We are super stoked to announce Yolanda Green as our Houston NetSquared guest speaker for August!

Yolanda Green is a community pioneer, children's advocate and host of the 'Outlook Houston' television program. She'll tell us about her work in the community and give us the opportunity to help her get things on the right online technology track!

Among many other community-focused accomplishments, Yolanda has helped distribute over $8 million to local non profit agencies through her work with the CW Cares for Kids Fund and has helped over 3100 children find adoptive homes through a citywide public service campaign.

The President of the Ms. Wheelchair Texas Foundation will also be joining us to share her technology needs and questions.

Get ready to get your hands dirty at this Houston NetSquared meetup - come with your ideas, suggestions and cool new technologies to help 'Pimp My Non Profit'. All of our meetups have brought on fabulous conversations, but this is an evening where we can really make a difference immediately!

Invite your technology and non profit friends - this is going to be a good one!

We are as pleased as punch to announce that Reggie Bibbs (http://www.reggiebibbs.com) and the Texas Neurofibromatosis Foundation (http://www.texasnf.org) will be joining Houston NetSquared for our June Meetup.

Reggie will discuss his work promoting awareness of Neurofibromatosis and growing a strong support community through Web, viral and public service projects. Online technology has shaped his global communication efforts in a huge way - let's discuss the good and the bad of running a grassroots campaign online!

To learn more about this amazing man, visit his Web site (http://www.reggiebibbs.com) and Reggie's Blog (http://reggiebibbs.wordpress.com). This will be an amazing evening of heroism, perseverance and putting social technology to the test.

-- Again, many thanks to Jeremy of HyperAlert (http://www.hyperalert.com) for speaking with us in May!

Join us for this month's Houston NetSquared meetup where we'll be discussing the very pressing issue of the future of Houston Center Serving Persons with Mental Retardation.

We are really excited about our last minute speaker - Wilson Wendell a board member from the Houston Center Serving Persons with Mental Retardation. The Center serves over 600 adults with mental disabilities by providing education, vocational training and job placement.

The Center is in danger of losing their West Dallas campus, as the city of Houston gains to benefit ($26 million) from the sale of their campus property. They have launched an extensive Save the Center campaign, replete with online petition signing and City Hall protest march.

Wilson Wendell is not only an active and involved board member, but a parent to a Center resident. I know he'll have some very insightful things to share with us. This is a very HOT issue and should lead to some great discussions, packed with information on a very immediate local cause.

Many apologies for the last minute notice - but I do hope we will see you tonight! Please forward this to anyone you know who might be interested in making a difference in our community or is just wanting to learn more about a very pressing Houston issue.

Cheers - Katie and Jason

Do you vote? Then you might be interested in learning about the League of Technical Voters!

Join us for our February Houston NetSquared technology discussion as we speak with Silona Bonewald on her work with the League of Technical Voters (http://leagueoftechvoters.org/)? a group dedicated to promoting use of technology in policymaking and connecting constituents and legislators alike to important voting information through technology.

Some League of Technical Voter projects Silona will touch on:

1) Project: Transparent Federal Budget

2) Divide and Conquer - Fragmenting legislation

3) Entity based Social network - How to make a Meta network Work and the role of Open Source and Non Profit Organizations

4) Designathon and Codeathon : Creating Open Source Software for Non Profit Organizations

As an extra bonus, Robert Brackenridge of Houston Technology Center (www.houstontech.org), our originally scheduled speaker for February, will give us a preview of his March discussion on Houston technology projects and vision.

This action-packed Houston NetSquared Meetup is going to be a great one for technology nerds, political activists, non profit advocates and everyone in between. Don?t miss out!

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More about our speaker Silona Bonewald:

Silona Bonewald founded the League of Technical Voters, a membership organization dedicated to providing nonpartisan information about technology policy to the public and policy-makers, and to creating technology tools to support a healthy nonprofit sector. Before this she started her own company, ElecTech that designed specialized software for political campaigns, and ran a web consulting business where she was one of the first people to create websites for hire, and to successfully optimize her clients' websites for usability and top search engine ranking.

She has also worked in the gaming industry, creating high visibility web presences, content management systems, and large database back-end integrations. She has worked for such clients as Seimens, Bluebyte and Ubisoft on large CMS systems. She is most proud of her largest project where she designed and managed the development of a work flow system for 20 teams in 20 countries with various languages.

Silona volunteers for the ACLU and EFF-austin on technology-based civil liberties issues, and has lobbied on various issues. The combination of her involvement in political activism, educational activism, psychometrics for gaming communities, lobbyist work, netizen activities and web design make her uniquely suited to envision the framework that will make the LoTV system all possible. She is also on the Board of Directors for TANO.org, Eff-austin.org, and Assistorg.org.

Open discussion of politically incorrect social issues in honor of Thanksgiving in a few weeks.

One of the challenges with the Houston meetup for Net2 is that it is based on a west-coast organization. Being in Houston we aren't exactly inside the beltway DC and we also aren't west-coast-governator.

Which begs a few questions that only a Houston person can answer?

1) The Election - No Dean campaign euphoria and bust for either party. A huge win by the democrats. What is the fall out for social change? For technology?

2) Web 2.0 conference is over. Did anyone notice?

3) Accessibility follow up. Airs is over (awards tomorrow night). Target lawsuit with the National Federation of the Blind continues. What is your take on it?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/technology/06ecom.html?ex=1163566800&en=56817317ec589e39&ei=5070

This will be in a discussion format. I'll buy the beer. You bring the brains please! Please do attend.

Thanks,

Ed