Got a great note last week from Nick Moraitis about the launch of Social Tech Brewing in Australia. The first event is set for later this week in Sydney, then moving to Melbourne in the coming months. I met Nick when he was here in Toronto working with Taking IT Global and we kicked around some ideas about successful community-led events -- thought I'd quickly recount them here:

• Stay away from speaker-at-front-of-room syndrome (which we fell victim to frequently at the Toronto events) and leverage other models like Speed Geeks and Demo Camp-style speed presentations.

• Personally, I feel that many of these events happen too frequently. When we switched the Toronto Social Tech events to every six weeks it really took the pressure off having to organize a monthly event; and when we switched to every other month, it really took the organizing pressure off and seemed to attract more people at each event. My advice: pace your series and focus on quality content / participants -- there's no rule that says an event has to happen every month.

• Size doesn't always matter, but good participation does. In the end, I felt that Social Tech events in Toronto were getting too big and too diffuse (not that they were anywhere near the size of Toronto's BarCamps or DemoCamps). They lacked the continuity of common experience and the solidarity that brings; participants came from far and wide and conversations become very general to accommodate everyone's needs. Some of the best events that I attended were small -- maybe 10 - 15 people -- where we could really delve into a topic and come away with new ideas & energy.

• On the participation front, my personal take is like this: be as specific as possible about the reason for convening the event, and about the type of participation that is expected, and about target participants that would really add to the event. I'm a huge fan of networking for the sake of networking in the context of things like market-building, or business development, or just plain ol' socializing. However, in the context of building "communities of change," I've found that a broad participant base can work against group cohesion. Ultimately, that is part of what happened to Social Tech brewing here in Toronto: for me it was an attempt (that was not clearly defined) to build a community of change, but that for others it was a regular networking / socializing space.

Anyway, that's my three cents on community-led events and building communities of change. :-)

Congrats to Nick for getting Social Tech Brewing off-the-ground in Australia! My friend Simon who lives in Adelaide pointed out that BarCamp has also made it over to that side of the world recently too.

I'm pretty sad to be missing another fantastic event hosted by Aspiration. Gunner almost managed to get me there with a few well-timed bribes -- but, alas, the timing is a bit off. If you're involved in supporting non-profits and their technology needs, and want to be involved in some of the most important "social tech" conversations this year, consider attending this event (and take good notes for me!):

The Summit will be a first-of-its-kind convening to bring together the range of developers, technologists, managers, eRiders, integrators, users and others who self-identify under the umbrella of “nonprofit software development”. The event will provide an opportunity both to gather as a community and to take stock of the field, while building connections and capacity.

The Summit is taking place in Oakland, California, from February 21st to 23rd, 2007. Additional code sprints and collaborations may be scheduled in the days following the event, and a post-event party will be hosted on the evening of the 24th in San Francisco. Participants will be arriving from all across North America, as well as Latin America, Africa and Europe.

The 2007 Nonprofit Software Development Summit is supported in part by the generosity of CompuMentor and Google, as well as anonymous donors.

Full event details are at http://www.aspirationtech.org/events/devsummit, and you can also see the latest Event Schedule and Agenda at http://devsummit.aspirationtech.org/index.php/Event_Schedule and Event Background at http://www.aspirationtech.org/events/devsummit/background.

Wow -- I was super-stoked to open-up my newsreader this morning to find GreenCamp listed on Upcoming. Last spring David Crow and I bantered about the opportunity for social-mission organizations to use the "unconference" format as a way to facilitate new conversations around progressive ideas. It's incredible to actually see this happening -- And right here in Toronto too! Think I'll be making it out to that event for sure.

GreenCamp isn't the only progressive unconference around. There's a whole new movement afoot, including Chris Messina's WineCamp, New Organizing Institute's RootsCamp, and the Media Consortium's recent ConsortTechCamp. Though not an official "Camp"-style unconference, I like to think of Web of Change as a progressive unconference, and I hope that Misha's summary of lessons from the recent CopyCamp added to the mix of ideas on how to use the unconference model for change.

Know of other progressive unconferences? Pop 'em in the comments! :-)