There is so much I learned from my years in Guyana, but the lesson which had it’s biggest impact on me - my life, my career - was that youth are absolutely vital to creating and sustaining positive change. Today I read an article from Starbroek News (online) that reminded me of this lesson:

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National Children’s Conference

Posted By Staff On November 16, 2008

Stop the violence, children say

It was only three words ? stop the violence ? but when 120 Guyanese youths raised their voices to say enough is enough and “we can’t take it any more” it played like a chorus blasting from the Convention Centre at the Ocean View Hotel where the National Children’s Confer-ence wrapped up after two full days of youth empowerment.

From the soft-spoken to the outspoken the youths assembled to say how tired they are of being neglected, physically abused, sexually molested, forced into early labour and left unprotected, among other things. They spoke directly to President Bharrat Jagdeo.

“Mr President, we need more social workers to investigate what is happening with us across the country, we need harsher penalties for child molesters, we are asking you to drop food prices and please, stop the violence!”

Rueshanna Boyce of St Rose’s High School captured their feelings in a gripping address on the opening day of the conference, which was organized by EveryChild Guyana in collaboration with Unicef and the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security.

“If you love us will you hurt us, will you keep us away from school? Will you abuse us and cause us hurts and pains and will you allow us to be victims of child labour? We are loitering on the streets; we are being physically or sexually abused by a stepfather, grandfather, grandmother and worse our own parents…  it is obvious that these very adults who should be protecting us children, instead, protect the family’s image,” Boyce said.

Of major concern to the nation’s youths is their protection. The issue of child protection was a recurring one during the two-day national conference, which drew children from across the country. The children pointed to their parents and teachers as their immediate protectors, but singled out government and their communities as important factors in child protection.

In her address to the conference, Boyce said that children are expected to rise above waking up to violence in the homes, being cuffed, kicked and screamed at, even hearing that they are dunces and good for nothings, and still feel good about themselves. She said that while some put up with it, others leave and live on the streets. But more importantly, she said they are making poor choices.

Where are our mentors? Boyce asked the question as did a host of other children who found the courage to speak up during the conference after initial moments of silence. They unanimously agreed that it is right to first seek out mentors in the home and at school and in their communities.

They are also looking around for role models. The children hope they can find Guyanese with integrity, caring spirits, love in their hearts and intelligence to fill these positions. Their optimism is ripe and according to one child, “we need more role models other than mommy.”

Guyanese youths are also calling on the government to make additional provisions in the budget that will give them greater access to education, health care and social services. As they wrapped up the conference and started to present individual views, they called for a stronger education programme and more schools in the less fortunate areas.

“We need more schools in regions nine and ten and not just that, but also better programmes that will allow children there to have the best education,” one child said while onstage articulating what he and his group of peers wanted to see happen.

Even the police were considered. The children said they hope for a police force that is more responsive to them, and they would also like to see more honest police officers. They called on members of the Guyana Police Force to stop taking bribes and for them to investigate matters more thoroughly before making arrests. Though this evoked laughter among some adults in the room, the children noted that they were being very serious.

The conference was aimed at empowering children across the country to speak out on issues affecting them and to stand up as advocates for child protection. Some of the children Stabroek News spoke with are eager to go back into their villages and speak out on the issues.

Omattie Seaforth, County Director of EveryChild Guyana, had noted that the compelling factor for the children’s conference is the high incidence of violence and abuse that is perpetrated against children in the Guyanese society. She said that the idea behind the conference was that children would leave with a clear understanding of child protection issues and how to safeguard themselves.

Seaforth said she had hoped that the children would bring their dreams, hopes, fears, challenges and enthusiasm to the conference, in the spirit of bringing alive the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Human Services Minister Priya Manickchand, who spoke at the opening of the conference, re-affirmed her commitment to have legislation in place that protects the nation’s children. She said that children’s rights must be respected, but urged the youths to know what those rights are.

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http://www.stabroeknews.com/news/national-children%E2%80%99s-conference/

(via timesonline.co.uk)

Friends of a motorcycle- loving computer consultant who was kidnapped with his bodyguards as he worked in Iraq’s finance ministry 18 months ago are launching a campaign to increase pressure for the men’s release.

They say Peter Moore, 32, who took a lucrative job in Baghdad to pay off his student loan after years of Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) on an allowance of £140 a month, is strong-willed and will not be defeated by his ordeal.

However, they fear he and the other hostages — two Jasons, Alan, a father of two from Scotland, and Alec — have been forgotten because of a virtual news blackout imposed by the government. Their full names have been withheld at the request of the Foreign Office’s advice to the families.

Moore’s friends have set up a website — www.4pete.org - which explains why they are defying the official line that publicity could jeopardise efforts to help the hostages.

“It is to be hoped that if more can be known about Pete and the ideals he represented, then pressure can be brought to bear upon those in a position to negotiate for his and his fellow captives’ release,” the site says.

It claims that the cases of Terry Waite, the Church of England envoy freed in Beirut in 1991 after four years in captivity, and Alan Johnston, the BBC journalist who was held in Gaza for four months last year, suggest that sustained campaigns can produce results.

Most hard-core web users have either seen or used sites like Digg and Reddit at one time or another. These popular news aggregation services use the vote-to-promote model to push interesting user submitted links to the front of their pages. Users then vote on these submissions and the links with the most votes float to the top.

The model first gained traction with the launch of Digg in 2004. Many other sites are trying to repeat Digg’s success by launching similar websites in specific niches. You can find vote-to-promote in Mixx, Reddit, Shoutwire, Blinklist and VideoSift. The USA Today has adopted the model for use in their articles, an interesting approach to bringing more popular news to the forefront of their website.

Del.icio.us and Magnolia, both social bookmarking services, take a different approach to the vote-to-promote model. These sites allow users to share bookmarked links with other users, promoting further discovery of interesting news while adding more bookmarks to the service. The number of times a specific link is bookmarked the more popular it becomes as people implicitly vote for that link.

Websites can now roll their own vote-to-promote applications though Pligg’s and Reddit’s opensource software. Reddit, who opensourced their code earlier this week, has a slim advantage over Pligg as the technology is more familiar among web-heads.

The vote-to-promote model is an interesting way to aggregate fresh content though it does have its flaws. As the technology matures and developers tweak the underlying source code, websites and services will continue to find novel uses for this idea.

You can read more about it here and here.

Why a Free Month?

So that anyone, anywhere can try Idealist at no cost.

Usually, job postings on Idealist cost only $60, but this month we are inviting all nonprofit organizations, as well as vendors and consultants who serve the nonprofit sector, to post all their job openings for free. (Volunteer opportunities, internships, and jobs posted outside the United States are always free.)

If you have never tried Idealist, or if you have used us only for entry-level jobs, we hope you’ll try us for all your positions. 60,000 people come to Idealist every day, and many of them are seeking high-level jobs.

And if you are looking for a job, our goal this month is to get you as many job openings as we can, but to do this we need your help. If you know anyone at an organization that is not currently using Idealist, please invite them to join us. And if you have a way to get the word out to friends and colleagues across the sector - through a mailing list, a blog, or any other way - please tell them that Idealist is free for the whole month of June.

Thank you!

Yahoo Pipes

Pipes is a web service that allows users to easily build web-based applications from aggregated web feeds, web pages and other sources of content. The drag-and-drop user interface makes it dead simple to quickly create useful applications from various data sources.

Some examples below:

Content Keyword RSS
This pipe will search news sources from multiple sites such as Digg, Technorati, Yahoo News, PRWeb, and Google News, compare content to remove duplicates and output a unique RSS feed full of content related to your keywords.

YouTube tags to RSS
Be alerted when videos on Youtube are tagged with specific keywords that you may be interested in watching.

Social Media Firehose
This is a big, fat, wide-reaching net of social media searches to alert you every time your brand or product is mentioned by anybody on a slew of social media sites, including flickr, twitter, friendfeed, digg etc.

Bestselling Books
Keep up with the Amazons bestselling booklist. This Yahoo Pipe creation is updated hourly to include the most popular books on Amazon.

GeoAnotated Reuters News
Uses the geonames.org RSS-to-geoRSS webservice to add location information to Reuters newsfeed. The result is displayed using the Yahoo!Maps AJAX API

Nonprofits will find the service beneficial for augmenting their own data, with Pipes geo-location mashups, buzz monitoring tools and data analysis.
Dapper is a similar service, based in Tel Aviv, that also makes it easy to reuse content from any web site.

