NPO Connect - isn't that what you've wanted all along? (To connect with nonprofit organizations?)

Please join us at the next Ethos Roundtable session, in which the topic will be NPO Connect, the online tool that assists in matching nonprofit professionals with peer mentors. It is currently being piloted by the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network of Boston and the Metrowest Nonprofit Network.

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guests: Kenny Weill and Gavin Murphy (developers of NPO Connect), and Marc Baizman (Young Nonprofit Professionals Network of Boston)

Here's how the NPO team describes the project:

The mission of NPO Connect is to build the capacity of the non-profit sector by enabling individuals working in the sector to connect, to learn from one another, and to build their skills as non-profit professionals. At NPO Connect, we envision a non-profit sector where individuals can more easily:

• Share best practices (or just what works) in particular operational areas by mentoring peers seeking to improve in those areas;
  
  
• Gain the tools and knowledge to more efficiently and cost-effectively meet the needs of their constituents;
  
  
• Strengthen the capacity of the sector as a whole by honing their skills and adding more value to their non-profit organizations.

NPO Connect facilitates skill transfer between professionals in the non-profit sector by allowing professionals to connect with one another through a web-based platform. Once connected through this site, the peer mentorship is developed and carried out primarily offline - in face-to-face meetings, phone conversations and/or email communications.

A six-month pilot with the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network-Boston was launched February 2010 (in parallel with a pilot launched November 2009 with the Metrowest Nonprofit Network). Quantitative and qualitative feedback from pilot users will enable the NPO Connect Team to further shape the platform to serve as an effective tool for non-profit professionals. After the pilot period is complete (summer 2010), the goal is to expand NPO Connect over time to provide additional functionality and serve a larger geographic area.

This is really an important initiative for the local nonprofit sector, because there are a thousand things about our organizational culture that you can't learn in an academic program or from books. NPO Connect is also an important working prototype for online tools that match resources and needs for nonprofits, philanthropies, community groups, and other mission-based organizations.

Here's a little background on our featured guests:

• Kenny Weill brings more than a dozen years experience in the non-profit sector to his consulting work. Since launching K. Weill Consulting in 2002, Kenny's grant development work has helped his diverse clients raise on average $1.5 million each year. He delivers additional services to help build his non-profit clients’ capacity, including program development, research, and other writing and editing services such as web and newsletter content. Kenny has held management, research and direct care positions in community-based, academic, health care and government settings. He is a member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, Nonprofit Consultants Network, MA Public Health Association, and Third Sector New England's Consultant Pool. Kenny received an M.S. in Health Policy and Management from Harvard University School of Public Health and a B.A. from Wesleyan University.
  
  
• Gavin Murphy founded Annkissam in the summer of 2007 with the goal of bringing innovative technology solutions to the nonprofit sector. Mr. Murphy has been a technology consultant to a wide range of clients since graduating from Duke University with a double major in Economics and Computer Science. He volunteers 10% or more of the workweek to being President of the Duke Club of Boston.
  
  
• Marc Baizman, a Board member for the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network-Boston, has been involved with nonprofits and technology for the past ten years. Currently, Marc is consulting for nonprofits in and around Boston, helping with Google Apps and Salesforce implementations. Up until the end of 2009, Marc was Technology Director at Root Cause, a nonprofit in Cambridge, MA that helps social innovators and educates social impact investors. As the first and only technology staff person, he was responsible for all things tech, from debugging network cables to disaster recovery planning. Before joining Root Cause, Marc was working at NPower New York as a Senior Project Manager in Consulting Services, specializing in helping nonprofits customize Salesforce.com and building Drupal-based websites. He has a passion for the nonprofit sector and connecting organizations with technology in a positive way. Marc has an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology and a TESOL Certificate from Columbia Teacher's College in New York City.

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, charming venue, and free food at the 501 Tech Club, which is generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food, it's both courteous and prudent to let them know how much to order.

News you can use from the Open Indicators Consortium

Please join us in March at the Ethos Roundtable!

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guests: Georges Grinstein and Mary Beth Smrtic, Open Indicators Consortium

We'll have more details as soon as our featured guests send them along, but in the meantime, here's a little bit about the consortium:

"The Open Indicators Consortium is an international consortium dedicated to improving access to data about communities and regions. The Consortium is developing an open source software system for the analysis and visualization of economic, social and environmental indicators at the neighborhood, municipal, county, regional, national and international levels. The effort is led by University of Massachusetts Lowell faculty members Georges Grinstein (Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Institute for Visualization and Perception Research) and William Mass (Director of the Center for Industrial Competitiveness), and by Charlotte Kahn, Director of the Boston Indicators Project at the Boston Foundation.

"The mission of the Open Indicators Consortium is to transform publicly available data into visually compelling and actionable indicators, to inform public policy, research and decision making. The Consortium brings together technical and academic experts, data providers and users, to create and sustain a highly interactive, high-performance, open source platform for measures, indicators and data. Numerous tools are available and being developed for personalization, customization, collaboration, uploading data sets, session history, and generating modern interactive web-based reports."

