Soapbox Engage Blog

The good folks over at Socialbrite have put together an awesome list of non-profit-related events for 2013 that will sure fill your brain with ideas and keep you in the good graces with your frequent flier program.  Of course, if you go to all of these events, not only will you be breaking the laws of physics, but you might never be able to deploy your new skills back at your organization.

So, to help you short-list what you shouldn't miss in 2013, here's a little cheatsheet we've compiled about the events we make sure to attend each year.

Non-Profit Technology Conference (NTC)

There's few other gatherings in our sector that can bring all the top speakers and thought leaders together in one place.  It's a terrific event for accidental techies looking to learn more about core skill building, and for long-time circuit riders looking to reconnect with good friends from around the world.

Penguin Day

Open source penguins flock from around the globe to this one-day event that typically takes place right before or after the NTC. The event is done in an unconference format, giving ample opportunity to share best practices and learn about the hottest technology in a peer-to-peer environment (no podiums or Powerpoints allowed!).  Hosted by our buddies at Aspiration.

Dreamforce

If you have heard of the "cloud", and you know what a database is, you should be heading to the annual Salesforce Dreamforce conference, held in San Francisco each year.  Non-profits can receive free licenses for Salesforce from the Salesforce Foundation, and this annual gathering gives you everything you need to get started and tool-up all in one place.  With nearly 100,000 attendees in the 2012 event, you'd think it'd be easy to get lost in the shuffle.  Instead, the Dreamforce team has put together a dedicated section of the event just for non-profits which makes it easy to work with fellow non-profiteers to learn more about how you can put this amazing software to use for your team.

Non-Profit Software Developers' Summit (NPdev)

Another great unconference that typically happens in November each year, bringing together software developers and users (that's right, actual users!) together in the same room to share best practices and lessons learned to better serve our non-profit sector.  This might be one of the best events I go to each year, do to the crazy high quality attendees and inside scoops on new technology waiting to be built.  The good folks at Aspiration put this on, and never disappoint.

JandBeyond

A global connection of all our of Joomla developer friends that happens each year in Western Europe.  This event is a wonderful chance to meet some of the leading minds in the Joomla software community in one place, while typically eating and drinking more than you ever thought you could.

Joomla World Conference

After the huge success of the inaugural event this past year, I'm looking forward to this more user-centric annual Joomla conference in 2013.  The event gives the accidental techies of your organization a better understanding of how they can use this powerful CMS, and enables you to connect with fellow users, designers, and developers in a fun setting.  I suspect this might be held again in the USA in 2013.

B Corporation Retreat

As a B Corporation ourselves, we're excited to attend our second B Corporation retreat in 2013.  The fast two-day event gives fellow socially responsible business leaders an opportunity to connect and determine ways to push the movement forward.

Soapbox User Summit

Finally, I'd be remiss to not include our awesome event that happens each spring, bringing together our community of advocacy groups, non-profits, and sustainable businesses together to learn best practices for our Soapbox platform.  We cover everything from advocacy tools to website management, all in the cozy confines of the nation's capital.

So, fire up your calendar tool, mark up your agenda, and hopefully I'll see you on the road in 2013!

Photo credit: Juglar Del Zipa from Flickr