Brisbane Connecting Up Conference 19-20 May: Great Line-Up

This year’s fifth Connecting Up conference ‘Online and Off to the Future for Nonprofits!’ will bring together people, information and stories about how innovative community and nonprofit sectors are using technology to change their worlds, whether it be a neighbourhood or a nation.

Conference Streams At The Brisbane Hilton

• Strategic Planning – planning, consulting, researching and thinking about where ICT fits with where you want to be in the future
• Generating Support and Money – Online fundraising and campaigning
• The Social Web (Web 2.0 and beyond) – Networking and collaboration tools to connect you with the people you need to know (and vice versa)
• How-To Workshops – hands on skilling for nonprofits – in website development, CMS systems, CRM, VoIP, Blogging, Using MS Office, Using Open Office, Online directories, Video-conferencing, Choosing mobile plans, Security, spam etc, Choosing b/band carriers, Which service provider?

Social Networking Sites Crucial To NonProfits

Doug Jacquier, CEO CISA Inc has returned from the US Nonprofit Technology Conference in New Orleans, and he is in absolutely no doubt that the tools of the social web are going to be a crucial part of online life for NonProfits in Australia, sites such as:

• social networking sites like Facebook
• video sites like YouTube
• photo sites like Flickr
• wikis like Wikipedia
• blogs
• RSS feeds etc

Doug continues:

“From fund-raising to membership to PR to activism, the days of one-to-many tools like email, e-newsletters etc will soon be numbered.

We live in a world where YouTube uploads 65,000 new videos every day and 3 new blogs are created every 2 seconds. So we need to be ready to get into these personalised, opt-in, many to many tools that will be necessary for our successful communication now and in the future.

Connecting Up 08 is presenting some of the best and brightest in the Web 2.0/social web world to help us make the transition. Look out for:

* Beth Kanter : a legend in her own lifetime in the US nonprofit online world, Beth will present at the conference and offer an intensive web 2.0 workshop on the Wednesday following the conference
* Zack Rosen : web strategist for a US presidential candidate, innovator in open source member management systems (CRM), Zack is the techie you can understand
* Priscilla Brice-Weller and Emily Turner : Yes, but who’s actually doing Web 2.0 here? These go-getting pioneers, for starters! Check out their experiences.”

The last two CU conferences in Adelaide were terrific – this one promises to be just as inspiring. You can see presenters here and register here.