And when the Open Indicators Consortium promises you "visually compelling and actionable indicators," they are not making frivolous promises. I've already seen a demo, and can assure that this is amazing and powerful software for individuals and organizations that care about positive social change.

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, charming venue, and free food at the 501 Tech Club, which is generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food, it's courteous to let them know how much to order.

See you in March!

The Massachusetts Nonprofit Database comes to the Ethos Roundtable!

Please join us in February at the Ethos Roundtable!

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guests: Tom Pollak and Doug Denatale, developers of the Massachusetts Nonprofit Database

In my opinion, the Massachusetts Nonprofit Database is an "epic win" for our sector, and I have high hopes that it will become a national model.

Here's a description of the project, from Tom Pollak:

Massachusetts Nonprofit Database, a collaboration of the Urban Institute's National Center for Charitable Statistics and the Boston Foundation, will provide nonprofit organizations, community leaders, and citizens with comprehensive data, information and tools to build stronger nonprofit organizations and communities, promote greater citizen engagement, and link to other data and information resources. It includes a number of modules:

Starting with a core of mostly IRS data from the NCCS databases, the Community Inventory enables users to view, update and add nonprofit organizations, schools, churches or other organizations or resources and to overlay with data on community needs via maps, charts, lists or tables.

TheFinancial Analyzer permits users to compare an organization’s performance to similar organizations (a user-defined peer group or general category) and to graph key ratios.

The Programs and Service-Delivery Area Mapping Tool lets users combine program descriptions from IRS Form 990s with additional data from 2-1-1 and other community databases and define and map the service delivery areas of the organizations to create a comprehensive picture of the programs and services in a community. (Urban Institute outcome measurement tools may be integrated into this system, as well.)

The Shared Goods and Services Tool provides a convenient system for nonprofits to communicate with one another about both their needs and potential excess capacity.

Project Management Tools enable nonprofit organizations or groups of citizens or students to collaborate efficiently in mapping community resources and needs.

Advanced Tools for custom analysis of nonprofit data are also available for registered users.

A Knowledgebase of resources to help citizens create their own projects and learn more about the how to create stronger communities and nonprofits is linked into the system.

We expect to incorporate resources from the Foundation Center, the Mass. Charities Bureau and possibly others through our Data Sharing Infrastructure, which permits real-time sharing of NCCS data and viewing of non-NCCS data with key partners.

We believe that the key to making this project successful is to get its tools used on the ground to meet the practical needs of nonprofit organizations and communities. Potential users include United Ways, high school and college student outreach organizations, nonprofit associations, place-based education and human service initiatives and others. If you are interested in working with us, we would like to hear from you!

Here's a little bit about Tom himself:

Thomas Pollak is program director of the nonprofit National Center for Charitable Statistics at the Urban Institute, a Washington DC-based research organization, which he joined in 1996. He has his law degree from Georgetown University and has been actively involved with a range of other nonprofit organizations as a director, volunteer, consultant and employee.

Here's a profile of Doug:

Douglas DeNatale is the President of Community Logic, Inc., an independent consulting firm that specializes in the development of information systems for the cultural sector and managing qualitative research projects. Dr. DeNatale has consulted for national foundations and institutions including the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Library of Congress, Heritage Preservation, and the Smithsonian Institution; as well as a variety of regional and local organizations. He served as co-director of the ethnographic documentation component of the Ford Foundation’s six-year “Internationalizing New Works in the Performing Arts” initiative; and directed a year-long ethnographic documentation project in Lowell, Massachusetts, for the Library of Congress. He has authored a range of articles, monographs, and white papers, including a handbook on documentation for cultural organizations; a white paper on current data systems in the Humanities for the American Academy of Arts & Sciences; a white paper on cultural support to Cambodia for the Rockefeller Foundation (co-author with Khatharya Um)); and a series of studies examining the economic health of the creative economy in New England (co-author with Gregory H. Wassall) Dr. DeNatale holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He has served as Deputy Director of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Director of Research at the New England Foundation for the Arts, and Director of the Folklife and Oral History Program at the University of South Carolina.

Liz Keating, the third developer in this project, won't be able to join us in February, but I think that every friend of the Ethos Roundtable should be aware of her expertise, so here's her bio:

Elizabeth Keating CPA PhD is a Lecturer in Accounting at the School of Management at Boston University. She is also an Associate Scholar at the Center for Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute. Her research focuses on nonprofit and governmental accountability, financial health retirement funding, employee compensation and benefits, and overhead. In the past year, she has produced two reports for the Boston Foundation: "For the Benefit of Our Workers: The Massachusetts Nonprofit Employee Benefit Study" and "Purpose Restructuring, Repositioning and Reinventing: Crisis in the Massachusetts Nonprofit Sector." She has taught at Harvard University, Northwestern University, and New York University. She received her PhD in management from the Sloan School of Management at MIT and her MBA from the Stern School of Business at New York University.

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, charming venue, and free food at the 501 Tech Club, which is generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food, it's courteous to let them know how much to order.

See you in February!

Ringing in 2010 with the Ethos Roundtable

We have some wonderful Ethos Roundtable sessions lined up for the new year, and hope that you'll join us!

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guest: Clay Ward, developer of Procrasdonate

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guests: Tom Pollak and Doug Denatale, developers of the Massachusetts Nonprofit Database

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guests: Georges Grinstein and Mary Beth Smrtic, Open Indicators Consortium

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guests, Kenny Weill and Gavin Murphy, developers of NPO Connect

Remember, no reservations are required. Just show up, and feel free to invite others.

Learn about ProcrasDonate at the Ethos Roundtable in January!

Please join us in January at the Ethos Roundtable!

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guest: Clay Ward, Founder, Buy It Like You Mean It

Here is a summary of the our upcoming session:

ProcrasDonate is a new kind of hybrid fundraising tool for non-profits. It works like this... users improve their time management by donating to selected websites whenever they waste an hour online. Our preliminary research suggests that people will give five times more as a charitable incentive than they would as a traditional donation. So we're very excited to sign up worthwhile charities and to learn how else to spread the word about this fun new software."

Here's a little bit about Clay himself:

Clay Ward is an artist/entrepreneur who is a graduate of MIT and Parsons School of Design who worked on numerous community art projectsbefore moving to the virtual realm. He recently founded Buy It Like You Mean It, a tool for educational discovery about the real world impacts of product supply chains. As a co-founder of ProcrasDonate.com he remains committed to strategic service and to responding to the deeper needs of virtual communities."

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company and free food at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food, it's courteous to let them know how much to order.

See you in January!

Come talk with Joe Edelman about Groundcrew at the Ethos Roundtable!

Please join us in December at the Ethos Roundtable!

Tuesday, December 15, 2009
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guest: Joe Edelman, CEO, Citizen Logistics

Here is a summary of the our upcoming session:

"Joe will present about Groundcrew — a framework being used for real-time volunteer coordination — and the PosX system of rewarding the organizers, leaders, and nonprofits which do the most good and cause the most positive experience. He will cover the immediately practical uses of Groundcrew, from field and community organizing to volunteer mobilization, and then discuss the direction we want to go, towards creating a world and an economic system where doing good is tracked and well-rewarded, and where people have both the information and the availability to rapidly assemble to help one another. He'll talk about the steps necessary to reach that goal, some of the missing pieces, and how everyone can be involved."

Here's a little bit about Joe himself:

"Joe Edelman was instrumental in scaling CouchSurfing.com from 100,000 members to more than a million members, and in designing the trust and reputation metrics and rules involved. CouchSurfing connects 180 people per hour with a stranger and a place to stay, and has led to almost 4 million real-world positive experiences between strangers, and 100,000 close friendships. He is passionate about using the web, and more recently mobile devices, to create community, build friendships, and bring people together in the real world, and this passion has brought him from stunt groups like ImprovEverywhere to disaster relief operations to alternative schools. In fifteen years of work with research labs and internet startups, including research work at the MIT Artificial Intelligence lab, Paul Allen's Interval Research, and a research faculty position at Dartmouth College, has remained focused on the problems of the real-time, real-world web, and the use of computational tools to navigate continuous data sources. He was educated at Dartmouth College and MIT."

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, food, and drink at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food, it's courteous to let them know how much to order.

See you in December!

At the Ethos Roundtable in November: David Weinberger on the moral architecture of the web

Please join us in November at the Ethos Roundtable!

Tuesday, November 17, 2009
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guest: David Weinberger, fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society

Here's a summary from David of our upcoming session on the moral architecture of the web:

Of course technology is neither good or bad in itself. You could use a hammer to build a home for the needy or to hit the needy on the head. Yet, it also seems wrong not to be able to draw any moral distinction between, say, the H1N1 vaccine and a device designed to torture people. In that light, is the Web good or evil…or at least good-ish or evil-ish? In this speculative talk, we'll look quickly at the usual theories about what makes something moral or immoral, and wonder how the distinctive architecture of the Web fits.

Here's a little bit about our featured guest:

Dr. David Weinberger writes about the effect of technology on our ideas. He is a co-author of the bestselling "The Cluetrain Manifesto" and the author of "Small Pieces Loosely Joined." His latest book is "Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder." He writes the well-known blog Joho . His work has appeared in Harvard Business Review, USA Today, Wired, Salon, The Guardian, Foreign Policy and many others. He is a commentator on National Public Radio and is a columnist for KMWorld and Il Sole 24 ore. He has been a strategic marketing consultant to startups and Fortune 500s, and has been an Internet adviser to presidential campaigns. He is a Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society and has a Ph.D. in philosophy.

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, food, and drink at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food, it's courteous to let them know how much to order.

See you in November!

Learn about the World Community Grid with Cathleen Finn on October 20th!

Please join us in October at the Ethos Roundtable!

Tuesday, October 20, 2009
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guests: Cathleen Finn of World Community Grid and IBM Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs

Here's a preview of our upcoming session:

World Community Grid, launched in November 2004, is dedicated to becoming the world's largest public computing grid working on humanitarian research. The initiative enlists the support of hundreds of thousands of volunteers to donate unused computing capacity to researchers around the world. Current research projects include cancer, AIDS, influenza and environmental research as well as others. IBM donates the infrastructure and services needed to support World Community Grid, which currently includes over one million devices.

Here's a little bit about our featured guest:

Cathleen Finn is the IBM Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs New England Program Manager. She is responsible for managing the IBM discretionary grant making program, the employee volunteerism program, the employee charitable contributions campaign, and special community events for Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Rhode Island. Cathleen's community affiliations include serving as a director for the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, membership in the Greater Boston Corporate Volunteer Council, serving as an advisor to Commonwealth Alliance for Information Technology Education, and serving as a mediator for Community Dispute Settlement Center and Mediation Works Incorporated.

Prior to joining the Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs, Cathleen held a variety of positions of increasing responsibility in the Information Systems department, and was a Senior Consultant in the Process Engineering, group where she completed internal management consulting assignments in Massachusetts and internationally. She has been with IBM since October of 1992. Cathleen graduated with honors from Boston University with a B.A. in Mathematics and Psychology.

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, food, and drink at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food and drink, it's courteous to let them know how much to order.

See you in October!


(Please note that, despite having the same surname, Cathleen Finn and I are not related, except insofar as all human beings are - at the very least - distant cousins.)

Dan MacNeil and Carolyn Thompson of the Community Software Lab at the Ethos Roundtable

Please join us in September at the Ethos Roundtable!

Tuesday, September 15th
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guests: Dan MacNeil and Carolyn Thompson of the Community Software Lab

Here's what Dan says about the session:

Our primary presentation goal is to show off our software websites designed to connect people to the social services they need. A secondary goal is to connect to people who want to share source code and data. Time permitting, we'd also like practice telling jokes.

We'll start with a 5 minute video. This video is designed to demo our software in such a way as to hid the weak spots.

We'll pause for questions and discussion. If there are no questions or discussion, we will punish the group by pontificating bombastically on the weak spots of our software, the minutia of free software licenses and the syntax of the Perl programing language.

We asked our featured guests to tell us a little bit about themselves, and this is how they responded:

Dan MacNeil, is a stereotypical computer geek in everything except for personal hygiene. He's been trying to get a BS in CS since 1982. He's crawled under desks to re-connect network cables for organizations with $20 in the checking account and for organizations with millions of donors. In 1998, he started the Community Software Lab to help bring about the post scarcity society and have an excuse to print "Fearless Leader" on business cards.

Carolyn Thompson, outreach coordinator of the CSL, has a degree in Psychology from Philadelphia University and a long, impressive but boring resume. Once, as a summer life guard, she prevented (on average) one drowning per week.

Here are a few links to visit before the session:

• Wikipedia: "Post scarcity"
• Community Software Lab
• The North Shore Portal
• The Merrimack Valley Hub
• MVHub, a directory of social services

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, food, and drink at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food and drink, it's courteous to let them know how much to order.

See you in September!

Join us this fall at the Ethos Roundtable!

We have some exciting guests lined up for the fall, and hope that you'll mark your calendars now:

Tuesday, September 15
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guest: Dan MacNeil and Carolyn Thompson, Community Software Lab

Tuesday, October 20
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guest: Cathleen Finn, World Community Grid and IBM Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs

Tuesday, November 17
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guest: David Weinberger, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University

We look forward to seeing you in the fall!

We'll be on hiatus in August

The Ethos Roundtable will be taking a break in August, as will the Boston 501 Tech Club.

There are no sessions scheduled for the month, and we plan to resume on September 18th.

We look forward to seeing you at our July session, and in September when we resume.

Have a happy summer!

Social Actions at the Ethos Roundtable on July 21st

Please join us in July at the Ethos Roundtable!

Tuesday, July 21st
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guests: Peter Deitz and Christine Egger of Social Actions

Social Actions is an aggregator and search engine for actions that you can take on any issue that concerns you. Instead of checking over 50 web pages, you can go to Social Actions, type in some key words, and run a search. You'll see opportunities that include volunteerism, political action, jobs in nonprofit organizations, fundraising campaigns, social networking, and micro philanthropy. The partners include Kiva, Pledgebank, Changing The Present, Idealist, Six Degrees, Modest Needs, Volunteer Match, and many more.

