I'm here at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in Chicago, my first N-TEN event as a participant (as Senior Consultant with Beaconfire, to be specific) rather than an organizer. Everyone's been asking me how it feels, and my colleague Heather Stouffer had the best analogy: It's like the first wedding you attend after your own. I'm not worried about whether everyone's having a good time or whether the wireless connections are working--instead, I can focus on the issues that are most interesting to me rather than being spread too thin trying to cover everything under the sun; I can actually sit in sessions rather than having to be available in the hallway; and I can have in-depth conversations with people rather than talking to everyone for 30 seconds before being pulled into the next discussion.
I'm really pleased to see how much the NTC has grown and how far N-TEN has come, and I'm proud to have played a role in that evolution. But I'm also so happy to be here in a different role, thinking about different things. More on that to come...