Yahoo! Pipes

Google Gears

Gears “is an open source project that enables more powerful web applications, by adding new features to your web browser.” With Google Gears, you can -

• Let web applications interact naturally with your desktop
• Store data locally in a fully-searchable database
• Run JavaScript in the background to improve performance

I use Gears to run GReader offline, to check Remember the Milk and more recently, I’m able to to use Google Docs when disconnected.

Gears is exploring implementing other uses as well:

• Multiple File Upload: Using the File System API, Chris demonstrated a multiple file upload experience.
• Resumable File Upload: He then showed a YouTube mockup that showed uploading multiple files, seeing their status, and after a connection died showing how the file resumes and doesn’t start from 0% All using a ResumableRequest that sat on top of the Blog API and HttpRequest
• Find nearby stuff! A Google I/O demo searched for beer, resulting in local places around the Moscone Center. This example used the Geolocation API which uses GPS, Wifi IDs, Cell IDs, and IP address to work out where you are

Google Gears

1,000 True Fans Theory
Peer-to-peer networks, bittorrent, email and other forms of file sharing have many asking how an artist can make any money when the content they’ve created can be so easily pirated?

The RIAA is trying to address this issue by the suing the bejesus out of college kids and grandparents for using Kazaa, the MPAA is suing the creators of DVD rippers and indie video game makers are having a heck of time getting wider distribution.

Kevin Kelly, a founder of Wired, suggests one solution for content creators to keep some of the profit. His idea is called “1,000 True Fans.” The idea goes like this,

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat.

If you think about it, 1,000 True Fans isn’t that unrealistic. With the growth of internet usage expanding almost exponentially each year, potential exists for growing an even larger fan base. If each of those 1,000 True Fans spent a paltry $100 US a year on artist produced and distributed music, art, media, whatever, that’s $100,000 a each year. This idea works well for solo artists and will need some tweaking for a band, but it’s not an unrealistic goal.

Trent Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails, has tested this approach with his release of the album Ghost in March and The Slip in May. His success in selling directly to his fans has allowed him to bypass the traditional big label model. Also, the prostitue involved with Eliot Spitzer made over a million dollars over night selling singles she created on the site Amie.st (of course this isn’t quite the norm for this approach).

Spinning this idea for non-profit world, I can bet Idealist has 1,000 True Fans. The question for us and for other non-profits is how we can leverage a devoted community, how do we nurture it and with what content? The problem for most non-profits isn’t content creation or distribution, but a lack of a larger following, limited two-way communication and a failure of creativity.

A former PCV of Guyana has started a non-profit called Dance Beyond Limits, Inc.  They’re a nonprofit organization dedicated to enhancing the lives of children and teens with life-altering illnesses, persons with developmental disabilities and inner-city youth through Ballroom Dance.  Check out her upcoming event -

Dance Beyond Limits, Inc. and Dancing 4 Fun have teamed up to bring you a 4-Week Class!!!

Beginners and Intermediate Salsa, Bachata and  Merengue

What: A 4-week dance class and latin party benefiting Dance Beyond Limits

When: Every Tuesday for 4 Weeks starting March 18, 2008 from 7:30-9:30. Party from 9:30-12am

Where: Nemoes Tavern & Grill 6025 Peachtree Pkwy
Norcross, GA 30092.

Price: $25 min. donation for 4-week class. $5 min. donation for each party

Dance Beyond Limits is a nonprofit organization dedicated to enhancing the lives of children and teens with life-altering illnesses, persons with developmental disabilities and inner-city youth through Ballroom Dance.

To Register and Pay for the 4-Week class, visit www.dancebeyondlimits.org and click on Events and then click “DONATE.”

A few months ago FROG, along with 49 other organizations, were invited to have their Change.org sites turned into a branded site.

http://www.change.org/FROG

Some of these other organizations included Amnesty International, Green Peace, CARE, Environmental Defense, The American Lung Association, and The Humane Society of the United States.

We jumped on board immediately, providing Change with our photos, color scheme and a lot of enthusiasm. So what can we do with our new branded site?

