A couple of weeks ago, I volunteered at Community Media Workshop's first CommuniCamp, an open space conference for nonprofit communications staff. For me, this was an experiment to see how the open space format would work for CMW (I hope this will be the first of many open space events there!). It was also a chance to reconnect with old friends working in the nonprofit technology space in Chicago, while meeting some new ones.

The event was incredible, as expected :) Some quick takeaways:

• Nonprofiteers are interested in emerging technologies, like Facebook, but range from enthusiastic to skeptical about the potential benefits.
• Technology actually figured in a large number of conversations. It's clear that tech is driving a lot of the communications models we're seeing today, ranging from online social networking to content management systems. This makes non-techie communications folks nervous sometimes.
• "My CMS is better than your CMS." We had a couple of quick conversations on Drupal vs. Wordpress, Drupal vs. Joomla, and questions from an org using Plone. The group consensus seems to be that tools like Wordpress may be end-user friendly for DIY web development by non-techies, but building a more sophisticated web presence on a platform like Drupal requires technical skill. Once built, however, these systems allow non-techie users to manage and administer powerful websites, databases, and web applications without forcing them to learn "tech" skills.
• Organizations should focus on developing relationships with trusted vendors, rather than having non-techies select a technology platform. I pointed out that when we quoted "typical" nonprofit website specifications with some of the folks from the Joomla! project, the cost to develop a particular site (measured in hours of work) was very comparable between the two. The leading applications in the open source CMS space are all fairly powerful these days.
• My friends in Chicago are doing empowering, amazing work.