Drunk Techies

Aspiration recently held the 2008 Nonprofit Software Development Summit in Oakland, CA which was basically a three day event to get a bunch of nonprofit techie geeks into a room, hash out the industry and then get them all drunk afterward. It ended up going very smoothly but for those three days I was pretty stressed. There's a lot of things to do to make an event run smoothly for 115 people. On the up side, I learned how to navigate the Bay (SF, Berkeley and Oakland) in the car (read: mini-van) and realized how incredibly small it is. Also, people swear at you. But outside of picking up boxes of Aspiration T-Shirts and wildly swerving on I-80, I got to meet some really cool people doing crazy stuff in nonprofit technology. There was this little man named Arun from India who is developing a computer program for disabled kids to use (think of Stephen Hawking's wheelchair computer) and it made me really excited about getting involved. I also got to meet a bunch of people in the nonprofit tech industry who I interact with a lot but never actually meet because they're all over the world. For instance, the Brattleboro Tech Collective in Vermont develops Social Source Commons and I finally got to meet Josh, the guy I talk to all the time on Skype. It's crazy how technology totally takes down distance to nothingness. Also, at the Summit, there were a bunch of former CTC VISTAs which was cool to find out. They all basically felt bad for me and bought me booze which was a perk.

Gunner, my boss, is going to be out of the office for the next 6 weeks which means that we're going to be working with a remote boss for a while. It's been kind of hectic as we prepare for him not to be here for so long but it's finally easing down. I'm vaguely worried because a lot of my tasks for my position are kind of set up so that they require Gunner's approval before they can go through. Right now, when he's here it can take him a while to get to things, but when he's in India? We'll see. I mean it hasn't been a problem, it's just one of those things that you find to worry about a new situation, you know? LAME.

San Francisco "winter" is supposedly low 60s, high 50s, dreary with rain. I think we're at the beginning of it now. Luckily, I am told it only lasts from December through January (big contrast to the 28 months of winter we get in Michigan a year). I think that's it for me for right now. Later

Comment from Morgan Sully on December 10, 2008 - 3:18pm

seven words: Second Annual Nonprofit Geek Trivia Pub Quiz.

awesome. that and the haikus.
and the sessions.
and the food.
and the awesome staff.

and meeting LOADS of people equally as geeky and concerned about making a positive change in the world.

oh yeah, and the shirts? don't even get me started.

Comment from Dan Stangl on January 5, 2009 - 6:15pm

Matt,

You make us all look bad with your timely field reports.