metropolitan Philadelphia Indicators Project for Temple University, TRAMAH for the University of Pennsylvania’s Cartographic Modeling Lab, and the SMART application for OJJDP. Copies of several of these presentations are available for download in the Library section of our website. We were also excited to share booth space with OJJDP and Development Services Group (DSG) to promote the SMART project, offering live demonstrations of the application and answering questions about its use and capabilities. Azavea implemented SMART using our Kaleidocade Indicators Framework.

For new attendees (as two of us were), the ESRI User Conference can be a bit overwhelming. With so many participants, workshops and presentations it was tough to choose which sessions to attend, but it was thrilling to see the range of projects being carried out using GIS technology.

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2007 Nonprofit Technology Conference

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"The nonprofit community is vibrant, sophisticated and mighty inspiring..."

The Nonprofit community is vibrant, sophisticated and mighty inspiring…

We experienced this first-hand at the NTEN (Nonprofit Technology Network) Conference in Washington, D.C in April. When one of our colleagues told us about this conference, we did not quite know what to expect but decided we would give it try. What a treat this was!

We met people involved in environmental issues, political advocacy, arts advocacy, micro-philanthropy, social mapping, youth issues, health and human services solutions, gays and lesbians’ rights, women’s rights, micro loans in India, Kung Fu and Lion Dance (yes! Indeed), workforce philanthropy, neighborhood revitalization, citizens’ rights, digital storytelling initiatives … and the list goes on.

I think that people sometimes assume that nonprofits don’t use or might not understand how to implement advanced technology in their daily activities. However, we attended workshops on API’s, Open Source CMSs, Mashups, Video Blogging, Online Advocacy Strategies, Online Donation Tools, Email Deliverance Options, E-Newsletters, Viral Marketing, and heard how some innovative uses of Flickr, mobile technology, online social networks, and YouTube can bring communities and organizations’ constituencies together. We met numerous people who knew about GIS and understood the applications and significance of spatial analyses is to support their decision-making processes.

NTEN claims that their “goal is to enable [their] members to do their jobs better, and to help their organizations strategically use technology so that they, in turn, will make the world a better, just, and equitable place.” After attending their conference, there is no doubt in our minds that their members are subscribing to and embracing this statement.

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