Fresh off of the recent Vancouver NetSquared event (also known as NetTuesday), I just got swamped with work and thus was pretty much unable to write a recap. However, since I have a meeting shortly and I can’t really focus much on work, I figured I might as well write a couple of comments on the meeting.
I had happily volunteered to live-blog the event for Rebecca (on Miss604.com), who couldn’t make it on Tuesday. It was the first time I’ve done a guest live-blog directly on her site, which made me a bit nervous (I feel better if I screw up on my site than on anybody else’s!), but at the same time, I was very excited.
At any rate, the evening, entitled “Welcome to the Widget Revolution” was very entertaining, with two presentations on how non-profits are making use of widgets to advance issues of social justice, sustainability and societal change. The last presentation was actually a demo of SproutBuilder, a great tool-building application.
I have the feeling that some of the participants expected a more geeky/techie kind of talk. The last part definitely was, but the rest was very much about how already built widgets were incorporated into the social media toolkit of a number of non-profits. I think that the message could have been more clearly articulated, although reading again the invite, I have to say that one could have found it from there.
Widgets aren’t just little pieces of portable code. Widgets are about opening up your message to your supporters and the community. Widgets represent a shift towards using online tools, and online thinking, to connect with more people and build deeper relationships with the people you are already connected with.
Vancouver’s 3rd Net Tuesday will explore the stories of nonprofits that are spearheading this revolution as well as demo a new widget platform — Sprout.[Vancouver NetSquared Meetup Site]
I took the liberty of making bold the part where you can read exactly what the event was about, but honestly, I can also understand why it felt as though somehow there was something missing. In the future, I would suggest that the organizers make it a bit clearer. Joe has made a LOT of great choices and put in a lot of hard work, both for speakers AND the sponsors – for example, the food was organic and the cutlery was biodegradable.
Here are some links in case you weren’t there:
Jason Mogus Slideshow: (Click here)
Jason Mogus Video:(Click here)
Scott Nelson Video:(Click here)
It was great as always to see a lot of my fellow Web 2.0 friends, including Nancy Zimmerman, Jonathon Narvey, the always amazing DaveO, Erika Rathje, Nadia Nascimento, Jenn Lowther, and I’m a bit afraid I’ve missed someone, so if I did – sorry! You can always send me an email to reproach me, hehe.
Related posts: