Would you like to participate in the NPTech attention stream but feel like it's too overwhelming? Is the whole idea new to you? Before describing the drastic measures I took to lighten a reader's load, here's the basics on what it's all about...

NPTech is a tag used by people to designate an item they find online as being of interest to the community of nonprofit technologists. People use nptech as one of any number of tags to describe an item online and that item is entered into the nptech attention stream, subscribable by RSS or email. Since it's in RSS format, you can do all kinds of things with it - see for example the feed of the tag net2 syndicated automatically in the sidebar of this site. ("Net2 elsewhere" is what it's titled.)

Originally based in del.icio.us, I put together a metafeed that captured events tagged nptech in Upcoming.org, photos tagged nptech in Flickr and more. Click here to learn more about the NPTech metafeed and see it in action. The nptech tag's originating discussion and community is at nptech.krazy.com. (That's where the logo came from too!) I wrote a longer intro to tagging that might be of interest, titled 13 reasons to use tags.

There are between 30 and 40 people subscribed to the metafeed and and I don't know how many submitting items. It can get overwhelming to read everything that comes through that stream! In the spirit of helping expand participation and perhaps giving new folks a taste of the action, I've put together my personal highlights of items tagged nptech over the weekend.

There were 42 items tagged nptech in the included systems since Friday morning, here are my favorite 11. I excluded things that weren't super interesting, that I didn't understand or that I had to log in to some site to read. So take these highlights with a grain of salt - they're just my favorites.

• Writer, digital media artist, and human rights activist Melissa Gira tagged an introduction to the DotOrganize project on the ScoutSeven site. DotOrganize is a project lead by Billy Wimsatt and Leda Dederich to bring a coherent set of affordable technology tools to the youth organizing sector and beyond. From the article tagged, "Instead of throwing untold dollars at building a whole new technology platform, dotOrganize will harness the potential of emerging web application development trends (open APIs, web services, open source development models) to integrate the most appropriate and relevant tools into existing tool suites. Solutions will be based on the principles of interoperability, accessible user interface design, easy implementation, and sustainability."
• A mysterious someone on a mysterious blog (presumable connected to NetCentricCampaigns?) posted a request for people involved in mobile phone-enabled political campaigns to share their experiences for a body of case studies for MobileActive. If you can help with this, please do!
• New del.icio.us user GrillWork tagged eRiders.net, an active site that about "Mission Driven Technology Support for Non Governmental Organizations."
• Another brand new del.icio.us user, GoofyMan (identify yourself in the name field or else I'm going to refer to you by your handle!) tagged a very cool looking site called SocialSourceCommons. This is an Aspriration Tech project testing and highlighting good tools for nonprofits.
• Deborah Elizabeth Finn wrote a good piece about nonprofit technology infrastructure and the pressure faced by small organizations to consolidate. Originally from her personal blog, she cross posted it over to the NetSquared blog as well. She tagged her post nptech when she wrote it.
• Nancy White tagged a GreenChameleon post titled Taxonomies vs Tagging: High Context, Low Context and then followed up with a post of her own about a frequency-of-use test that Beth Kanter blogged about. Beth writes about a web site that will compare the number of Google results there are for two different terms, in order to help you decide which you might want to use yourself if you are tagging something for maximum visibility.
• Deborah Elizabeth Finn (del.icio.us user DEF) tagged a nice short explanation of mashups and why they are important to organizations that she found online.
• Celeste of Studio 501c tagged an overview she wrote of a longer report on blogging best practices from a University of Massachusetts marketing professor. She says the report includes good advice and some assertions that deserve questioning.
• Del.icio.us user Rudivs tagged an older Crash Course (intro) on How To Create Passionate Users, a controversial but interesting approach by consultant Kathy Sierra. It's from January 2006 and it's a bit long, but Sierra is widely discussed and an intro to her thoughts is worth reading.
• Finally, Allan at Confessions of an IT Director posts a reflection on last week's NTEN feedback session. He says his least favorite part of NTEN is the NTC conference's domination by vendors.

Well...those were my favorite 11 items out of 42 from the NPTech Attention Stream this weekend. Hope you found that useful and I hope you'll consider tagging nptech-type items next time you find them so that my job is even harder next time I try to summarize them.

In all seriousness, the nptech tag is a great experiment in the kind of knowledge sharing that could really benefit many organizations using their own tags. When the number of items submitted hits a certain level, it may be of great benefit to have one or more than one person exercising an editorial hand in creating an alternate feed of pared down resources. The nptech community could have several and people could subscribe to the editorial feeds of whoever's taste in highlights they preferred. Or multiple highlighters could splice their feeds together and remove duplicates. It does take time and resources, but the minds of all the people online using the nptech tag are stirring up a large number of resources that could use some value added summarizing now and again I think, for people unable to keep up with everything that people submit by tag.

Let me know what you think. In the meantime, if you'd like to subscribe to a feed of occaisonall highlights from the nptech tag, here's an RSS URL you can subscribe to or enter your email address in the following box:

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And remember! You can always subscribe to both the full feed over every one's items and my selected highlights - as you may only find the time to read highlights some times.

So there's a little introduction to one use of tags and feeds. If you'd like to go beyond nptech, check out Beth's intro to the NTEN group called Tagvocates.