Christine

Responses for the VentureChicks

There's been some interesting feedback on the recent search for female investor-bloggers. Thanks to Matt Marshall, Kirsten Osalind, and Anne Zelenka for chiming in on the topic. Though I've got to say...there have to be more than three of us. Um...doesn't there? I will continue to maintain the list, so please do comment with any more suitable blogs that you find.

Ramifications of Web 2.0 for Nonprofits with Participatory Applications

Although Web 2.0 may be a dying buzzword in technorati circles, its paradigms are still new within most nonprofits. At N-TEN's 2006 Nonprofit Technology Conference, traditional issues of community, advocacy, and participation were explored within the context of individual ownership and content remixing:

FreeFind-Typepad Beats Google-Typepad for Blog Search

I found some down time this weekend to take care of a lingering annoyance: site search on my blog.

Nonprofits Using VoIP for Advocacy, Outreach, and Service Delivery

Folks came to this 2006 NTC session because they were interested in telephony cost savings, networking distributed organizations, and reduced operating costs. The presenters (organized by Duncan Drury of the London Advice Services Alliance) presented some great case studies and context:

Online Benchmarks for Nonprofit Outreach

Ben Smith and Karen Matheson of M+R Strategic Services presented the results of their recent study on e-mail messaging metrics. The study included environmental, human rights, and international aid organizations, and looked for benchmarks around both donation and taking action:

Where the Girls Are: N-TEN's 2006 NTC

Environment: The 2006 Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) in Seattle, sponsored by N-TEN.

Community WiFi Deployment in Seattle

Muni wireless, metro wireless, ubiquitous access...what defines community wireless? This was part of a good panel discussion at the 2006 Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) sponsored by N-TEN. David Keys from the City of Seattle's Community Technology Program proposes these characteristics:

Faith or Control? Frameworks for Engaging Constituents

How to control your message - and how to have faith in your constituents and set your message free - were central issues at this week's 2006 Nonprofit Technology Conference in Seattle. Michael Stein organized a conversation on smart communications in relationship management, and Steve Anderson from ONE/Northwest kicked things off with a formal framework for constituent engagement:

Kawasaki's Keys to Nonprofit Innovation

Guy Kawasaki offered the opening keynote at the 2006 Nonprofit Technology Conference on the art of innovation. What stuck out most in an audience of mission-based organizations? Mission statements are stupid. It's about mantras: if you're Wendy's, you don't provide "innovative service delivery" - you provide "quality fast food." Having received many, many ugly mission statements that use ten-dollar words yet mean nothing, I couldn't have agreed more:

VC Girl-Watching

I've been noting the apparently long-standing hullabaloo over the women at Etech, and thought it would be interesting to look for blogs from venture capital women for a change. Here's where I looked, and what I found:

Katrina: Muni WiFi at its Finest

Before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, city CTO Greg Meffert thought that he'd be known for a host of good outcomes as delivered by a new muni wireless system. Neither lowered crime nor reductions in the digital divide, however, were as astonishing as what this system delivered (and still delivers) in Katrina's aftermath:

Standards-Setting on VoIP and IPTV

John Waclawsky (from Cisco's mobile solutions group), coined the term S4 for "Systems Standards Stockholm Syndrome" - like hostages becoming attached to their captors, systems standard participants become wedded to the process of setting standards. Henry Sinnreich from pulver.com moderated a Spring 2006 VON panel that talked about this issue as it relates to voice and video over IP:

What's Really Happening Around IPTV

Dave Burstein from DSL Prime lassoed a bunch of IPTV evangelists at Spring 2006 VON. The idea was to discuss what's real about video over IP, and what we'll continue to wait for. The big takeaway? IPTV is about bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth. Each of these companies had something to say about it:

How the Internet is Transforming Television Distribution

The global video market adds up to $350B, including industries such as theatrical film, retail purchase/rental, and cable and satellite subscriptions. At Spring 2006 VON, Jeremy Allaire of Brightcove explored how the Internet is transforming TV content distribution:

Mobile IM and IP: the Web Portal Killers

Mobile presence, availability, and community were the central issues brought to Spring 2006 VON by Borough Turner of NMS Communications. As explored in Turner's session, here's how mobile IM/IP could become Web portal killers:
 

Are the Girls at VON?

Environment: Spring 2006 VON in San Jose.

Transforming Video on the Net

VON originally stood for voice on the net, but now it's also video on the net...and Hank Kafka, the Chief Architect for BellSouth, would like to see us move to "everything on the net" (EON). Here's the vision as articulated at Spring 2006 VON:

Why Sling Media is Protecting Consumer Freedom

"Bits are bits." - That's how Jason Krikorian of Sling Media took his place onstage at Spring 2006 VON today, drawing parallels between video over IP and VoIP issues:

Sprint's ILEC-Hosted IP Centrex Deployment Strategy

How are ILECs and CLECs propping up their market share in traditional TDM voice services? Rick Schermerhorn from Sprint outlined Sprint's Business Markets strategy at Spring 2006 VON:

How the Big Guys Support VoIP Through Mesh Network Transitions

Seamless transition between mesh network sites is a tough challenge for data access. At Spring 2006 VON, the even greater challenge of VoIP transitions was addressed:

The Impact of Voice/VoIP on MMOGs

MMOG communities were an interesting (and surprising) addition to today's program at Spring 2006 VON. Robert Moore from the Palo Alto Research Center guided a panel through a discussion of how voice collaboration (via VoIP) is changing online gaming:

Deployment Challenges for WiFi Operators

A coterie of network operators got together at Spring 2006 VON to discuss growth drivers, challenges, and roadmaps around WiFi deployments (and specifically, voice over WiFi). Mike Borsetti moderated, and panelists included:

Etech 2006 Photos

etech2006 blogging
Originally uploaded by spacejockeys.

Ning: A Playground of Social Freeware

Yoz Grahame and David Sklar stepped up at O'Reilly Etech to demo Ning, a free platform for whipping up social applications. This is definitely worth checking out if you've got the next big idea, but no cash to develop it:

Similarity Searches in Good Ol' SQL

This was a very interesting project developed during Google's Summer of Code. Meredith Patterson, a PhD from the University of Iowa, is the author, and at O'Reilly Etech she shared her techniques for intuitive searches using data mining extensions built in postgres. See how easy it is to discover relevance buried in masses of data: