Here’s what happened in my NetSquared gig in December/ 2012.

Happy New Year!

I’m looking forward to supporting your local community activism in 2013 and I’m delighted to welcome new members to the NetSquared local organizer team. In fact, I received more than five new organizer applications over the holidays and several inactive groups including Seattle and Montreal are also planning to relaunch.
Let’s use the new year to commit to holding frequent NetSquared local events and if you know anyone who might be a good prospect for launching a new group please refer them to me!

Here’s an update on our latest activity:

Highlights from the NetSquared community blog

The NetSquared community blog is alive again! We welcome your contributions. Use the blog to promote your upcoming events, share your nonprofit tech thoughts, or show off (don’t be shy!) with highlights from your meetups. We welcome your blog posts, photos, storifys, videos and more!

Top posts from December:

• NetSquared organizer Tierney Smith shares lessons learned from NetSquared Camp Toronto.
• TechSoup’s Jim Lynch reports on last year’s NetSquared Camps on the community blog.
• NetSquared Camp Downunder unleashed the power of a four-city event.
• Keep abreast of social change and philanthropy in Asia and Africa with Tiffany Pintor’s weekly recaps of the top stories.
• We offer tips on what makes an ideal submission for the Windows 8 Apps for Social Good Contest

Platform

The eleventh of the NetSquared platform is now live. Highlights include the ability to add non-meetup events to your user profile and projects. We have improved the local organizer map to make the pins bigger and easier to navigate. The local organizer profile pages have been fixed and now show your city and link to your group pages.

Windows 8 Apps for Social Good Contest

The Windows 8 Apps for Social Good Contest invites both new and seasoned developers to create an app for “social good” – and you could win cash prizes to help fuel your dream and keep it going!

The contest is open to pre-existing applications, so if you know of a Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8 app that meets our definition of social good please encourage the developer to register.

Note: the contest is only open to residents of the USA. But anyone can vote and share!

January events

So far 14 events have been scheduled in January, with several still in gestation. Are you planning an event that didn’t make it onto this list? Let me know!

• Denver, CO: Engaging Stakeholders with Interactive Annual Reports
• New York: Make Your Nonprofit More Efficient with the Best Cloud-Based Tools
• Vancouver, BC: Tablets, Smartphones, iPads, iPhones: Gadgets for Good?
• New Orleans, LA: Resolution Solutions PLUS the First Crowdfunding Festival for Creators
• Philadelphia, PA: Making Your Website Mobile-Friendly: What, How and Why
• Boston, MA: Mass Innovation Nights
• Guatemala: #CampusTec: Informe de visita a Silicon Valley
• Honolulu, HI: Hacking for good nights
• Toronto, ON: Tech trends of 2013 and what your nonprofit needs to know
• Washington, DC: What’s on the Horizon for 2013 – Panel Discussion
• Morrisville, NC: Data Mapping with Google and WordPress
• Melbourne, Australia: Growing netsquared in 2013
• Paris, France: Comment sortir des énergies carbonées et fissiles?
• Auckland, New Zealand: TBA

Image: JUAN RAMON RODRIGUEZ SOSA on Flickr.

A blog post from NetSquared.org encouraging local organizers to host events on a monthly basis. It’s the key to growth!

Local organizers:

Here’s what I did as the NetSquared Local Community Curator in September 2012.

September is here, and even ‘tho the new year doesn’t come for another four months I still think of September as a time of rebirth and renewal (I’ll always think like a student, I guess.)

What I did at NetSquared in October 2012

October is here! This is going to be a big month for NetSquared. Not only are we going to be holding three regional camps, but there’s also 18 local meetups scheduled and a major local organizer-focused update to the NetSquared platform.

Camps

There are three NetSquared camps scheduled for October:

• October 12, 2012: NetSquared Camp Toronto: Building & Engaging our Networks
• October 25-29, 2012: Vermont ‘Social Media For Social Change’ FREE Workshops
• October 25, 2012: NetSquared Camp Europe

And in November there will be two more:

• November 3, 2012: NetSquared Guatemala: Evento Regional 2012
• November 28, 2012: NetSquared Camp Downunder

Platform

The seventh release of the NetSquared platform is now live. It includes several new features including notification feeds (Facebook-style!) and NetSquared camp pages which appear as green dots on the local map.

What comes next? A major revision of the local organizer pages, to be rolled out October 23, 2012. Hopefully that will solve some of the ongoing bugs y’all have been struggling with, including an unpredictable meetup integration and hunt ‘n peck map icons. :-)

October events

A quick scan shows 18 events happening across the NetSquared local network. Did I miss any? I think our local organizers have put together an impressive lineup. :-)

• Vancouver, Canada: Crowdfunding for nonprofits
• Sunnyvale, CA: iOS Employer/Developer 1on1s
• Chicago, IL: Community Engagement – DexCon/CMEP
• Houston, TX: Learn How to Make Amazing Online Videos for Tiny Amounts of Money
• Toronto: Canada: NetSquared Camp Toronto: Building & Engaging our Networks
• Lafayette, LA: Learning basics of LAMP server configuration
• Washington, DC: Website Redesign: Design For Your Audience
• Baltimore, MD: October Tech & Social Change Baltimore Meetup – Year-End Giving
• Philadelphia, PA: The Integration of Social Media and SEO: How the Twain Meet For Nonprofits
• Boston, MA: Measuring the Networked Nonprofit #MeasureUp Book TweetUp
• Honolulu, HI: Social Media primer for Food Security Campaign
• Guatemala: Sesión de la Mesa Técnica de Innovación – 4 de Octubre – CIG
• Guayaquil, Ecuador: The Guayaquil NetSquared Meetup Group Monthly Meetup
• Manchester, UK: October Meetup: Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!
• Paris, France: La Co-Révolution et le phénomène collaboratif
• Abidjan, Ivory Coast: Abidjan NetSquared Meetup Group Monthly Meetup
• Wellington, New Zealand: NetTuesday event
• Adelaide, Australia: The Hospital Research Foundation: Social media strategy and Dry July

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Photo: My Geek-o-Lantern. Creative Commons licensed by Neal Gillis