Here's a little bit about our esteemed guests:

Peter Deitz is a blogger, social media consultant, and the founder of Social Actions. He is a guest blogger on Social Edge, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and PopTech. Peter has spoken at several 2009 venues including the Nonprofit Technology Conference, the NetSquared Conference, Connecting Up Australia, Semantic Technology Conference, and My Charity Connects. Peter holds a BA in History from McGill University and an MA in History from the University of Toronto. He lives in Montreal, Quebec.

Christine Egger is a founding team member of Social Actions. She holds a master's in International Development from Michigan State University and brings 15 years' experience in for- and non-profit project management, fund development, networking and collaboration, and strategic planning to the Social Actions team. Her work focuses on the intersection of international development, philanthropy, and the complexity sciences. She lives in southeast Michigan.

Here are some links to visit before the session:

• Social Actions
• My Social Actions
• Triple Pundit: "You Can't Create Social Good Without Taking Social Actions"
• Open Source Business Resource: "Social Actions: Making the Web More Philanthropic"
• My Social Actions: "Peter Deitz's Profile"
• My Social Actions: "Christine Egger's Profile"
• My Social Actions: "Social Actions Presentation at Google Tech Talk, September 16, 2008"

This is definitely a project that exemplifies the spirit of the Ethos Roundtable, by using information and communication technology to create positive social change! If you'd like to participate in a brainstorming session on this topic, we welcome you to the table.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others!

Please also note that there will be no Boston 501 Tech Club event in July. The latter usually follows Ethos Roundtable sessions. However, our wonderful hosts at TechFoundation are taking a well-deserved break for the summer. Therefore, Ethos Roundtable attendees will need to make their own arrangements for food and drink after we adjourn at 6:00 pm.

See you in July!

Online Capacity Mapping and Resource Matching for Nonprofits

Having served as a co-convener of the Ethos Roundtable since 2006, I have finally scheduled myself as a presenter for June 2009:

Tuesday, June 16th
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guest: Deborah Elizabeth Finn, Strategic Technology Consultant to Nonprofits and Philanthropies

I was first inspired to think about one giant web-based tool for capacity mapping and resource matching for nonprofits by a conversation in 2003 with my buddy Tim Gassert. Since then, I've looked for ways to make it happen. Within the last year, some sort of tipping point occurred, and all sorts of esteemed clients and colleagues started pulling me into conversations about pet projects that were closely related to the pipedream that Tim and I had.

I've been actively working on the big picture, and bringing together these folks who are converging on the concept, for about six months. It's clear that this could be a tremendous asset to nonprofits, philanthropies, and communities in the region - at a time when money is tight, it's important to ensure that surplus assets, capacities, and resources do not go unused. It's also clear that this could be many separate projects with clever mash-ups and data interchanges. In the age of XML, it does not have to be a monolith with one owner, one web host, and one platform.

This session will not be a nuts-and-bolts discussion of technical specifications or organizational arrangements, but an exploration of the big picture. What if we had web-based tools to help mission-based organizations use every possible resource and meet every possible need? If you're interested in this question, please come and brainstorm with us.

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, food, and drink at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food and drink, it's courteous to let them know how much to order.

See you in June!

Melinda Wittstock on Web 2.0, populism, and professional journalism at the Ethos Roundtable

Please join us for our next Ethos Roundtable session:

Tuesday, May 19th
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guest: Melinda Wittstock, founder of Ask Your Lawmaker, Capitol News Connection, and Pundit Productions

Melinda Wittstock is an award-winning broadcast and print journalist with 20 years of experience in New York, Washington, and London. Her writing and hosting work spans BBC Radio and TV News, ABC News, National Public Radio (NPR), MSNBC/CNBC, as well as London's Times, Guardian, and Observer newspapers.

Melinda founded Capitol News Connection (CNC), which covers Congress from a local perspective for more than 200 public radio stations nationwide, reaching three million listeners. She also created "Power Breakfast", which airs daily on WAMU 88.5 FM in Washington.

She conceived and launched the Ask Your Lawmaker web site and widget, which lets citizens directly question their lawmakers. Users ask questions and vote on the ones they most want CNC journalists to pose to lawmakers. Audio answers are uploaded for users to listen to, comment and share.

Melinda will be sharing her vision of collaboration between citizens and professional journalists to foster accountability and transparency in government. She calls this "truth-squadding," and will be leading a discussion about how Web 2.0 makes this possible.

Although we don't often carry over an Ethos Roundtable theme from one month to the next, we do have an opportunity to do this in May. During our April session with Susan Labandibar, we brainstormed about ways to call Congress to account about the hazards of recycling e-waste overseas, and one of the strategies I suggested was posting a question about this to Ask Your Lawmaker. I posted a question on this topic, which you are welcome to vote up. You're also welcome to post a question of your own (on any topic whatsoever) to Ask Your Lawmaker - it only take about three minutes.

