At our "Making it Happen" table, we discussed how we could use tagging to help make social change, not just organize our own work.  We decided that we should come up with a few tags for the nonprofit sector and start getting them out there by recruiting "Tagvocates" who vow to: 

1. Use the tags all over the place
2. Recruit other tagvocates for their tag(s)

The plan is to get a set of tags out there, the aggregate the content (maybe with Suprglu?), and then foster a discussion about how we can use the content that we're tagging for social change.  For example - can a legal services organization use a set of tags to help aggregate content about Seattle area housing for their clients and agreggate it on their site?  Can an enviro group use a tag to aggregate info about a local developer to expose ant-environmental practices?

These are just my quick notes - I'll come back to add reflections later... 

Beth's story on the use of tags to improve the efficiency of using nptech tags (and others) - I could see that many non-profits (and schools) are using outdated and inefficienty tools to accomplish their goals.

Chris Heuer believes that tagging is the most important aspect of web2.0. All events should have their own unique tag. He discussed folksonomies, his launch of brainjams as a response to web2.1 and tagspaces as a response to an identified need to search tags by subsets of users. He introduced Paramedia - networks of people with access to media publishing tools and training.

This is Mike Lawrence, of Computer Using Educators, live blogging from netsquared. This session is being led by Erik Collier of Ask.com, Chris Heuer of BrainJams, Beth Kanter of beth.typepad.com, and Marshall Kirkpatrick of netsquared (immoderator).

The topic of this session is tagging and aggregators and their use in the non-profit world.

Interesting tidbit -  5%-10% of adults read RSS feeds. 

I have been thinking alot lately about how tagging and social bookmarking can be used in the nonprofit sector. The one thing that I thought of right away was using tags to organize content better. That means use tags that will help you find content better.

How can you use tags?

• Create a tag that will be used for news and press releases for your organization. Give the URL and/or RSS feed to people outside of your organization to keep up with the news.
• Create tags related to your mission to find links and photos easier
• Create tags for events
• Are you a large organization? Keep track of your members or chapter websites, blogs, other related items using a tag.
• Need to collaborate with other staff members for a project, research, or event? Create a tag for to help collaborate better.
• Do you work at a museum or are you creating a scrapbook? Be sure to tag photos to find these items easier.

These are just a few ways you can use tags. What other ways can you think of?

The Art Museum Social Tagging Project is a group of art museums is looking at integrating folksonomies into the museum Web by developing a working prototype for tagging and term ollection, and outlining directions for future development and research that could benefit the entire museum community.   The project uses a tool named STEVE, an open-source tool for enabling social tagging of museum object images to create folksonomies.   I first heard about this project last November and thought I might check in on it as some background for the Tagging and Aggregation Panel.

Thanks for all the comments,  sounds like there will be some other participants who are also either working in libraries or aware of the issues going on in the profession!  I should add a disclaimer of sorts,  while I mentioned the university that I work for, I won't be participating in the conference as their representative. I'm here on my own time/dime because I'm interested in the issues and technologies, especially because libraries continue to find themselves pulled further into the larger digital environment that keeps evolving and changing. So my thoughts and comments are representative of myself and and not my employer.

I looking forward to the conversation on this topic, particularly around the question:"What is the best way for an organization to begin to use aggregation and tagging?"  My own brainstorming about this topic is here. 

I'm an individual contributor to Google Health Co-op and work on the non-profit Palo Alto Medical Foundation's tagging efforts @ Google Health Co-op as well.  I'd be happy to speak regarding how tagging is improving health search on Google.

http://www.enochchoi.com/thoughts/archives/002164.html

http://www.google.com/coop/profile?user=000834671960008790965

http://www.google.com/coop/profile?user=001677525886229228418

Hello!  My name is Beth Kanter and I work as a consultant to nonprofits and technology.  I'm not a techie, I'm a trainer.   My work includes training, curriculum development, evaluation, planning, and assessment.  I'm also very interested in the use of technology in developing countries, particularly Cambodia.

I'm very interested in nonprofit adoption of technologies -- what it takes to use technology effectively.      

I am looking forward to being a sponge at this conference - listen, take notes, thinking outloud with other people about the issues. 

What am I bringing to the conference?  Open ears.  Open mind.  Closed mouth.  Okay.  I won't keep my mouth closed for the whole time, but I intend to do a lot more active listening than monologuing.  I'll do the monologue here:

What else will I bring?  Some book knowledge of the Millennial generation and a little experience in marketing to them in a higher education setting.

My experience? I have a little volunteer experience.  Some experience in building and maintaining online communities.  Some experience enabling citizen journalism (circa 1997).  Some exeperience in the .Gov world; some in the .Edu world.  I have ZERO experience in real programming, but I've been living and working online since 1993.