See What’s Out There

The folks at NTEN have already begun planning for their Nonprofit Technology Conference 2009, and they’re asking the nonprofit community to vote for the sessions they like the most.

Last year we ran two great sessions: “The Age of YouTube” and “How to Show, Tell, and Active with a Video-centric Microsite“.

This year, we’ve submitted 8 sessions that we want to lead. Click on our session titles below and give them 5 stars (or as NTEN puts it, “I’m already there in my mind”) if you like what you see.

1. Online Video: Tools of the Trade
2. Online Video: Creating a Strategy
3. Hands-On Video Production: Documenting the NTC
4. Viral Video: How to Make it Work for Your Organization
5. You Made a Video, Now What?
6. Web 2.0: How to Get the Buy-In You Need
7. Drupal for Dummies
8. Ning: Building a Custom Social Network

See you at NTC 2009!

YouTube recently opened up its API (application program interface) so that users can now customize embedded players. They’ve provided some cases studies already, but it’ll be exciting to see just how this step encourages innovation using video on the web.

But this moves means a lot more than you’ll be able to change the color of your player. YouTube will still do the heavy lifting (videos will still be stored on and streamed through YouTube), but it means that you’ll be able to fully integrate YouTube into your site or application. Now your organization’s website can have its own YouTube without ever having to leave your site. Though of course you still have YouTube branding, still have conversation around the video happening on YouTube. It is NOT a white-label product.

If you don’t have a programming bone in your body, start easy like me and go to the YouTube page of the video you want to embed. Click “customize” and you’ll be able to change the colors, choose whether or not you want to include related videos, and remove the border. Then grab the code above and put it right on your site or blog. You can see my own example below.