1. Have your Change.org social network designed to match your website
2. Email your supporters
3. Capture and download supporter and donor contact information
4. Send “Supporter Requests” to recruit new members
5. Start email advocacy campaigns
6. Blog

Check out the new site and give us a hand where ever you can, donations, recruiting, what ever. Thanks!

http://www.change.org/FROG

I’d be a happy man if FROG had the resources and the time to attend each one of these events. Running down the list, you might ask why our tiny non-profit would want to hit up Bonnaroo or SXSW? Our focus is Guyana and international development, so how do any of these events relate to our work?

From Burning Man to Coachella to DEMO to TED, these are the gatherings of progressive minds, showcasing their latest ideas and boldest initiatives. Much of what happens at these places has nothing to do with our work but everything to do with our potential.

Attending conferences focusing primarily on non-profit work and international development, or workshops on fundraising and community organization fundamentally helps at every level of operation. But it’s these places that attract the brilliant minds and innovative thinkers that don’t traditionally work with us nor we they. With the massive potential for networking and influence from these atypical sources of inspiration, our capacity for good and growth is exponential.

The point being, sure it’s necessarty to attend the workshops and events related to activism and development, but we cannot forget to reach outside of our focus and embrace the people pushing ahead in other areas. There’s much to be learned and appreciated.

Bonnaroo

The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival is a four day annual music festival by Superfly Productions and AC Entertainment, first held in 2002. The festival is held on a 700 acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee, 60 miles southeast of Nashville, Tennessee. The main attractions of the festival are the multiple stages of live music, featuring a diverse array of musical styles including world music, hip hop, jazz, americana, bluegrass, country music, folk, gospel, reggae, electronica, and other alternative music. The festival began with a primary focus on jam bands, but has diversified greatly in recent years. The festival features craftsmen and artisans selling unique products, food and drink vendors, and many other activities put on by various sponsors. Sponsors of the festival are required to provide free activities for attendees.

Bumbershoot

Bumbershoot is an annual international music and arts festival held in Seattle, Washington. One of North America’s largest music and arts festivals, it takes place every Labor Day weekend at the 74-acre Seattle Center, which was built for the 1962 World’s Fair. Seattle Center includes indoor theaters, outdoor stages, McCaw Hall, and Memorial Stadium. The name of the festival was taken from bumbershoot, a colloquial term for umbrella, probably coined in the 19th century as a portmanteau of umbrella and parachute.

Burning Man

Burning Man is a project best known for an eight-day-long annual festival that takes place in Black Rock City, a temporary city on the playa of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, 90 miles north-northeast of Reno, ending on the American Labor Day holiday in September. Though the event’s specific location on the playa changes from year to year, the location has been quite constant in recent years. The event is described by organizers as an experiment in community, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance and takes its name from the ritual of burning a large wooden sculpture of a man on the sixth day. The event is organized by Black Rock City, LLC, under the guidance of founder Larry Harvey.

Coachella

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is a three-day annual music and arts festival held at the Empire Polo Fields in Indio, California. The event features many genres of music including alternative rock, hip hop, and electronica as well as large sculptural art. The event has several stages/tents set-up throughout the grounds, each playing live music continuously. The main stages are: Coachella Stage, Outdoor Theatre, Gobi Tent, Mojave Tent, and the Sahara Tent.

The D Conference

Since its debut in 2003, The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way.

Conference creators and executive producers Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher put the industry’s top players to the test during informal but pointed conversations about the impact digital technology will have on our lives now and in the future. The results are critical insights and relevant advice that stay with you well after the conference ends.

The top annual gathering of the digital world will return to the elegant Four Seasons Resort Aviara in Carlsbad, Calif., from May 27 to 29, 2008, for the sixth edition of D. Check back for more information on D6. Or, send us an email with the word “Subscribe” in the subject line and we will notify you when registration opens.

DEMO

DEMO is the premier launch venue for new products, technologies and companies. For more than 16 years, DEMO has established a reputation for identifying and presenting to an elite audience the products most likely to have a significant impact on the marketplace and market trends in the coming year. Each product is carefully screened and selected by DEMO’s Executive Producer, Chris Shipley, one of the top trend spotters in the personal technology product industry. DEMO is held two times a year; one in February, and one in September.

EMP Pop Conferences

The EMP Pop Conference is an annual event that debuted in 2002 and takes as its mission the idea of bringing academics, writers, performers, and other music lovers into an all too rare common conversation. Previous year’s conferences have resulted in the collections Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music, forthcoming later this year on Duke University Press, and This is Pop: In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project. The conference is sponsored by the Seattle Partnership for American Popular Music (EMP, KEXP 90.3 FM, and the University of Washington School of Music), with the help of a grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

Gel

Gel (Good Experience Live) is a conference focused on experience in all its forms — business, art, society, technology, and life.

The conference has been held annually in New York City since 2003, and the first European counterpart, euroGel 2006, has taken place in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 1 September 2006. Each conference has been hosted by Gel’s founder, Mark Hurst.

ideaCity

ideaCity, also known as ‘Canada’s Premiere Meeting of the Minds’, is an eclectic gathering of artists, adventurers, authors, cosmologists, doctors, designers, entertainers, filmmakers, inventors, magicians, musicians, scientists and technologists. Fifty of the planet’s brightest minds converge on Toronto each June to speak to a highly engaged audience. Only 497 are privileged to attend.

Produced and presented by Moses Znaimer, ideaCity is not themed around any one topic, issue or business. There are no scripted speeches or, breakout or parallel sessions. Rather, everyone is in one place and in on the same narrative. With extra-long schmooze breaks between sessions, and legendary parties each night, attendees have had an unprecedented opportunity to mingle with such notable speakers as Conrad Black, Barbara Gowdy, Michael Ignatieff, Douglas Coupland, Pamela Wallin, Pete Seeger, Robert Kennedy Jr., John Ralston Saul, Daniel Libeskind, Clayton Ruby, Romeo Dallaire and the late Peter Jennings.

Nantucket Conference

The Nantucket Conference convenes a small, invitation-only group of New England’s most creative and forward-thinking entrepreneurs, investors, technologists, and executives. There are several reasons why this region’s high-level high-tech players consider the Nantucket Conference a must-attend gathering.

First, there are unique opportunities for exchanging ideas and networking in a relaxing, informal environment. [They] acknowledge that much of the value of the Nantucket Conference comes from impromptu hallway conversations, serendipitous seatings at lunch, and walks around town. Nantucket is a place for having fun, doing business, and making new connections.

Second, sessions on Nantucket elicit the kind of real-world war stories and insight that you don’t hear at any other conference. All proceedings of the Conference are off-the-record, which gives presenters a chance to talk openly and honestly. [They] limit the use of PowerPoint and forbid blatant company pitches. Also, since there is precisely no difference in the caliber of people on stage and those in the audience, there is always plenty of opportunity at each session for interaction and debate.

Finally, this isn’t an event produced by a conference company that churns out dozens of cookie-cutter events each year. Nantucket is organized by a group of people — [their] Advisory Board — who actually work in the technology space every day.

The National Peace Corps Association Group Leaders Forum

An annual forum for the leadership of the 130+ Peace Corps RPCV groups to meet and discuss important topics relating to Peace Corps, the RPCV community and international development.

Nonprofit Technology Conference

Where people come “together at the Nonprofit Technology Conference to connect with colleagues, learn about the issues, share their knowledge with others, and, of course, have fun. [They] talked about what works, what doesn’t work, and what is in the works when it comes to using technology in the nonprofit sector to further your cause.

O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference

ETech balances pie-in-the-sky theorizing with practical, real-world information and conversation. Our tutorials and breakout sessions will help you inject magic into your own projects, while keynotes and hallway conversation will hopefully spark enough unconventional thinking to change how you see your world.

Penny Arcade Expo

The Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) is an annual gamer festival held in Washington. PAX was created by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, the authors of the Penny Arcade webcomic, because they wanted to attend a show that gave equal attention to video gamers, computer gamers, and tabletop gamers. No such show existed, so PAX was born.

Created in 2004, PAX has doubled in size each successive year and has grown into a weekend-long celebration of gamer culture. Defining characteristics include game-inspired concerts, panels on game industry topics, exhibitor booths, after-hours parties, tournaments, and freeplay areas.

PICA - TBA

PICA acknowledges and advances new developments in contemporary art while fostering the creative explorations of artists and audiences. Established in 1995 by a committed group of artists and patrons, PICA features emerging regional, national, and international artists in all disciplines, bridging the gap between historically-focused collecting institutions, commercial galleries and performing arts presenters. PICA’s enduring passion adds significant value to the arts ecology of the region.

