Think about your old or current workplace.

How your emotions have gone from soaring hope to plunging despair in an instant.

How your sunny first beliefs about this job crumbled away in the harsh reality, as people showed their true faces and negativity.

How you hoped your desire for mentorship and continuing education would be honored, and it wasn’t.

How it was harder and harder to get out of bed in the morning.

The day you realized that you could have no loyalty to people in your office who betrayed you, who yelled at you, or socially ostracized you in other ways.

How you kept asking yourself, why why am I going to this job that I hate?

Why can’t I find a new job that’s better?

Or even, “Why am I looking for a new job at all? All jobs are the same!”

Think about how that workplace has affected you, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. With the prospect of leaving it all behind, do you feel liberated and joyful, or has the negative energy of your workplace rubbed off on you, leaving you feeling exhausted and deflated? If it has, here’s how you can start to recover your balance.

Start to address these things one by one.

Feelings: “I just want to cry” “I just want to scream.” “I just want to hide somewhere.”

Jennifer Louden, Author, The Woman's Comfort Book

Beliefs/Values: “I don’t believe that there are any good bosses.” “I’m such a lazy, dumb worker, I deserved all of the abuse that boss gave me.”

You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay

Ideas: “There are too many people competing for shitty jobs! Bosses can treat people like crap and they can’t do anything but hang onto the job because they’re too scared they won’t find another one!”

When you start to address your ideas, read Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore and Uncharitable by Dan Pallotta. Dan Pallotta talks about nonprofit dysfunctions, and can help you address what may be holding your old organization back, and the sector as a whole. It can be very healing to name and claim what’s been going on, what’s making your nonprofit so dysfunctional, and the people in it so dysfunctional. So even if you can’t take back the months or years you spent there, knowing it was a systemic problem instead of just you can be comforting.

Work ethic: “Why should I work hard for anyone after this terrible experience? Won’t everyone just take advantage of my good nature? Is it even worth it to look for a job in this field?”

Barbara Winter

Here’s another way you can recover, aside from reading the books above. Journal every morning, for 3 pages. However long that takes you. Just wake up and journal. It can be about anything. There are no rules except that you fill up 3 pages, longhand. No checking email, voicemail, texts. Just journal right there in bed.

If you need prompts to journal, think about these questions.

* Where am I at right now, physically? Emotionally?

* What’s my outlook, my assumption as I respond to daily events? Am I assuming the best? The worst?

* How clear is my thinking? Am I distracted easily? Can I concentrate on what I used to enjoy?

* What did my sense of purpose used to be? What is it or where is it now?

* What can I do to feel joy every day? Draw a picture? Sing a song in the shower? Walk my dog?

* What one change can I make right now that will help me feel good in this moment?

* What can I do to take care of myself today?

Thanks for reading. You CAN recover from that toxic workplace. And if you need any help, I’m here for you.

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Gender, A tricky subject

Some frequently asked questions I get are:

Why Wild Woman Fundraising? What about the Men?

I’ve been asked recently whether my meetings are just for women, or if men can come too. I say, “Of COURSE men can come too. Just because I have a mission to help women empower themselves doesn’t mean that men can’t attend these meetings and get something out of it.” And for that matter, Trans people can learn a lot as well!

And, I’m not a man, and I think there are plenty of blogs out there written by men that can give you the male voice you’re craving, from a male perspective, speaking directly to you, as a man. I’m not trans, but there are trans blogs out there too. If you’re interested in a woman’s perspective, then read what I have to say.

I write from my research and experience, and although I do write frequently about books I’ve read by male authors, my perspective will remain a wild woman’s. And I’m writing primarily to women who want to empower themselves, even if they don’t claim the label of wild.

Why exclude men in the title of my blog?

Let’s say there’s a group of American black entrepreneurs meeting because they want to discuss business ideas and issues facing black entrepreneurs specifically. White entrepreneurs might say, “Well, you’re excluding us, how dare you?” And this group might reply, “We’ve got issues that are particular to our group that we need to focus on.” and “This has to be between us.”

I’m not excluding men, but I am speaking to primary and secondary audiences. It’s important to have a goal for your blog, and my goal is to help women empower themselves, and help everyone understand fundraising, marketing, and nonprofit management. Why are women my primary audience? Because we have a lot of different issues than men face in the nonprofit workplace. Issues such as being attacked for our fashion, not being allowed to make mistakes, expectations to be “nurturing” and never have a bad day, inappropriate questions about your personal life, etc.

We have gender oppression/sexism, and we often have other oppressions such as ableism, ageism, regionalism, homophobia, racism, etc added on top. One could argue that if you’ve experienced, let’s say, ageism, you have a sense of sexism, but it’s not quite the same.

Oppression is something that needs to be addressed, and if people outside of your gender or group can’t understand, they may need some training in that area.

Why I’m addressing this now

I just want to get clear that if you’re a man, I love it when you read this blog. And if you’re a woman, I love it when you read here too. If you’re trans or any other gender, I also love it when you read this blog. This blog is for everyone.

I would like to categorically state that I am not here to wallow in pity or victim-hood. I’m not here to be someone who points the finger and says Bad Man. That’s not the goal. The goal is to start the dialogue about equality. I’m here to help people wake up to what’s going on and take action to become more successful in their lives. I’m also here to help educate people to how they can be less sexist, less oppressive to the people in their lives.

Women perpetuate sexism too, against other women as well as against men, and we need to name and claim this.

Gender Oppression 101

The first thing you need to know about whether or not you’re acting out gender oppression is that it’s not only about what you do, it’s about what you DON’T do.

Do you speak up when someone makes a sexist joke? Or do you keep silent? If you’re silent, why? Is it because you’re not a woman, or you don’t see anything wrong with the joke?

Do you listen less carefully to women? Do you give them less than your full attention? Do you find yourself judging their appearance more harshly? Even if you don’t say anything out loud, people can feel this.

How can you be more of an ally to women?

Start reading books about how to recognize and work on oppression. Start learning the language of how to talk about oppression, and start showing your support.

Go to meetings.

Stay home and comment on blogs and show your support.

Give to nonprofits that are working to end oppression for women, like domestic violence nonprofits focused on women, or sexual violence charities around the world.

Promote women in your organization, and mentor women around you.

Start paying closer attention to women, giving support and respect to the women in your life right now.

If you are a woman, join a group focused on women’s empowerment, like Sharp Skirts.. If you’re a man, or another gender, join a group like NOW, and keep asking what else you should be reading, or what else you can do to help.

Are there other things I’m leaving out? What other ways can people support women? Please leave a comment.

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Long Tail Parakeet

What is the Long Tail?

It’s a book by Chris Anderson, who talks about the internet’s ability to keep a product going long after it should have stopped selling. The Long Tail means that there are no masses, but lots of people with very specific sets of niches and interests. Mr. Anderson looks at the business models of Zappos, Amazon, Ebay, Apple, Google, and other top American companies, and tries to decipher how they keep up with the changing pace of the business world and the internet markets.

This can apply to your charity, and I’m going to tell you how below.

Number of words: 874
Estimated read time: 5 minutes

1. Make Everything Available
Show your donors how your nonprofit is helping, how your resources are being used, and how they can concretely help today, and I’ll GUARANTEE you get more donations. Transparency is huge. the Indianapolis Museum does this very well. Check out their dashboard which shows everything from how many memberships they have to how many kilowatt hours of electricity they’re using.

2. Help me find it
To reach people in your tribe or very specific groups, make it easy to find your information. Put clear search functions on your website, again, Indianapolis Museum does this really really well. On their dashboard, you can find out everything from how many schoolchildren go through their doors to how much their executives are making, all in one place. This openness and attention to detail makes me trust that they know what they’re doing when it comes to museum education. Crazy, isn’t it? But I think that people who have gotten their stats down to an auto-updated science on their website must have their donation processes together, and have hired the right people to keep all of this running.

3. Lower costs: Move inventory in, or waaaaay out
Amazon does this by offering products on their website that they don’t have, that actually belong to their network of small businesses. When a customer orders something on Amazon, they can tell their supplier to get it to the customer, and take their fee without ever having to worry about touching the product. You can apply this to your nonprofit by farming out your appeal letters to a mail house, letting a printer take care of your annual reports, and creating an auto-email thank you when someone gives online. Your development department will run a lot more smoothly, as your fundraising staff have more time to do major gifts, or create events or other tasks. Another way to lower costs is to partner with other nonprofits who do something particularly well that your nonprofit has struggled with, and allow them to send projects your way that your nonprofit does well. This way, you can both provide better services by playing to your strengths and farming out the rest.

