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July 31-Aug 2
Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Washinton, DC

2012 InsideNGO Annual Member Conference Program & Sessions

With more than 75 different sessions at the InsideNGO Annual Member Conference, it’s easy to build a learning experience to match your unique areas of interest and professional development needs. 

Check out our mobile app to start building your personal schedule!

Cross Operations – Finance, Grants & Contracts – Human Resources –Information Technology – Professional & Organizational Development - Opening Keynote Speaker Tim Sanders - Closing Keynote Speaker Michael Wesch - Special Sessions

Tentative Agenda - 7/20/12
This agenda is still under development and subject to change


Cross Operations

“Good topics and well versed, articulate and knowledgeable presenters.”

Finance, Grants & Contracts

Human Resources

Information Technology

Professional & Organizational Development

Special Sessions

 

Love KillerAppsOpening Keynote Speaker – Tim Sanders



We are very pleased to announce that Tim Sanders will be the Keynote Speaker for the 2012 Annual Member Conference. As we celebrate 35 years of member generosity, Mr. Sanders’ insightful perspectives on how generous communities serve as a differentiator and a source of resilience for both organizations and professionals could not be more relevant.

Distinguished author of four books including the global best seller Love Is The Killer App, Tim’s second book, The Likeability Factor was featured in major media from USA Today to The New York Times. His latest book, Today We Are Rich: Harnessing the Power of Total Confidence is an Inc. Magazine business bestseller.

Former Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo! during a period when the Internet industry was going through significant change and pressure from the stock market, Tim was charged with responding at break-neck speed to complex critical situations. From this experience, he learned that leadership is a personal decision, not just the function of a title. A strategic consultant to leading brands, associations and government agencies, Tim is the innovative CEO of Los Angeles tech start-up Net Minds and founder of research firm Deeper Media Incorporated.

Unleashing the Power of Generosity
Tim Sanders will challenge us to rethink the concept of generosity, and how it's a critical tool for our success personally and as NGOs. 
He'll recast what it means to be generous, why it's important to be consistent about it and where we can improve as leaders. Drawing from his best seller Love Is the Killer App, Tim will address how to grow our own limited resources (financial and personal) by sharing our intangibles: Knowledge, Network and Compassion. In today's tough take-and-give environment, these are invaluable tools. Other key highlights of Tim’s keynote will include: Tim will help us to examine both Generosity and Virtue, qualities that together as one are the embodiment of our community of NGOs and the core to our continued success.

Annual Conference registrants will receive a copy of Love Is the Killer App as part of their registration fee.

Closing Keynote Speaker - Michael Wesch

Closing our 35th Anniversary Annual Member Conference is Michael Wesch, PhD, a global thought leader working at the intersection of anthropology and technology.  Dr. Wesch addresses the need for wonder, curiosity, communication, empathy and creativity to solve complex problems in an environment of rapidly increasing information.  Dubbed “the Explainer” by Wired Magazine, Dr. Wesch is currently working on a book about complex problems (or "wicked" problems as they are sometimes called) and how to transform them so they become tangible, and therefore solvable. Given that so many international operations teams at NGOs are working to address complex "wicked" problems in diverse cultural situations, Dr. Wesch’s message is especially timely.

An Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Digital Ethnography at Kansas State University, his videos on culture, technology, education, and information have been viewed over 20 million times in over 20 languages. Dr. Wesch has won several major awards for his work, including being named an Emerging Explorer by National Geographic and the 2008 CASE/Carnegie U.S. Professor of the Year for Doctoral and Research Universities.

The Age of Wonder in the Age of Whatever
New media and technology present us with an overwhelming bounty of tools for connection, creativity, collaboration, and knowledge creation - a true "Age of Whatever" where anything seems possible. But any enthusiasm about these remarkable possibilities is immediately tempered by that other "Age of Whatever" - an age in which people feel increasingly disconnected, disempowered, tuned out, and alienated.
The complexity of the problems we face grows.  In today's world, it is not enough to simply master information and become "knowledgeable."  Nor is it enough to attain the skills to learn, to become "knowledge-able." Knowledge and skills are necessary, but not sufficient.  What is needed more than ever is to have the courage and capacity to truly wonder, to question our taken for granted assumptions, break down old models, and be as willing to unlearn as we are to learn.  Only then can we harness and leverage the bounty of possibility all around us and rediscover the "end" or purpose of wonder, and stave off the historical end of wonder. It is with this spirit of wonder that ordinary people solve extraordinary problems and inspire us all.