Return to blog

The Ennui of the 2006 N-TEN Conference

10:00 PM Mar 27, 2006

As my prolonged Northwestern sojourn wraps up in the guise of overstaying houseguest on a placid cove across the Puget Sound from Seattle, I'm a little dismayed at my inability to file a riveting dispatch from the scene.

The fact is, though the conference was the largest on record and seamlessly organized by the NTEN crew, there was a feeling of "awaiting action" about it all. Breathtaking new developments have concussed cyberspace every couple of years for a decade, but this has, perhaps, been an off-year. The "Web 2.0" meme is still the freshest thing ... and that was around this time last year. A series of "Hot in 2006" panels grappled to find things worth mentioning that are hot in 2006. Maybe more Plone vs. Drupal.

It isn't only the tech side. Strategically, though there are as always a million interesting things going on, few of them stand out as heretofore undiscovered fauna. Peer-to-peer pages and (at least in the U.S.) mobile messaging are still a bit embryonic, short of that dramatic and accessible-to-everyone case study. Online-to-off action, like the house party model so dramatically deployed by Brave New Films' Wal-Mart hit piece, has been done before -- it figures prominently in the Howard Dean story. (The Brave New Films action is probably a much higher-profile conversation at conventions of film distributors ... or it ought to be.) The blogospheres are doing their various things, assassinating one another's dignitaries and the like, but we don't have much hand in that. The contours of the space as a whole a few years down the road look murky.

And maybe it isn't only the strategy but the organization. NTEN seems to have evolved the single role of putting on really smooth conferences, but its stated role as a trade association of tech-interested nonprofits and their consulting retainers is not causing it to lead from the front on sector-wide issues. Given the diversity of organizations participating, the level of commercial sponsorship the NTC receives, and its relatively small staff, that might be as expected -- it could arguably even be just as well: there's value in really smooth conferences. It certainly constrains the options for what NTEN can be about, however, and imposes a natural ceiling on the potential energy factor in a crowd with so many people who see each other so often. (NTC Theme for 2006: "Changing Lives and Building Community: Nonprofit Technology in Action." Mothers, lock up your daughters.) The compare-and-contrast with May's NetSquared conference ought to be interesting -- the latter (which is open-sourcing much of its organizing on the conference site as we speak: you can go there right now and make a blog post) might end up filling an unserved niche in the space. Or it might, you know, be the same people talking to each other about the same things.

Because maybe it's just us, just the space. Leda Dederich sure seems to think so. It's risky to start tying these web widgets into confrontational politics and serious social agitation and Ideas that go deeper than apps. A lot of people aren't sure what role technology might play in all that, and might be a little afraid to admit that, or afraid that the answer is none at all. Afraid to commit to something that'll look dumb in retrospect. Afraid to seek counsel from folks who know picket lines better than Perl. And more than a few want no part at all in such change. The space is a haunted cross between a board room and an orphanage.

So the stirringest event of the conference took place where you'd least expect it, at the opening plenary where entrepreneur/venture capitalist/man-about-town Guy Kawasaki issued to the sector a clarion challenge to dare to suck (maybe you had to be there) that DemocracyInAction will answer boldly. Rumor has it that video of this hour-long address will be up on the NTEN site, and it's well worth streaming if it's posted.

Thursday did feature a recrudescence of the Goodmail firestorm with a panel where the company's CEO shared billing with AOL's postmaster, collaborating vendor GetActive, and lead critics Electronic Frontier Foundation and Free Press. Though elucidating in some respects, the affair suffered from a surfeit of presentations, leaving scant time for Q&A or head-to-head debate which might have overturned fresh ore in this well-mined shaft. It was, nevertheless, perhaps the workshop with the most heat in the room.

Michael Gilbert delivered an insightful Friday lecture on his new meme, "The Permeable Nonprofit", which I was able to attend by virtue of the praiseworthy decision of conference attendees to vote with their feet against Speed Geek sessions set up as uninspiring micro-vendor fairs. (the genre will surely either be discarded or reworked for next year.)

You get the idea. Some of the most engaging sessions of the conference occurred on the day after, occupied as tradition dictates by the wholly unaffiliated event for open source afficionadoes, Penguin Day -- well worth adding to your itinerary if you're planning to attend the '07 NTC in Washington D.C. Yes, it's open, friendly and useful for tech-challenged schmoes like me.

And do think about coming to the big shindig next year. At least half the purpose of an event like this is to shake hands, not imbibe Powerpoint, and there'll undoubtedly be wagging appendages aplenty and some ideas about what to do when they get together. We'll be proud to be in the host city and, perchance, take a cue from One Northwest's spectacular welcome party to guarantee you at least one raucous workshop.

Update:  Holly from N-TEN -- and I do hope that nothing written here construes as an attack on N-TEN -- has a great post-conference piece on the tribulations of organizing such a massive event.  Leda Dederich knocked out another post on the conference that, I think, eloquently captures the gist -- NTEN has a lot of value, but not all possible values (what conference ever could?) ... and ultimately, it's up to any of us looking for something different besides to find it or make it.

Add a comment

There are currently no comments for this entry

Login

You must login to post

Email:
Password:

Sign Up

Sign up for an account

Email
User ID
Password:
Confirm Password:

Forgot your password?

Email: