Blog Team Guidelines

First of all, thanks to all of the blog team members for helping out. Our goal is to provide thorough coverage of the Summit, in a way that will be informative and fun for everyone involved. To that end, here are some simple guidelines to help get you started.

The Blog Team

• We’ve asked a group of volunteers at the summit to share their thoughts on our blog. We welcome the thoughts and feelings.
• Anyone can join our blog team by following the instructions below
• We invite all participants to help us improve these blogging instructions
• Bottom-lining this effort is Tim Wescott of Aspiration. Feel free to ask him any questions or share any concerns. He’ll be around the conference, but he can also be reached at tim@aspirationtech.org

Register for your blogging account on AspirationTech.org

• Go to http://www.aspirationtech.org/blog/devsummit and sign up using the link in the upper left. This URL will also serve as the primary URL for the blog.
• Fill in as much personal information as you feel comfortable sharing. All entered information is public, though your email address will never be displayed. Only a name is required, everything else is optional.
• After registering, you will receive an email with your password, which you can then use to log-in at http://www.aspirationtech.org/user. You can change your password by editing your profile after logging in.

Blogging Guidelines

• To create a blog entry, click on “Create Content” in the left column and then click on “blog entry”.
• Choose a title for your blog post and enter it under “Title”
• Choose the topic “Nonprofit Software Development Summit” (NOTE: ALL DevSummit blog posts should have this topic).
  • Ignore the section entitled “Heather’s Topics” :^)
• Under “Body”, write your message to be posted. Several HTML tags are supported.
  • For tips on using HTML for your post, visit http://www.aspirationtech.org/filter/tips
• Hopefully it goes without saying that we would like civil, productive discourse on our blogs. We reserve the right to remove any content that we do not feel is appropriate.

Topics

• We invite any and all topics relevant to the Summit to be discussed, whether it’s a cool new feature for Ruby on Rails or the scenic views of downtown Oakland.
• Be BOLD and speak from your own passions in reporting your reflections
• We have three main topics listed on the wiki’s Event Agenda and Event Schedule, and we would like thorough coverage of these themes whenever possible. If you are interested in focusing exclusively on one of these topics, please let Tim know. The links will direct you to the list of sessions focusing on that topic.
  • Practices, Processes, and Community
    • Addresses concepts, themes and essential issues in the nonprofit software development realm.
  • Software Engineering Topics and Trends
    • Dives deep on a host of technical and strategic issues relevant to nonprofit software developers.
  • Going Vertical: Application Focus Areas
    • Explores specific “vertical” categories of nonprofit software.

Interviews

• We highly encourage you to conduct interviews with other people at the summit. This provides wonderful material for posts.
• Ask questions that probe their passions – both in a software sense and in a nonprofit activism sense.
• Sample questions:
  • What is your organization’s mission? What do you do for your organization?
  • Why do you care about nonprofit software development?
  • What are you hoping to get out of this event?
  • What sessions have you attended? What were your reflections?
  • What are you learning here that you will take back with you after the Summit to help you accomplish your objectives?