4. Let customers/donors do the work
If you can improve what you are offering to the community, whether it’s an opera, senior services, advocacy, or environmental clean-up, give your donors a say in how you improve. Ask them to come in and investigate how you could do it better. Get your stakeholders to figure out how you could do things more efficiently. Many of them would LOVE to be asked for their advice, and it could make them more loyal donors down the line too, if they know that you care about their opinion.

5. Think Niche: One distribution method doesn’t fit all.
This is why direct mail will never be dead. You may feel completely comfortable with an e-appeal, but other people prefer to get a letter. Still others prefer the fullness of information in an annual report before they give. And then there are people who prefer the phone. And of course most foundations haven’t moved to an online application system yet. They still prefer to get your paper letter of intent, and then your 7 paper-clipped copies of your grant proposal which they send, by mail, to their trustees or board members.

Tomorrow I’ll give you five more things I learned from The Long Tail.

Was this helpful? If so, follow me on twitter, and sign up for my newsletter, where once a month I’ll give you tips and tricks you can use at your charity all year long!

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Are you making MUCH less than you deserve?

Do you wonder what you’re going to do about retirement? About your health if you get sick?

What if in this downturn, your nonprofit decides they can’t afford you anymore?

What’s your plan B or plan C?

You don’t HAVE ONE? Why not?

Now might be a good time to leverage your knowledge into profit.

Here’s how you start to get money on the side.

Figure out what you do best.

Do you love people? Hate them? Somewhere in between? What keeps you up at night about nonprofits? How does your personality mesh with your job? What do you see could be improved about the nonprofit world?

For example, since I like to write and meet people, I started a development consulting business in 2004, and ran it for several years. Then I went to work full time for nonprofits, but I also found some consulting clients to supplement my income. Now I’m back to consulting full time.

Read “Now, Discover Your Strengths” by Buckingham and Clifton. This book will help you build on your strengths, instead of focusing on and trying to “fix” your weaknesses. This can be frustrating, and you don’t have to do it all. Focus on what you do best.

How do you start consulting?

Look at this video by Yaro Starak, who is a pro blogger. He writes a lot about how to become a successful blogger and consultant.

Research and get to know your customers.

Don’t ask anyone’s permission. If you want to be a consultant, then you are one.

Make yourself a website, showcasing your skills. Here is a person who can help you do that.

How to find customers?

Ask people questions in person. Start to go to networking meetings, consultant meetups, chamber of commerce meetings, religious/spiritual meetings, and get out there and meet people in person. This is the best way to drum up new business. Ask for referrals.

The next best way would be to get on idealist.org and look at some small to mid-size nonprofits on there who don’t have fundraising staff, but who, you are sure, could use the help. Then call their executive director and ask them out to coffee to talk about what their biggest vision for their organization is. This is where you get a sense of if they recognize that they need fundraising help, and if they are willing to pay for it.

If they try to get you to work for free, thank them politely and tell them you have another engagement.

If they want to know how much you charge, figure out in advance how much you charge. Is it $18/hr? $25/hr? $100/hr? What do they get for that? And when do you expect payment?

If you try to work full time and then also 20 hours a week at another job, this is going to be difficult, so if there is a cyclical nature to when people need you, then figure this out in advance.

For instance, if you’re a fundraising/development consultant, and a client has an event, you know that if you’re organizing it/publicizing it, you need to allot more time for it, and take a vacation afterwards.

If you’re doing grant research and writing for them, this is easier to do in your spare time, at home.

Stay tuned for the next installment of how to make money on the side tomorrow!

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It goes like this:

Rebel Girl! Rebel Girl!
Rebel Girl you are the queen of my world!
I wanna take you home I wanna try on your clothes

That girl thinks she’s the queen of the neighborhood! I’ve got news for you! She is!
-Bikini Kill

So are you the Queen of your Neighborhood? Do you hold your head up high? Do you have a funky wardrobe? When you walk, is the revolution coming?

How do you get to be queen of your particular field? Start today. (This can also work if you want to be the King, or the Sovereign, ungendered.)

A. Get your online presence to be 100% powerful. This means
1. Control the first 3 pages of results about you on Google.
2. Get a portfolio site going of all your best ideas and projects
3. Interact with people and build your community on Twitter, Linkedin, and other social networks.

How EXACTLY do you do this though? Read my crazy free 17 page e-book. It takes you step by step on how to build your queendom of your particular neighborhood.

