Microsoft in Video Roundup of Restart Romania Tech Tools

December 13 marked an evolutionary moment, check out this video webinar (with guest Todi Pruteanu from Microsoft Romania) as we explored the technology which made Restart Romania a success.

About a year ago I sat down to my first coffee with the guys from ITSpark.  We talked about their interest in developing Romanian language content about Microsoft tools for beginning and intermediate level users.  We talked about TechSoup and our interest in bringing such content to civil society.  Then we walked over to our first NetSquared local meeting in their town.  

Over the year since, our organizations have traveled together to the major cities across Romania for Connection Days, hosted monthly webinars and attended NetSquared Local events.  ITSpark's community of  technologists share their knowledge passionately and inspire the rest of us to take notice of things like Microsoft One Note which might actually help organize our days... In return, they meet dozens of civil society folks who need to know about tools to increase the scope of their impact.  

Now ITSpark had been playing with some new toys and, after being a part of NetSquared local meetups in Cluj and Bucharest, decided they could do the same thing online. Instead of webcasts, powerpoints and demos, the next generation of monthly webinars will include interactive video which opens a variety of interesting options like round-table discussions about a tool or a topic highlighting tech (from the point of view of civil society and other perspectives).  With live chat, we can take questions from the audience and even get a few new volunteers.

I hope that other countries will take up the challenge model pioneered by NetSquared which worked so well for us in Romania.

(For background on Restart Romania, see here, here, here, here, and here on this blog and in the Huffington Post article by Daniel Ben-Horin).