Wouldn't it be great if complicated technology concepts were explained in a simple way that's easy to understand? Imagine how something like this could assist you in training sessions for patrons or staff. Well look no further, Common Craft creates explanatory videos "in plain English" that cover topics like money, society, and technology.
 
In this free webinar, Stephanie Gerding from TechSoup will interview Lee LeFever, from Common Craft to learn more about their learning videos and how they are created. We will also hear how librarians are using these videos to support the needs of their community.

Wednesday, November 18, 11 a.m. Pacific time (12 p.m. Mountain time, 1 p.m. Central time, 2 p.m. Eastern time)

Space is limited, register today!

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The Internet is a great tool for communicating and connecting. We now have a variety of ways to do so, but which one is best suited for your needs? Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn? Each serves its purpose and audience, but what if your needs aren't served with these tools? Create your own!

Ning is a powerful tool that allows you to not only create a dynamic, easy to update website, but its functionality allows your community to create accounts, share information, connect with you and other people in your community and work collaboratively.

Kami Griffiths will interview Manny Hernandez, author of Ning For Dummies who will give an overview of Ning and how it is being used by several organizations. Learn what it takes to get a Ning site set-up and the resources needed to keep it going.

Please join us on Thursday, October 15, 11 a.m. Pacific time. Space is limited so register today!

Our friends at Idealware have partnered up with Third Sector New England to offer a one-day, intensive bootcamp on October 7 to help organizations maximize their fundraising through email. And, they've extended an offer to TechSoup users for a special 15% discount off the registration fee by using the discount code TS325 when registering.

Here's more info from their site:

What: NTEN is holding an online workshop on social media using a Choose Your Own Expert format. They've gathered a group of nonprofit social media experts to help you devise a solid organizational strategy and learn the secrets of a variety of social media tools.  After an opening plenary by Beth Kanter, you'll choose one of 4 breakout sessions:

Mozilla Service Week is here! We've blogged about Mozilla Service Week a few times in the past few weeks, but if you still haven't gotten involved, it's not too late. The Mozilla Blog has a list of projects and challenges that still need volunteers. If you need help at your nonprofit but don't know where to start, try Jayne's list of short-term assignments for tech volunteers. Beth has some suggestions too.

All week, the Mozilla Service Week site will be featuring volunteer success stories. You can also follow the action on Flickr and Delicious.

Are you participating in Mozilla Service Week, either with your nonprofit or as a volunteer? If so, come tell us about it in the TechSoup forums.

Earlier this year, we hosted the first Microsoft-TechSoup Show Your Impact Story Contest and I wandted to take a moment to highlight one of the winners. Elliot blogged about another one of the winners last week. As you may have noticed, we've been writing tooklits and guides, conducting webinars, and blogging about different ways to plan and prepare for disasters and emergencies over the past couple of weeks.

This is, in part, because September is National Preparedness Month. It's also in part because it's around this time of year that the news is full of warnings about hurricanes and wildfires and we want to do our part to make sure that nonprofits and libaries have resources especially for them.

Despite the fear that talking about a major natural disaster might evoke, the resources we've been developing and sharing are really intended to help ensure that your organization can be resilient and flexible — able to adapt to any situation quickly, whether it's an emergency or an opportunity.

One such resource, is a project of the Pangea Foundation, one of the winners of that contest I mentioned earlier. They developed something called ReliefPoint, "a real-time communications hub for national disaster relief coordination and information dissemination." They initially created it in response to the October 2007 wildfires that destroyed land and homes in and around San Diego.

Initially, the region relied on all-centers in order to communicate that status of the fires to various agencies, news affiliates, and community members, but they found it to still take too long to get the information turned around. As an alternative, Pangea created (in 3 days) a hub that provided:

Ana-Marie Jones is the Executive Director of CARD - Collaborating Agencies Responding to Disasters, a nonprofit located in Alameda County, California. Created by local community agencies after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, CARD trains and supports nonprofits and their special needs clients in disaster preparedness, response, and recovery activities. CARD has been a TechSoup partner for developing The Resilient Organization: A Guide for Disaster Planning and Recovery, a new 77-page manual for nonprofits to prevent and recover from any disaster.

Cell phones and "smartphones" are easily the greatest additions to accessible emergency preparedness and disaster response. Virtually any nonprofit can dramatically increase its level of emergency preparedness and planning efficiency by embracing cell phone technology. Since many employees, volunteers and consumers already carry cell phones, this approach doesn't necessarily require buying anything new. If the phones are already familiar to the user, little time will be needed to  teach new technology, and the tech support systems for cell phones is readily accessible — in stores, via phone, and online. Remember that even if the reception and signal fail, the programmed information is still available!

Among the most useful ways to embrace the cell phone solution is to dedicate a few minutes at staff meetings and gatherings to help program phones. Have people pull them out and enter these numbers and information immediately. Some of the most basic things to program include:

Kevin blogged last week about the upcoming Online Nonprofit Technology Conference that NTEN is hosting on September 16-17. I want to add a bit more to the discussion about it here.

First, TechSoup users are eligible to get a 25% discount off the registration price just for being part of TechSoup. Type "TS25" as your discount code when you register.

A few months ago we conducted a webinar called Producing Webinars for Nonprofits & Libraries where we discussed the best production practices for delivering webinars and how to inspire participant interaction and engagement before, during, and after the event. We heard from experts that have used webinars to develop awareness and build online community in their organizations.

There was overwhelming interest from participants to go even deeper by presenting the process step-by-step. So we'e decided to take you behind the scenes of TechSoup Talks and demonstrate how our webinars are organized, what we do, and don’t do to ensure a successful webinar.

Join us on Thursday, September 10, 10 a.m. Pacific time for Step-by-Step for Conducting Webinars for an inside look into how to produce great webinars for your organization.

This webinar is ideal for nonprofit and library staff who have decided that they would like to conduct webinars or web conference calls, but aren't sure how to get started. We will walk you through the process from start to finish, spending time talking about ReadyTalk – the web conferencing tool we use to promote, register, conduct, record, and track each webinar. Shawn Cardinal from ReadyTalk will be available to answer product-specific questions.

Register today!

You understand how to track the success of your programs, but when it comes to social media you're at a loss. How do you show that this new technology is something worth the staff time invested?

If you are interested in implementing a social media program (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Digg) but are unsure how to measure the impact or know what success looks like, attend this free TechSoup Talks webinar on Thursday, August 13, 10 a.m. Pacific time.

Kami Griffiths will interview John Haydon and Chris Garrett to learn more about the impact we can expect to see from these tools, how it can be tracked, and how to adapt to get the most return on your investment.