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, food, and drink at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food and drink, it's courteous to let them know how much to order.

See you on the 19th!


Full disclosure of financial relationship: I serve as a paid consultant to Capitol News Connection and Ask Your Lawmaker.

Join the Ethos Roundtable for a discussion with Susan Labandibar about green IT

Please join us for our next Ethos Roundtable session:

Tuesday, April 21st
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guest: Susan Labandibar, founder of Tech Networks of Boston

Susan Labandibar is an expert on green information technology for small nonprofits and businesses, an ardent environmental advocate, and a leader of Boston's Sustainable Business Network. Her organization, Tech Networks of Boston, is creating a free web-based tool to allow any company to create a baseline for IT energy use. Businesses will be able to use the tool to forecast energy savings as they design and implement new IT solutions. Susan's presentation, Real Green IT, covers the three big reasons IT departments should go green, the five focus areas, and a sneak preview of the web-tool and its underlying methodology.

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, food, and drink at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food and drink, it's courteous to let them know how much to order.

See you on the 21st!

Ken George joins us at the Ethos Roundtable for a discussion about public radio, social media, and civic engagement

Please join us for our next Ethos Roundtable session:

Ken George, online production manager of WBUR
Tuesday, March 17th
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Ken George, new media production manager at WBUR-FM, is a self-described "public radio guy stumbling along the digital highway." He will be leading a discussion about public radio, social media, and civic engagement.

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, food, and drink at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food and drink, it's courteous to let them know how much to order.

See you on the 17th!

Brian Reich on "Mastering Today's Technology to Connect With and Keep Your Audience"

Please join us for our next Ethos Roundtable session:

Tuesday, February 17th
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guest:
Brian Reich, co-author of the book "Media Rules: Mastering Today's Technology to Connect With and Keep Your Audience," and principal at EchoDitto

Brian is a veteran of online communications for political and nonprofit causes, and we'll have a lively discussion about how to use what he's learned to support positive social change.

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, food, and drink at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food and drink, it's courteous to let them know how much to order.

See you on the 17th!

Starting off right in 2009 with the Ethos Roundtable

As 2009 begins, we are grateful to have some very exciting featured guests scheduled:

Jeffrey Wood, founder of eHope
Tuesday, January 20th
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Brian Reich, co-author of the book "Media Rules: Mastering Today's Technology to Connect With and Keep Your Audience," and principal at EchoDitto
Tuesday, February 17th
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Ken George, online production manager of WBUR
Tuesday, March 17th
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Susan Labandibar, founder of Tech Networks of Boston, and green IT expert
Tuesday, April 21st
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Melinda Wittstock, founder of Ask Your Lawmaker, Capitol News Connection, and Pundit Productions
Tuesday, May 19th
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA


Deborah Elizabeth Finn, Strategic Technology Consultant to Nonprofits and Philanthropies
Tuesday, June 16th
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA


Peter Deitz and Christine Egger of Social Actions
Tuesday, July 21st
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others!

Jeffrey Wood and eHope will join us at the Ethos Roundtable on January 20th

Please join us for the first Ethos Roundtable session of the new year!

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guest: Jeffrey Wood, founder of eHope
(This session was originally scheduled for Tuesday, September 16th, 2008.)

Jeffrey Wood is the founder and president of eHope, a non-profit which facilitates caring communities which provides non-medical physical, emotional, social, emotional and spiritual support for people facing a life-threatening illness. Born and raised in Wisconsin, Jeffrey served 20 years as a U.S. Army leadership instructor, as Human Resource Manager for Teledyne, and also as a web developer & IT Consultant. His volunteer work on the oncology wing at Maine Medical Center and then with Hospice of Maine serving ALS families in Southern Maine, provided him with the vision and inspiration for birthing eHope. To date, eHope has launched 55 caring communities mobilizing approx. 2,600 volunteer caregivers throughout Central and Southern Maine.

Jeffrey recommends the following links for attendees of the session:

• Social Isolation Growing in U.S.
• NPR eHope Story - 10 minute audio clip

Please note that Ethos Roundtable events are usually paired with meetings of the Boston 501 Tech Club. However, this month's501 Tech Club meeting has been rescheduled for Tuesday, January 13th. If you have any questions about the 501 Tech Club, or would like to make a reservation to attend it, please send an email to Kathleen Sherwin (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org).

As always, we are very grateful to TechFoundation for underwriting the conference room in which Ethos Roundtable sessions take place.

There's never any need to make a reservation to attend EthosRoundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others!

George McCully at the Ethos Roundtable: Philanthropy reconsidered in the internet age

We invite you to join us for our next session:

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge
Featured guest: George McCully, Founder of the Catalogue For Philanthropy, and author of "Philanthropy Reconsidered"

George's new book has some very striking and useful insights about (among other things) the transition that it in progress from the industrial age to the internet age of philanthropy.

There's never any need to make a reservation to attend EthosRoundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others!

