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From #13ntc: Puppies

From #13ntc: Puppies published on No Comments on From #13ntc: Puppies

The Nonprofit Technology Conference had everything you could want: WiFi that worked! Great sessions! Handsome sleep-deprived gentlemen roving the halls and sketchnoting those sessions!

But they also had a puppy to skritch, cuddle and fawn over during the breaks! That was in return for a small donation to an animal charity – a lovely approach to fundraising, and a great way to relax a little before learning more about crowdsourced story-centered fundraising in the cloud. (No… wait… that was last year’s session…)

If I had to draw this again, that python’s head would be at a slightly different angle.

From #13ntc: Stranded…

From #13ntc: Stranded… published on 3 Comments on From #13ntc: Stranded…

It was a lovely conference, even from afar (thanks, Maddie Grant and team, for a great online stream!).

A major storm slammed the Midwest, including my wife’s flight home – which was supposed to arrive around dinner, giving us a few hours together before my red-eye to Toronto and then Minneapolis. Then Alex’s flight home was delayed…and delayed… annnnnnd… cancelled. She got herself on another flight.

Meanwhile, I learned at 8:30 pm that my flight the next morning from Toronto to Minneapolis was also scrubbed. Unable to get through to Air Canada by phone (“Owing to greater than normal call volumes,” normally the bullshit line to end all bullshit lines, was probably true that night), I headed to the airport on spec. Thankfully, the Air Canada ticket agent cheerfully found me another flight – later in the afternoon, but it meant that I finally made it to the Nonprofit Technology Conference, bleary-eyed (I had plenty of company on that score) but intact.

Ticket agents, by the way, put up with a lot of crap for circumstances completely beyond their control. Be nice to them.

Uncharitable

Sketchnotes from #13ntc: the Nonprofit Technology Conference

Sketchnotes from #13ntc: the Nonprofit Technology Conference published on 1 Comment on Sketchnotes from #13ntc: the Nonprofit Technology Conference

Here are my sketchnotes from the 2013 Nonprofit Technology Conference. The sessions I drew include panels on:

And then there were the keynotes:

  • Beth Kanter’s panel on Placing Small Bets – which was both a thoughtful exploration of the power and limits of experimentation in the nonprofit world, and a great example of how panels can be more than the sum of their (mighty impressive) parts
  • Dan Pallotta‘s Uncharitable, arguing that nonprofits are trapped in a paradigm of self-sacrifice and calling for charities to throw off the shackles of philanthropy as usual

It’s my favourite conference of the year… even if (see next cartoon) I spent an awful lot of this year’s edition in airports, waiting for the weather to clear.