The NpTech Blogs TwitterFeed

The NpTech Summary is a weekly compilation of resources tagged with "nptech" by those who follow all things nonprofits and social media.   Since conversations are getting more distributed and in addition to using the NpTech tag to discover, aggregate, and summarize resources, I'm incorporating nuggets from micro media sources, nptech bloggers, nptech friendfeed room, and networks.The summaries are more focused on a social media theme or a social media question related to practice.

I've been thinking a lot lately about listening and the tools for listening.   So, I thought I'd share a few sources that have flowed through the NpTech Social Media Stream about how to monitor nptech.   The number of nonprofit technology folks in the social media has grown by leaps and bounds, making the nptech meta feed quite a lot to consume, unless you've fully mastered the art of high volume scanning.   (I have, but for many people it is simply tooooooo much information.)

There are lots of niches, small aggregated collections of crowd-sourced links being share where you can dip your toes in the water and not suffer too much from information overload.  

Any one of these sources will give you quick sense of what nptechers are thinking about.   Although, be warned, you don't want to avoid the blind men and the elephant trap.  

1.   Follow social bookmarks tagged with NpTech on Del.icio.us:   People are still tagging items into del.icio.us with the NpTech tag and I still use it as one of my best sources.   Just pop the RSS into your RSS Reader and you can quickly scan lots of resources zeroing in on the ones that you find of interest.       Use medium volume scanning techniques.

2.   Track the NpTech Group in Mag.nolia.com:   This is a smaller volume that bookmarks tagged on del.icio.us, but I consistently find resources that I haven't seen elsewhere.

3.   Follow the NpTech MetaFeed:   Warning this is not for the faint of heart or those who can't deal with repetition and high volume.     This feed, created by Marshall Kirkpatrick, combined nptech tag feeds from a number of sources.     It's great for overall pattern analysis and a broad swipe.

4.   Follow the NpTech Blogs TwitterFeed: This is an aggregation of feeds from nonprofit technology blogs put together by @engagejoe.   It isn't comprehensive, but it is a nice way to dip into what nptech blogs are saying.   He is looking for suggestions to add.   Here's a few Joe.

5.   Subscribe to a Twitter Search on "Nptech":     Still lots of good 140 character resource sharing happening via the #nptech has tag.   Easy to scan too, although tiny urls require you to click through.

6.   Scan Nonprofit Pulse:   This site aggregates the tweets of 259 Twitter users identified with nonprofit technology.   There are two RSS feeds - top links and the tweets.  

7.   Read TechSoup blog, Netsquared blogs, and NTEN Blog.   It's easy enough to pop the RSS feeds into your reader and these organizations aggregate resources and keep on top new developments in social media and nonprofits.    

8.   Subscribe to specific nonprofit technology blogs:   Which ones, and how many - well that's up to you.     But there are more and more nonprofit blogs being launched and many are good.   I really appreciate the blogs that aggregate sub-niches of the field - take for example Social Action's roundups of social fundraising.  

9.   Join the NpTech FriendFeed Room: I have to admit it, I love the FriendFeed Room.   I wasn't going to put it on this list because it is nice and small.   It isn't a fire hose - it is a community - lots of great information shared here and conversation.

10. Follow the NpTech SlideShows on SlideShare:   The best place to find inspiration for presentations, particularly for presentations about social media and nonprofits.

There's are also some interesting ideas floating around for the future including NpTech-A-Matic.   It doesn't exist.   Peter Campbell's interesting idea using Ubiquity.    

How do you track the nonprofit field?   What ponds, rivers, or oceans do you swim through to find information relavant to your professional development as nonprofit technologist interested in social media?

The NpTech Tag started as an experimental community tagging project in 2005. A loosely coupled group of nonprofit techies and social change activists decided to use the tag "NpTech" to identify web resources that would create an ongoing stream of information to promote and educate those working in nonprofit technology.   Through TechSoup's Netsquared project, blogger Beth Kanter, was commissioned to write a weekly summary.