B. How do you broadcast your regal self out into the world?
1. You don’t have to wear a crown. Make sure your voice and your gestures are appropriate for a leader. Think old-time movie actresses and divas like Grace Jones, Diana Ross, and Bette Davis.
2. Go watch some drag shows! Those ladies have it down. How do they move their heads? How do they use their eyes? How do they walk? How do they talk? They perform power well.
3. Clothe yourself well. This means how would you dress if you had $1 Million dollars? Sure, you might have some favorite expensive brands you can’t afford right now, but can you find approximations of those clothes at cheap second hand shops, Goodwill, TJ Maxx or Kohl’s? Chances are, you can find something similar.
4. Go get yo hair did. Even if it’s just a trim. Whether you’re Queen, King, or Sovereign of your neighborhood, it’s going to make you feel fresher, more ready to take on the world.

C. Revolution!
1. So this means educate yourself on how to build a movement. Start with Kim Klein’s Tools for Radical Democracy.
2. Go to your local Slow Food, Slow Money, Farmer’s Market, Anarchist Collective, Labor Union, Bike Alliance, City Repair Project, Tool Library etc. and start to make connections. Find people and organizations to collaborate with.
3. Read the news, get involved in making small changes in your neighborhood. What can you start to change right now? What nonprofit is working towards some issue you want to have an impact on?
4. Write about your journey, encourage others to come on it with you. Get WILD!
5. Mentor a girl and help her be a queen of the neighborhood too.

Go nuts, seriously. This summer, it’s your time. Let it hang out. Let it all hang out.

Follow Wild Woman Fundraising on Twitter because you want more sassy tips!

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I’ve written a guest post last week for Sharp Skirts about how to ask for help, and how to find your magicians who help you here.

I’ve written a guest post on how to manage volunteers for Vivanista.com!

And thanks for the mention last week, Phil Cubeta at GiftHub!

And stay tuned, I’m writing a guest post for Pamela Grow on fundraiser empowerment and it should be up within the next week!

I’m also going to be interviewed by JMH for Generation Meh about nonprofit careers, why Generation Y and X go into them, and what to watch out for.

Thank you so much Carla at Sharp Skirts, Phil Cubeta at Gifthub, Stacy at Vivanista, and Pamela Grow and JMH at Generation Meh! Looking forward to continuing the conversation with you all!

XOXO

Mazarine

Oh, PS. If you are geographically situated in or near Austin and want to enjoy a face to face meeting, thanks to @CaitStuff I’m now apparently attending these Twitter meetups called #BATHH… which stands for Big Ass Twitter Happy Hour. And you can usually find these event notices at Jacqueline’s Life, Bridge The City a very useful social calendar to help you network and find a job in Austin.

And of course, you can always see me organizing and talking at the 2nd and 4th Tuesday Nonprofit Career Club, and this Tuesday, we’re meeting Lisa Avra, CDO of the Ransom Center at UT. We are so excited! So come out and see us, if you’re in Austin.

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Well, now you can.

If you see that a place you used to work is trying to hire someone new, again, after only 6 months of people coming and going, you know that all the old problems are still there, and what can you do about it?

How do you warn people off of a potential bad job with a bad boss, rankism, sexism, racism, classism, or homophobia without a potential libel lawsuit?

For the nonprofit sector, you can give an anonymous review at Charity Navigator.

For the nonprofit OR forprofit sector, you can give an anonymous review at Glass Door.

What would you REALLY like to say about a previous place that you worked?

You owe it to yourself, and others, to build up a body of knowledge around a particular nonprofit or corporation. If they are treating workers well, and not embezzling or breaking any laws, they have nothing to fear. If, on the other hand, they are no better than they should be, and in some cases quite worse, help other people avoid the heartbreak of working there.

When you get on Glass Door.com, be constructive, no expletives, help people understand what to expect when they get there. You can also put in your salary at a previous position, or what it was like to interview. So if you’ve been on a few interviews lately, do us all a favor and help us figure out what to expect when interviewing there.

Have you left a review on Glassdoor or Charity Navigator? Or have you benefited from a review on Glassdoor? Let me know in the comments.

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World of Good got acquired by eBay and Greater Good!
Now you can find World of Good at eBay.

What is World of Good?
World of Good was founded in 2004 by Priya Haji, MBA with the mission to help small artisan producers improve their livelihoods by providing them with access to mainstream retail markets. The company has helped more than 40,000 individual artisans across 70 countries by connecting them with millions of U.S. consumers. Haji also founded World of Good Development Organization, a sister non-profit focused on improving the lives of low-income women in the developing world.

