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At this year’s Nonprofit Technology Conference, CITI Director of Professional Network Services Matthew Eshleman, along with Earthjustice’s Peter Campbell, presented a session covering virtualization technology. We’re pleased to announce that their session was included in NTEN’s June newsletter summary of the best NTC sessions, selected based on conference participant feedback on each of the sessions.   A summary article by Matthew and Peter on “Virtualization: The Revolution in Server Management and Why You Should Adopt It” is featured on the NTEN blog. Excerpt:

Most of the discussion related to virtualization has been centered on large data centers and enterprise implementations, but a small network can also take advantage of the benefits that virtualization has to offer. Here are three common scenarios:

• Using a new server running a virtualization hypervisor to migrate an existing server
• Using a new server to consolidate 3-4 physical servers to save on electric & warranty expenses
• Using a storage area network (SAN) to add flexibility and expandability to the infrastructure

In the first scenario, an existing server is converted into a virtual server running on new physical hardware…

Visit the NTEN Blog to read the full article.

Visit this NTEN website to view videos of the key speakers from the Nonprofit Technology Conference last month.  Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations talks about the impact of self-organized online communities on traditional organizing.  Eben Moglen, Professor of Law, Columbia Law School and Founding Director of the Software Freedom Law Center, gave a thought-provoking talk in favor of open source software and open knowledge sharing in the technology community.  I highly recommend taking time to view these insightful speakers if you were not able to attend NTC.

I’ve been quiet on the blog front lately. In part, I’ve been waiting for the recordings of the NTEN plenaries to go up, at which point I’ll insist you listen to them. Both Eben Moglen and Clay Shirkey gave very thought-provoking presentations. What else can I tell you? I enjoyed Dean Hollander’s session “I Hate My Website!: Overcoming the emotional and logistical challenges of Web site development and online communications planning.” It wasn’t much different in content than a lot of the high-level online strategy sessions you get at NTEN, but I liked his take and his presentation. Unfortunately, his slides don’t seem to be available online.

In “A Nonprofit’s Guide to Client Data Collection and Privacy” we had a great, focused discussion on privacy issues. Presenters Sarah Tucker and Toby Shulruff made a great number of resources available online — sample policies and release forms, in particular.

I was also jazzed by NPower’s presentation on their tool for Measuring the Impact of Technology Projects, though the actual implementation remains to be done, and it’s huge. Slides for the presentation are linked through the session title, above.

On another NTEN-related subject, yesterday Beth Kanter summarized an NTEN webinar on Facebook: So you want a Facebook Fan Page for Your Nonprofit? Here’s the Scoop!. There’s a great list of linked resources at the end of the post.