This year I attended Net2 as an Advocate rather than as a Project. I attended the sessionslistening to each of the projects and internally evaluating them (just as others were evaluating the Grassroots.org Toolbox I presented as a Net2 Project last year).

Probably because my new role at Lumifi has me thinking a lot about marketing these days, I found myself considering how the projects presented themselves. As with nonprofits in general, I saw Net2 Projects with great ideas not always receiving the positive attention they expected. I am certain it was due to the clarity of their message and their message delivery. I imagine it must have been tremendously frustrating for them.

Activists who develop innovative projects are entrepreneurs. This means they are creative. They are risk takers. They are passionate. This does not ensure they have marketing skills. And in fact, social activists are known to shy away from organizational promotion as it can be misunderstood for self promotion, ie boasting. Nobody likes a boaster. And above the natural instinct to be liked is the need for a start up project to be liked in order to attract resources.

I will never forget when I worked for the Ohio Community Computing Network, the board president of OCCN told me I needed to have a bigger organizational head. I had not been promoting the organization well. At OCCN we had distributed over $5 million in grant funds and had not been shouting that from the roof tops. I heard what my board president was saying. We began shouting. Politely.

Of course the trick is to promote without being obnoxious about it.

The projects which had conference attendees asking the most questions were those with a clear message and leaders with a visible passion.

On day two we listened to two minute wrap ups from each of the 21 Projects. Multiple projects did a great job with this. I was most impressed with the project “City of New Orleans: A Mashup for Citizen Monitoring of the Recovery” and “MoveSmart”. The representative of the New Orleans Mashup grabbed my attention by beginning her two minutes with a story. Justin Massa from MoveSmart grabbed my attention by beginning his two minutes with history facts. Both were passionate. They gave quick details about the project. She was super nervous. He was not. That was irrelevant. I paid attention to both.

With all the projects, the technology was irrelevant. What those of us in the audience wanted to know was “Why is this project great? What immense problem are you going to solve?” The answer to that question is not the technology. Some of the projects are possible today because of the technology. That is important but not as important as solving the social ills of our world.

I was very impressed with Net2 this year. The folks at TechSoup learn each year how to make it better. They learn each year how to draw more resources and support to amazing tech based projects working to solve major social issues. Kudos to TechSoup.