Have you ever bought or sold something on eBay?

Have you ever bought anything from World of Good?

Has a hybrid nonprofit ever before been bought out by a for-profit?

It looks like they’re trying to compete with places like 10,000 Villages AND Etsy, because they highlight American-made goods as well as international, fair trade goods.

Wow. Imagine a new vision for your nonprofit. Imagine that you get so profitable and your nonprofit brand gets so popular that eBay is looking to buy you! Imagine what partner you’re currently collaborating with that you could convince to buy your nonprofit and help you scale your solutions!

World of Good’s take on the situation: “eBay’s acquisition of the brand results from a two-year long collaboration between the two companies that led to the development of WorldofGood.com by eBay, the world’s largest multi-seller marketplace for socially and environmentally responsible shopping. The transaction reflects eBay’s growing commitment to engaging consumers to affect social change through sustainable commerce. It also represents World of Good’s commitment to creating the greatest market opportunity for small, Fair Trade and environmentally responsible producers around the world. The online marketplace hosts hundreds of sellers, with tens of thousands of sustainable products from 85 countries.

“We are excited about the opportunity to scale the World of Good mission to an unprecedented degree through eBay,” said World of Good co-founder and CEO Priya Haji. “Also, we are confident that GreaterGood will be an excellent steward of the retail partnerships we’ve built and will continue to grow Fair Trade through mainstream retail channels.”

“GreaterGood’s acquisition of World of Good’s wholesale division reflects its growing Fair Trade business, including its Global Girlfriend apparel line. Since 2004, World of Good has developed extensive retail product lines for partners like Whole Foods Market, Hallmark and Disney, among others. GreaterGood will continue to work with the same retail partners and artisan groups in order to grow market access for small artisan suppliers around the globe.”

I hope that GreaterGood will not try to create more sweatshops for artisans that currently get fair trade. I hope they will do the right thing, since both Hallmark and Disney are not exactly known for discouraging sweatshop labor.

“Robert Chatwani, Director of eBay Global Citizenship said of the acquisition, “We look forward to this next step in our commitment to building an integrated, sustainable shopping experience within the eBay marketplace and are dedicated to applying our reach, resources and business model to create a positive impact for people, the planet and communities throughout the world.” -All quotes taken from The World of Good website

Wow. This is a big step for eBay and GreaterGood. It seems like they want to challenge Etsy, 10,000 Villages, and other companies that are helping more socially conscious consumers buy American-made or fair-trade goods. I wonder how these other companies will respond.

Imagine if you could get big companies like Paypal, Google, Dell, or others interested in buying your nonprofit and continuing your charitable work because of what you sold and how well you marketed yourself! Imagine how many more people you could reach, how much more you could work towards global solutions for poverty, clean water, hunger, vaccines, etc!

What do you think of the acquisition? Good? Bad? Indifferent?

Have you ever had a strange job that you don’t usually talk about?

Have you ever called a psychic on the phone?

Here’s a secret-I used to be a telephone psychic! It was fun. People would call me up and ask me to tell them their future. So I would use tarot cards, or destiny cards, or astrology to provide some amusement for them. The line said that it was only for entertainment purposes, and that people should not solicit psychic advice on major life decisions. So you know, you’d think that people would just call for fun. But actually, whether or not you believe in psychic powers, people do expect answers. And they expect you to know everything, and give them a direction. It’s a bit frustrating, because sometimes you just want to tell them, “Look, you are in control of your life. There are influences socio-economical, cultural, ideological, astrological, or whatever, but you have power. You can be, do, or have anything you want.” But somehow it’s easier for people to give their power away and try to pretend their life is fated to be one way or another.

So in the spirit of psychic predictions, here’s my view on what’s coming up in the next 10 years for fundraising and nonprofits. Let’s create this future together, shall we?

People are going to start demanding answers.
That means, they’re going to start saying, “Why don’t we trade charity futures?” and “Hey, why is paying for advertising a bad thing?” And “Why am I working for peanuts?” and also, “Why have we still not solved the problem of homelessness, hunger, and domestic violence in America?”

People are going to start demanding results.
That means, people are going to start asking, “What has your nonprofit done in the last 10 years to eradicate the problem you were created to address?” And you are going to need to be able to show them that you have actually worked to solve this problem and have achieved measurable results.