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, food, and drink at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who
work with nonprofit organizations. All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

See you on Tuesday!

Doc Searls at the Ethos Roundtable on November 18th

Please join us for our November session!

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge
Featured guest: Doc Searls, Fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and author of "Doc Searls Weblog"

Doc Searls is a fellow with both the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the Center for Information Technology & Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, a business bestseller, and Senior Editor at Linux Journal, where he has been covering open source development since the mid-90s. He is also one of the world's best known and widely read bloggers.

In "The World is Flat," Tom Friedman calls Doc "one of the most respected technology writers in America." J.D. Lasica, author of "Darknet," calls Doc "one of the deep thinkers in the blog movement." In 2005, Doc won the Google O'Reilly Open Source Award for Best Communicator.

Here's the word from Doc about the topic for our session:

The Intention Economy: What happens when free customers prove more valuable than captive ones.

Are you tired of carrying around "loyalty cards" for retailers who speak to themselves about "acquiring," "owning" and "controlling" their "relationship" with you? -- and do little more than clog your wallet and slow down checkout lines?

Are you tired of login and password hell? In the everyday world you don't have to become a "member" of a store to shop there, or to click "accept" after not reading "agreements" that are anything but.

Wouldn't it be cool to rent exactly the car you want (for example, one that seats six and has an AUX input for your iPhone), rather than whatever the rental car agency decides to give you?

If you answer Yes to any of those questions, you should know about VRM, for Vendor Relationship Management. It's how we manage them at least as well as they manage us.

VRM tools are being developed right now by a community of developers and other volunteers, organized around ProjectVRM at Harvard's Berkman Center and led by Doc Searls, the originator of the VRM concept and a fellow at the center.

Here are a few web pages that he recommends that attendees read before the Ethos Roundtable session:

• Doc's essay "The Intention Economy"
• The VRM entry from Wikipedia
• A list of VRM principles:
• The ProjectVRM wiki
• The ProjectVRM blog
• Doc's blog

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, food, and drink at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food and drink, it's courteous to let them know how much to order.

See you in November!

Upcoming at the Ethos Roundtable: Four unusually special guests

Check out this incredible line-up of featured guests for upcoming Ethos Roundtable sessions:

Joseph Porcelli
Director of Online Operations and Partnerships of Be The Change Foundation, founder of Neighbors For Neighbors, and many other civic engagement projects
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge

Doc Searls
Fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and author of "Doc Searls Weblog"
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge

George McCully
Founder of the Catalogue For Philanthropy, and author of "Philanthropy Reconsidered"
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge

Jeffrey Wood
Founder of eHope
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge
(This session was originally scheduled for Tuesday, September 16th, 2008.)

Details on the topics of each date will be forthcoming, as our featured guests send in their blurbs.

At the conclusion of each of these Ethos Roundtable sessions, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, food, and drink at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

There's no need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing free food and drink, it's courteous to let their team know how much to order.

Joseph Porcelli at the Ethos Roundtable, 10/21/2008

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge
Featured guest: Joseph Porcelli

Joseph Porcelli wears a lot of hats. He's been a coordinator of the Neighborhood Crime Watch Unit of the Boston Police Department, the executive director of Neighbors For Neighbors, the founder of the Name Tag Project, and is now with the Be The Change Foundation. In all his work, he has been an innovator in using online tools to increase social capital in local communities, so we're very excited that he'll be the featured guest in October at the Ethos Roundtable.

Please join us at the table!

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, food, and drink at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Reservations are never mandatory to attend Ethos Roundtable events. However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food and drink, it's courteous to let them know how much to order.

See you in October!

Change of format for the September 16th Ethos Roundtable session

Unfortunately, our featured guest for Tuesday, Jeff Wood of eHope, will not be able join us as scheduled. He will be with a critically ill patient and his family. Of course, our thoughts and prayers are with them all. We have rescheduled Jeff's presentation at the Ethos Roundtable for Tuesday, December 16th.

However, the Ethos Roundtable will definitely meet this Tuesday, even though Jeff will be unable to be there.

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge

Instead of the scheduled presentation, we will be having an "open mike" Ethos Roundtable session.

This doesn't actually mean that there will be a microphone or that anyone will be asked to perform; it does mean that it's an open discussion of any ideas that attendees might want to bring to the table. These ideas might pertain to your own projects, or to presenters that you'd like the Ethos Roundtable to invite to future sessions.

John Hopkins has very graciously agreed to kick off the session on September 16th with a brief presentation about HubUnity, a web-based service that provides tools to collect, organize and manage connections with everything local, such as local schools, groups, businesses, events, and news.

If you'd like to give a brief presentation on an concept or ongoing project that is relevant to ethos and technology for positive social change, please feel free to email us at ethos.roundtable (at) gmail (dot) com. Or just show up!

At the conclusion of the Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, food, and drink at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

As always, there's no need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org).

See you on Tuesday!

eHope at the Ethos Roundtable

September's featured guest will be Jeffrey Wood, the president and founder of eHope .

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge
Featured guest, Jeffrey Wood, eHope

eHope's mission is "to form caregiving communities which provide non-medical physical, social, spiritual and emotional support, for a loved one who faces a life-threatening illness." Their innovative use of online tools to support caregiving communities is very much in the spirit of the Ethos Roundtable, and we hope that everyone who is interested will join us for this session.

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, food, and drink at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Reservations are never mandatory to attend Ethos Roundtable events. However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food and drink, it's courteously to let them know how much to order.

Please join the team from Speakeasy and Asian CDC at the Ethos Roundtable on August 19th

August's featured guests will be the team from Speakeasy and the Asian Community Development Corporation.

Tuesday, August 19th
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge
Featured guest: Jeremy Liu, Speakeasy and Asian CDC

Speakeasy is a service that offers non-English speaking individuals convenient, free and easy access to a network of well-informed, multilingual “Guides” who would be able to provide on-demand, confidential language interpretation via the telephone. Aside from their interpretation services, Guides would also be able to effectively address callers’ concerns and needs as they are more familiar with the social service options available in this country. In practice, Speakeasy is not a new concept as many multilingual individuals are already serving as informal interpreters for their family members and friends, but often with uneven or inappropriate results. Instead of having to depend solely on this informal social network and to ease some of the unduly burdens placed upon family members and friends, Speakeasy would be able to take advantage of the ubiquity of cell phones and connect non-English speakers to Guides promptly.

Technically, Speakeasy consists of three components – a web service for Guides’ registration and scheduling, a telephone server for call routing and conferencing, and a database that stores Guides’ phone numbers, language capabilities and available times. Callers – any non-English speakers, including immigrants, refugees and other limited English proficiency individuals – would place a call to Speakeasy from any telephone and then be greeted by pre-recorded messages and prompts in English, Cantonese and Mandarin. After callers navigate the voice menu by pressing the appropriate buttons, Speakeasy then queues their calls through the database, and connects them to available Guides who would act as “linguistic liaisons” to city service agencies, community organizations and local businesses via their cell phones. In that sense, Speakeasy transcends geographic, spatial and temporal boundaries as it allows Guides to provide assistance wherever they may be and whenever they are available.

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, food, and drink at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Reservations are never mandatory to attend Ethos Roundtable events. However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org).

Please join Quintus Jett at the Ethos Roundtable on July 15th for a discussion about the Gentilly Project!

Please join us for the next Ethos Roundtable event!

Tuesday, July 15th
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge
Featured guest: Quintus Jett, Gentilly Project

The Gentilly Project uses a prototype mapping system designed to deploy after neighborhood devastation, follow progress, and pinpoint what aid is needed where. By using this new public mapping system, everyone—researchers, developers, politicians, and local citizens—will be able to see what has been done, and what needs to be done, with the sole purpose being to accelerate rebuilding.

The first application of this mapping system is the mapping of the entire district of Gentilly, a severely flood-damaged area in New Orleans, home to over 40,000 residents pre-Katrina. The project's public mapping of over 12,000 homes is the most current, and comprehensive look at the rebuilding progress in the city.

Here are some links to more information about the project:

• New Orleans Rebuilds
• Gentilly Neighborhood Mapping Center
• Open-source organizing
• Door-to-Door Map-making

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, food, and drink at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Laura Jaseviciute of TechFoundation (lauraj AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food and drink, it's courteous to let them know how much to order.

See you in July!

Good2gether at the Ethos Roundtable on June 17th

Please join us for the next Ethos Roundtable event!

Tuesday, June 17th
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge
Featured guest: Greg McHale, Good2Gether.Com

Good2gether is a social enterprise that mashes up mainstream media web sites with content provided by mission-based organizations. Nonprofit organizations can participate at no cost.

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, food, and drink at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food and drink, it's courteous to let them know how much to order.

See you in June!

The Stargazer Foundation is coming to the Ethos Roundtable on May 20th!

If you're interested in free resources for emergency management, please join us at our May session:

Tuesday, May 20th
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge
Featured guest: Art Bushkin, Stargazer.Org

It is our great good luck that Art Bushkin is traveling up to the Boston area to talk about the Stargazer Foundation's online resources for emergency preparedness.

Stargazer has devoted millions of dollars (and untold amounts of effort and expertise) to creating this absolutely free resource for nonprofits, families, and individuals. The foundation's slogan is "online services for social good," which could not be more congruent with the spirit of the Ethos Roundtable. Art will share his vision with us, and will also be available to meet with nonprofit professionals and community leaders who are vitally concerned with emergency management and disaster relief.

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, food, and drink at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Laura Jaseviciute of TechFoundation (lauraj AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food and drink, it's courteous to let them know how much to order.

See you in May!