Presentation on YouTube (10 minutes). 

June 8 I was able to speak at the SIGCHI conference - The Web and Beyond (http://www.thewebandbeyond.nl) about Helpalot. It's a social network site with evaluations.

More on the project on the project weblog http://www.makingthesite.com

To take advantage of the oppportunities that blogs and socialnetworking offer, many nonprofits have to reach the point where they have broader definitions of constiutents, participants, members, the media, and donors, and a broader definition of participation. I'm not sure what percent of service-providing nonprofits perceive any incentive in increasing their investment in these areas, as the case for return on their investment isn't a clear one.

 What bridging examples are there of organizations that moved from being net2/ socialnetworking/blog/ and wiki ignorant to successfully embracing these and seeing powerful results? Cases of custom webapps and mashups are the ones that come first to my mind.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the best way to go about networking groups of people who share common interests or experiences, whether it's conference attendees, trip alumni, organization members, or whomever. Which is why I showed up at this Online Social Networks panel. I was hoping for some new ideas on how to establish better online linkages and communication channels between the spokes and individuals of an organization.

So I asked the panelists how they'd advise or approach networking a group like Net2 participants. Dimitri responded by suggesting that my question was missing the point because we're already networked through existing social web tools like tagging which enable us to find any content related to Net2. And Ginger added that it's not about the tools, it's about the community.

Hi, this is Ginny live-blogging from Social Networking Systems at the NetSquared conference. Where do we start with the hot topic of social networks in one hour?

Like a lot of the sessions today, this was a chance to throw out some ideas, answer some questions and pose thoughts for next steps on how to use social networks to make change.

The best point made in the session is that to understand any community - whether an online social network or an offline grassroots group - we have to listen to our audience and appreciate the unique culture that any community has. Since only a small part of our community is sitting in this room, consider these points below as open questions for your answers and ideas.

I think I just heard the panelist say they have almost finalized a partnership to bring Youth Noise with the Verizon network.

I want to learn more about this.

People are organizing themselves on places like myspace, etc.

How are they organizing themselves and why? 

Daniel Ben-Horin welcomed us to the reception last night.  He warned us not to eat the cake as being nonprofit they were only rented!  No, seriously - eat the cake.  There was a chocolate, chocolate cake with the net2 logo.  I ate the first bite of the first piece of this one .. yum.

But the cake that created the most buzz in this reception was the HP cake - see the logo in strawberries.  It was fantastic!

Hello folks! 

I will be hosting a pre-conference dinner Monday night, from 5pm until the reception starts at 7pm.

NOTE: The venue was to be Nicolino's Garden Cafe, but it is closed for memorial day.  Please join staff at La Fontana restaurant in the Hilton if you were planning on coming here 

The topic is "Technology of Social Networks", a discussion of the technology powering social networking sites.

You don't need to be a techie to enjoy. Technology is not the closed-up, tight-lipped death-star fortress that it used to be.