Just one more great reason to go to the Nonprofit Technology Converence (NTC) 2009. Sarah and I both attend NTC 2008 in NOLA and had a great time. I ran a panel on Creative Commons and Fair Use which was well attended, although that could be because we gave away Blue Voodoo Beer to people who asked questions. May have to do one on Copyright 101 of Coders this year.

Here are the details on the conference:
The 2009 NTC will take place Sunday, April 26 through Tuesday, April 28 at the San Francisco Hilton.
* Rooms at the Hilton will be $199 at our group rate, which is pretty darn good for San Francisco.
* NTC Registration will cost the same as this year, starting at $349 for Members, $549 for non-members.

Registration for both the NTC and the Hilton opens on December 1st, 2008. Read more at NTEN’s NTC page.

The Wednesday “Science Fair” was a cute way to brand a vendor session. Often this type of high pressure selling event bothers me, but at NTC I was pleasantly surprised to find a few vendors that were engaged in empowering communities through their IP choices.

The Best:

mpowerOpen – mpowerOpen is software for constituent relationship management (CRM) and fund raising for nonprofits that is open source. This adds another competitor to a field dominated by by closed source companies who do not serve smaller nonprofits. MpowerOpen provides services for nonprofits that want customization or tech support and enables other NPOs to use the code and add to the community.

See3 – See3 is a NPO that focuses on empowering npo’s through digital media. The staff was very aware of copyright related issues plaguing digital media and was even aware of creative commons. Oddly though after 30 mins browsing through their partners and clients websites, I could not find an example of a See3 client using CC on video content. I wonder if their understanding of the need for CC to enable sharing is new…

Tech Underground – The Tech Underground is a network of independent technology professionals offering consulting/support services to nonprofits in the San Francisco Bay area. These guys rocked not just because they were giving away scotch but because they were smart. They were true techies offering tech services through a network of independent consultants with no mark up.

The Bad: There were too many vender’s shilling bad closed source solutions with little to no sense of community with only an interest in gaining market share.

Honorable mention: CiviCRM ran a great affinity group meeting earlier in the day. Sarah blogged about it already at Civil Disobedient.

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Check the slides out. These are the slides for my panel on copyright at the 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference. The panel is Friday at 3:30 pm, but I am willing to talk about Fair Use, CC or Copyright at anytime during the conference.

I am very excited to announce that we will be running a copyright panel at this year’s NTC (Nonprofit Technology Conference). The Conference is in New Orleans and runs from March 19th through the 21st. The panel will be focusing on best practices for non profits including Creative Commons, GPL, BSD, Wiki’s and User Generated Content.

Here are the details:
Generation Y meets Printing Press Law: Copyright questions in the digital age
Friday, March 21 , 2008
3:30 PM – 5:00 PM
Speakers:
Brian Rowe | Freedom for IP, Founder
Sarah Davies | ACLU of Washington, Internet Operations Manager
Others TBA

This interactive panel discussion will delve into the sticky mess of online copyright. User-generated content is an unforeseen battle-ground for legal rights on the internet. We will talk about what some organizations have done to clarify ownership of online content, from very restrictive to entirely open. Your organization’s values around community and sharing should be reflected in your copyright choices. Help us discuss how to make those choices and what your plans and fears are for the future.

Links:
NTC Registration – Early registration ends the 15 of January

I just finished doing NTEN’s online survey for 2008 NTC Agenda. I was surprised to not see a single topic or part of a topic that dealt with online copyright issues. When distributing information online ones IP strategy should play a central role in letting users know what they can do with your content and what happens to their contribution. SecondLife, Myspace, Wikipedia, Flickr and YouTube all have different ways of controlling and enabling distribution through IP choices.

I would love to run a session on using Creative Commons and alternative licensing of intellectual property to reach more constituents and more people in need. Using a culture of sharing as a form of distribution can empower your IP to work for you. If you are attending NTC this year and would find a copyright session useful please let NTEN know.