EchoDitto

In about 3 hours, I'll be boarding a plane to head back to the Big Easy - New Orleans, that is. Unlike last month, Brian Reich and I are headed that direction to attend this year's Nonprofit Technology Conference held by the Nonprofit Technology Network, better known as NTEN.

If you're heading that way or know someone who is, please don't hesitate to flag us down - or you can follow us on twitter to find out where we'll be.

Well, you may not know this, but I'm quite the baker and crafter. My parents call me "Martha, Jr." I've been supplying the DC office with sugar cookies for the last 18 mos and I have to say no one has complained. Although Ben is quite the cook as well - he's definitely challenging me for the title of "office baker." Where am I going with all this?

If you do, you're probably better off than you think.

In case you're a client or partner of mine and were wondering--- I'm alive and well. I just completed a two-day training on agile project management given by Sanjiv Augustine of LitheSpeed. I have to admit it, I'm kind of a sucker for information organization and process theory.

Even though I may be a process junky, I'm generally pretty skeptical about any type of training. Am I going to learn anything? Will I be able to apply this to what I do? What is the point?

Last Thursday, I pulled myself away from my desk for a field-trip to Yahoo!'s "Rise of Citizen 2.0" event. It was pretty freakin' cool. Ok, #1 - it's Yahoo! Granted, our shrine for Yahoo! is significantly dwarfed by Google's, but come on. Besides, they did have best party at SxSW so expectations were high!

The main part of the afternoon event was, of course, listening to Karl Rove talk about the internet and politics. For an invite-only event, the crowd was much smaller and more intimate than I thought it would be. Ingeniously, Yahoo! never actually published the agenda anywhere (that I could find) prior to the event so there was no sneaking in at the last minute for the big show!

As everyone was finalizing their weekend plans last Friday, it was announced that Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change."

Feeling left out? Want a piece of the action? Well, he can't do it all by himself. Check out one of our recent projects and do your part today to take action to solve the climate crisis - take the 7-point pledge - created by the Alliance for Climate Protection. If you haven't heard of the Alliance, find out more while listening to Gore speak about his award.

I was recently asked what one blog I read religiously every day? Ok, this isn't too tough a question, right? I mean we all use RSS to read 100's of blogs daily anyway. So, the tough part for me was coming up with just one blog, just one answer.

So many options here: there are the amusing hollywood blogs, the political blogs, the "I wish I had more time to read blogs like this" hobby blogs, the "supposed to make your life easier, but consumes your day reading it" type of blog, client blogs, personal blogs, work blogs, etc.... the list never ends. So, simplify it a bit by removing your personal and work-related blogs from the mix - What is the one blog that you read religiously every day? Why?

Yesterday, following a week of advocacy training, 200 student activists came together on Capitol Hill in DC to put Congress on the "hot seat" about global warming.

Change it '07, a project of Seventh Generation and Greenpeace, is a week-long training designed to educate and empower dedicated students to become the next generation of leaders in the global movement for environmental change -- definitely not your average summer school. The students were, by no means, average students either - check out the participant profiles.

Earlier this month, the Center for New American Dream launched a six-month Carbon Conscious Consumer (C3) campaign that "challenges individuals to establish climate-friendly daily habits and inspire their friends to do the same."

In working with this campaign, I've personally learned an immense amount about carbon emissions. I'm amazed by the stats. For example, did you know...

• Food in the U.S. typically travels 1500 miles and generates 5 to 17 times more carbon emissions than food grown locally.

• For every pound of local food you add to your weekly shopping list, you'll keep 13 more pounds of CO2 out of the atmosphere per year.