Below are some handy suggestions I pulled from the presentation Age of YouTube: Using Video Online to Reach the Masses which was presented at NTEN’s Technology 2007 Conference.

The Serial Approach - Consider offering a series of short videos (2-3 minutes) that explain your issue, instead of making an expensive project video (or in addition to). See how I Love Mountains features short videos about the destructive practice of mountaintop removal on their homepage.

There's nowhere like the nation's capital for turning out nonprofiteers in record numbers, and NTC had the scale of, like, Battlestar Galactica or something: a minor metropolis afloat in the stars. The number 1,200 was murmured, which would be enough bodies to outvote Vatican City. People talked about going the whole 2-3 days without the serendipitous run-in with someone they were hoping to meet.

Almost any thematic takeaway for the NTC would be a plausible one, simply because there were just so many different ways to look into the kaleidoscope.

My personal version of the theme -- having hit sessions on screencasting, mobile, and radio both online and off -- was multi-channel engagement. It feels to me that the sector is straining against this membrane, looking for the next ah-ha moment, the next breakout into open country. Can we get Internet everywhere? Can we mate it with television, telephones, voice, thought, shoe leather? Can the multiplying tools and gizmos combine and connect? Can it get from niftiness and even effectiveness to really game-changing?

We catch glimmers. A citizen video flips control of the Senate -- hybridized data sets present the occasional but isolated dazzling perspective -- rumors circulate of flash mobs on distant shores. The Twitter froth, I suspect, emerges fundamentally from its hint of gathering blogging, texting and social networking into a bridge tenuously connecting meatspace and cyberspace identities.

It -- whatever it is -- just isn't quite there yet, and some days it seems it's on the next train after Godot. But the hope for the Next Big Thing might be one of those cases of generals fighting the last war.

With apologies that fatigue and connectivity issues (I think every tech conference I've been to this year has had wireless problems ...), a few random snippets from the Nonprofit Tech Conference.

Wednesday, April 4

Vendor fair. No iPods won (note: for a Nano, I'll link to Satan himself), but an adequate haul of swag -- GoLightly has the stroke of genius with shot glasses for which their moniker is singularly apt.

(But why do they come containing jelly beans?)

DIA and PICnet collaborate on a good way to use them: the unofficial NTC drinking game (.pdf), readily adaptable to all manner of similar events.

Our table gives away Salsa.

With a smile.

I've got one foot out the door to the Nonprofit Tech Conference, where several of us will be spending a good portion of the next three days.

It's not too late to register, and for anyone in D.C. still feeling asea with some of the tech issues -- whether elementary or advanced -- it's well worth it if you can possibly squeeze out the hours. Free for everyone, registered or not, there's a free "science [vendor] fair" this afternoon -- lots of software/consulting/similar companies with drawings for free iPods. We'll be there as well, and with (I daresay) some intriguing raffle offerings courtesy of several members of our user community -- WITNESS, Flex Your Rights and Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

Or, just skip the product placement altogether and get straight to the free libations by hitting one of the several evening socials tonight, including DemocracyInAction's own open house.

We even cleaned up for the occasion, and improved the effect with selective photographic cropping:

I hope to put a lot of faces to names there. Naturally, there'll be plenty more from this highlight of the nonprofit tech calendar over the coming days.