People are going to start demanding better salaries for trying to help others.
People are going to start realizing that this whole “I can get paid $1M for giving children violent videogames but not $1M to help children” thing is BOGUS PURITAN BULL.

If people are successful with the first three, problems are going to start to get solved.
We will root out the corruption. We will collaborate more, and it will be built into our bylaws. The nonprofit sector will be renamed “The Social Profit Sector.” People will start getting paid quite a bit more. Staff will organize unions to make sure that 4% cost of living salary increases are implemented every year. Leaders with actual nonprofit experience will be put in place, instead of board members with MBAs and no nonprofit experience. Nonprofits are going to become more like hybrid nonprofits and social entrepreneurship will start becoming our main model of business, and social profits and for profits will start to look more and more alike.

What do you think the future holds for nonprofits?

If you haven’t given to our kickstarter project yet, here are 3 good reasons why.

Because:
1. You could help thousands, perhaps millions of people that you’ve never met!
2. Building the capacity of thousands of people to fundraise is not an opportunity that just comes along every day!
3. You can be the first in your city to have a game that teaches people in your organization how to fundraise. Imagine the edge you’ll have when all of your volunteers know how to research grants for you, do a mailing, or run an event!

So go on. Thank you so much, for whatever you’re able to give!

But have you ever had a fantasy conference?

I mean, have you ever wished that a conference you went to was more engaging?

Have you ever sat there, BORED OUT OF YOUR SKULL at yet another presenter who was just READING OFF THE POWERPOINT SLIDES and wondering where all of the smart, crazy, funny speakers were? Seriously. We’re colorful nonprofit professionals, not drab grey suited dorks. We need people to engage us.

Like, why were you expected to sit there for 5 hours a day, with your butt falling asleep in an uncomfortable plastic chair, as people talked AT YOU and asked you questions and then answered their own questions?

We’re in this field because we’re passionate about saving the world. Where were the people who get you to jump around? People who give you group tasks? Who play games with you and help you learn that way? What about the beachball in the front row that should get bounced back to you?

Well, I am sure that there is a reason we need a 3 hour presentation on planned giving, but it needs to be more interactive, you know?

What if you could put together your own conference?

Who would you invite? And why?

And what would your workshops consist of?

My Star Lineup

Dan Pallotta, author of “Uncharitable”

Kim Klein, author and editor of many fundraising books including “Toolkit for Social Change” and the excellent “Raising More Money,” which I ran out and bought and gave away and I’d do it all again.
Beth Kanter, a generous, visionary blogger who just came out with a book called “The Networked Nonprofit” which you should ALSO run out and buy
Hans Roslin, Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen Paul Stamets-6 ways mushrooms can save the world

Oh ditto for Lynne Twist, she should be there too!

And I bet that Pamela Grow could rock a grants presentation!

Oh, of course, I want to do a presentation too. I want to help people just really understand how to move ahead in their nonprofit, how to deal with conflict, and how to stand up for themselves.

So I would start with 5 minutes of yoga stretches. Then once we were all limber, I would get people into groups of 4 and 5, and then give each group a basketball. They could bounce it to each other, while they took turns talking about a time they had conflict in their nonprofit, and what they did or didn’t do about it. Then I would ask the groups to appoint a spokesperson and check in 20 minutes later and ask what they learned, what some of the commonalities were. Then we’d have a quick 10 minute presentation on rankism, oppression, and standing up for yourself. Then we’d have some roleplay in different 4-5 person groups for 20 minutes, where each person could say, “Here’s the kind of rankist I have in my office, please role-play them while I try a new technique out on you.” Then I’d have a different spokesperson from each group and ask, “What did you learn? What surprised you? What could you do differently next time?” Then we could break for questions, and network for the rest of the time. What do you think? Would you dig that presentation?

What conference presenters would make you jump up and down with joy?

And then, what about having a concert after the conference hours are done?
Why not have, oh, I don’t know, Neko Case, or Beyonce or name your favorite music artist?

Take a poll of people at the conference and ask them who they’d like to have next year?

Hey, AFP Conference 2011, WVDO conference, NTEN conference, Greenlights conference, I’m looking at you. You need me to come and present and get people moving!

PS.
These are the people I would ask back for the 2012 and 2013 conferences!

Becky Blanton-The year I was homelessSunitha Krishnan-Fights sex slavery