Good morning.

Thanks for coming, and welcome to RTPnet's 6th annual conference, co-hosted this year with Triangle United Way.

I'm Judy Hallman, President and Executive Director of RTPnet. I've been coordinating these conferences for six years now. Some of you may remember that last year I said I didn't want to run any more conferences. Well, this year Damita Chambers has planned and coordinated the conference! Damita, please stand up.

(conference Web site)

Damita has done a great job of planning the program and getting people here. But even more important, she's formed partnerships and collaborations with Duke University Nonprofit Management, ncyt (North Carolina's Network of Young Nonprofit Professionals), The Philanthropy Journal, Compumentor, and with our sponsors.

Please spend some time visiting with our sponsors. Our Silver Sponsors are Red Hat, CTCNet, e-NC, and SimDesk Technologies, and our Bronze Sponsors are Isoph, NetCorps, Antharia, and Gift, which is a service of OneWhoServes. We're especially pleased to have e-NC as a Silver Sponsor for the fourth year!

CTCNet doesn't have a table, but there's a CTCNet brochure in your packet along with a card for the CTCNet conference which is coming up June 16-19 in Cleveland. And two of the items in the drawing this afternoon are:

• A free registration for the CTCNet conference (this year or next year) and
• One complimentary year of membership to CTCNet.

Now I want to talk a little about partnerships and collaborations. I'll put my presentation online after the conference, so you will be able to find these Web sites.

Besides the conference partnerships, RTPnet, Triangle United Way, NetCorps, Isoph, Techaction and others work together through a group called TechCoop. And TechCoop recently created the Triangle 501TechClub. 501 Tech Clubs are informal groups of nonprofit techies that meet monthly in a number of cities. 501 TechClubs are a program of a national organization called N-TEN. There's some information about N-TEN and the Triangle 501TechClub in your packet. Some of you from outside the Triangle might want to think about forming a 501TechClub for your area -- I'm thinking in particular of Winston-Salem and Charlotte.

Now I want to switch gears for a minute and talk about Americorps*VISTAs, starting with Vahid Nourani. Vahid, please stand up. Vahid has provided assistance and support for the conference, in addition to his other projects.

Both Vahid and Damita are Americorps*VISTAs working for RTPnet and Triangle United Way. VISTAs work full-time for a year and cost less than $5,000 each. RTPnet membership fees have allowed us to have VISTAs, and collaborations with organizations like Triangle United Way, have provided office space and supervision.

Think about how your organization might use VISTAs. There's a session on the CTC VISTA program this afternoon.

And think about how your organization can benefit from existing collaborations or establishing new ones -- how can we all work together more effectively, particularly to continue these conferences. Perhaps the conferences can become N-TEN Regional conferences.