Pop!Tech

Conversation and dialogue are key parts of the Pop!Tech experience. Increasingly, we’ve been working to take the best of the insights and magical moments that happen in Camden, and share them with new communities throughout the world. We’re doing this through books, television, live “satellite” events, and more. Thus, even as the Pop!Tech conference draws to a close, the Pop!Tech conversation continues to inspire people around the world.

Pop!Tech champions the work of exceptional thinkers, entrepreneurs, activists, and performers but we are always looking for new and inspiring speakers to bring to the Pop!Tech stage. We invite you to let us know about any amazing individuals who you feel would be a strong candidate for presenting at future Pop!Techs. Please send an email with relevant links and background information to June Sung.

RESFest

RESFest was founded in 1996, and has become the most prominent digital film festival in North America. It is a leading global showcase of new digital filmmakers alongside England’s onedotzero festival. The festival now tours the world and in 2005 traveled to 35 cities in the USA, Canada, UK, Japan, Australia, Brazil and in various cities in Europe, Asia and Africa. A large part of the festival’s current content focuses on cutting-edge music videos and short films, and directors like Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham and Jonathan Glazer have all had their catalogs of work showcased at RESFest over the years.

The Sundance Film Festival

The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival in the United States and ranks alongside the Cannes, Venice, Berlin and Toronto film festivals as one of the most prestigious in the world. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the U.S. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, Utah as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is the premier showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival comprises competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, and a group of non-competitive showcase sections, including the Sundance Online Film Festival.

Supernova Conference

(via supernova2007.com) “I put together the first Supernova conference three years ago because, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, we all knew something was happening here, but we didn’t know what it was. My conviction was that underneath all the changes - business becoming increasingly distributed, users becoming more knowledgeable, old industry models collapsing, and everything and everybody becoming networked - is one fundamental phenomenon: decentralization.

At Supernova, we bring together business, government, and technology thought leaders to understand how decentralization and pervasive connectivity are changing our world.”

SXSW

South by Southwest is a set of interactive, film, and music festivals and conferences that take place every spring in Austin, Texas. Begun in 1987, SXSW is centered around the downtown Austin Convention Center and each of the three parts run relatively independently, with different start and end dates. SXSW is one of the largest music festivals in the United States, with more than 1,400 performers playing dozens of venues around Austin over four days in March. SXSW is the highest money making public event for the Austin economy, bringing in more revenues than Austin City Limits Music Festival and the Texas Longhorn football home football games.

In 1994 SXSW added Film and Interactive conferences. SXSW Film has become one of the world’s premiere film festivals, focusing on new directing talent. Similarly, SXSW Interactive has attracted a strong following among Web creators and entrepreneurs.

TED

TED (Technology Entertainment Design) is an annual conference held in Monterey, California and recently, semi-annually in other cities around the world. TED describes itself as a “group of remarkable people that gather to exchange ideas of incalculable value”. Its lectures cover a broad set of topics including science, arts, politics, global issues, architecture, music and more. The speakers themselves are from a wide variety of communities and disciplines. The TED Conference also has a companion conference, TED Global, held in varying locations.

With all the content your forward thinking non-profit is producing and maintaining, it’s odd that you wouldn’t consider self-publishing. The technology has been around for a few years and at this point, it’s almost effortless to publish something really worth reading. From your Twitter micro-content, Facebook social timeline, to your blogs, Flickr photos and God know what else you’re using to push your organization, you can put together a really interesting piece of history.

The reasons for publishing are straight forward. From promotion to organizational memory to building revenue, self-publishing your material is a novel and fairly inexpensive approach for pushing your ideas. Pick your target audience, round up the relevant resources and put together something compelling. Your printing options are there.

Two popular web-based technologies that stick out are Blurb.com and Lulu.com. Both exist for indie, on demand, cost-effective publishing - meaning you.

So what is Blurb? Here’s a great YouTube clip on how it works:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5n1Yeq34Eo]

And Lulu? You can also use their software to publish your ideas into books, but they also help you to move other digital content. From the site, Lulu helps you publish “…music, comics, photographs, movies and well, you get the idea.”

With a bit of inspiration, some interesting content and a little effort, you can turn your latest event and idea into something profound. Really, why wouldn’t you want to publish if you could?