Tag Archives: Heidi Beirich

Nonprofit Radio for March 8, 2021: Domestic Terrorism and Your Nonprofit & 21NTC

My Guests:

Mickey Desai, Heidi Beirich & Pete Clay: Domestic Terrorism & Your Nonprofit
Insurrection at the US Capitol. Insurrection by redditers against hedge funds. Our nonprofit community is also at risk of domestic terrorism, regardless of mission. What are those risks and what can you do to minimize them? In collaboration with the Nonprofit SnapCast podcast, my guests are Mickey Desai, SnapCast host, Heidi Beirich at Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, and Pete Clay with CyberOpz.

 

Amy Sample: 21NTC

Amy Sample Ward

Amy Sample Ward returns to reveal what’s planned for NTEN’s virtual 21NTC on March 23 to 25. Many of their smart speakers will be guests on Nonprofit Radio over the next months. Amy is NTEN’s CEO and our social media and technology contributor.

 

 

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[00:02:22.74] spk_1:
Yeah. Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of synesthesia if I sensed that you missed this week’s show. Domestic terrorism and your non profit insurrection at the US Capitol Insurrection by Reddit Ear’s against hedge funds are non profit. Community is also at risk of domestic terrorism, regardless of mission. What are those risks and what can you do to minimize them? In collaboration with the nonprofit snap cast podcast, my guests are Mickey D’s I Snap cast host Heidi Barrick at Global Project Against Hate and Extremism and Peat Clay with Cyber Ops, also 21 T. C Amy Sample Ward returns to reveal what’s planned for intends Virtual 21 NTC on March 23 to 25. Many of their smart speakers will be guests on nonprofit radio over the next months. Amy is N ten’s CEO and our social media and Technology contributor. On Tony’s Take two podcast pleasantries. We’re sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot c o. Here is domestic terrorism and your non profit. It’s my pleasure to first welcome Mickey D’s I. Mickey and I are co hosting this week’s show. His podcast is non profit snap cast. He invented the nonprofit snapshot, a micro assessment and dashboard for nonprofits. His past includes work at IBM Tech Bridge and Southern Crescent. Habitat for Humanity. Mickey is at NP Snapshot and the company is at nonprofit snapshot dot org. Mickey. It’s a pleasure to co host with you. Welcome. Thank

[00:02:25.39] spk_4:
you, tony. Glad to be here today.

[00:03:30.24] spk_1:
Absolutely. Thank you for coming up with this idea. Thank you. It was a team effort. That was good. It was your idea. I adopted it immediately. I’ll give you that. But it was your I was very I jumped on it. But it was your idea originally, right. Heidi Beirich, also with us. She is co founder and chief strategy officer at Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. She’s an expert on American and European extremist movements, including white supremacy, nativism, anti Semitism and anti government movements. She has appeared repeatedly on major television networks and in documentaries and radio programs and now a podcasts exploring extremism. Had he led the Southern Poverty Law Center’s intelligence project, the premier organization tracking hate and anti government movements in the United States, she’s at Haiti. Barrick, B E I. R I, C. H. And her organization is at global extremism dot org. Heidi. It’s very good to have you. Thanks for being with me and Mickey.

[00:03:32.94] spk_2:
Oh, I’m thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me

[00:04:03.74] spk_1:
a pleasure. And Peter Clay Pete Clay has a 25 year career in cybersecurity. He has served as chief information security officer cso for three very different organizations as a consultant to large international financial organizations, including the World Bank and multiple U. S. Federal agencies. He’s founder of cyber ops at Cyber Ops. That’s oh, pz cyber OPC dot com. Pete. Welcome to thank you, Tony and nonprofit Snap guest.

[00:04:11.54] spk_0:
Thank you so much. Glad to be here.

[00:04:37.14] spk_1:
Pleasure. Thank you for doing this with us. Hey, I got a first question for you. Um insurrection at the U. S. Capitol Insurrection by Reddit Ear’s against a Wall Street hedge fund. That bet against Gamestop and AMC stock. These two things monumental happened within a month of each other in January and February, Our nonprofits potential targets of insurrection.

[00:06:05.74] spk_2:
I don’t think there’s any question that nonprofits could ultimately be targets in this kind of mob action like you saw in particular off of Reddit related to the Gamestop stocks. Uh, you know, when nonprofits right about advocate about things that folks don’t like, This is probably the most likely way that you’re going to see an attack. Come. And I can just tell you from my years at the Southern Poverty Law Center, my work now at the Global Project Against Hate and extremism. We while I was at SPLC, and now we write a lot about the kinds of people that were involved in the insurrection at the Capitol. And when you do that, you are absolutely going to get harassed. Online. Doxed Online Targeted online. Fake news Produced about you Online. You can have mass hits to your Twitter feed from people attacking you, and, you know, there there are a lot of other things that can happen, including attempts to, you know, disrupt your Web services. Attack your payment systems so it’s more serious than just somebody saying you know that I’m a communist liberal and and should die, right? They can actually attack the systems that the nonprofit relies on to function. And there are real world effects because sometimes there is a need for security in real life, as if these things become threatening enough. And and it can include up to death threats, which we received many, many times, especially while I was at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

[00:06:45.84] spk_1:
Yeah, yeah, it’s incredible. And you’re right. The physical attacks could be physical. That could be virtual. That could be reputational. Uh, and I want to broaden it to I I think I want folks to realize that it doesn’t have to be that you’re doing controversial work like you are, you know, fighting extremism and nationalism. White supremacy. Um, I mean, it could just be something that a group or even a person just doesn’t like. Like you could just you could be doing environmental work. Or you could be you could be feeding the homeless, and somebody in your community feels that your your efforts are your your work is worthless and and should be devoted to something that that that that that person thinks is important. It doesn’t even have to be controversial. Like like gun violence or gun control or or planned Parenthood or something, right? I mean,

[00:08:00.04] spk_2:
no, I think that’s exactly right. I mean, nowadays, with this technology at your fingertips, right, the ability to zoom bomb people, you know, send them direct, hateful, direct messages reply to tweets online that any person really can have access to this and and engage in it so quickly. Before you could even report it right to like a Twitter or Facebook, anybody could be maligned this way. Also, it’s very easy to put up fake websites, right, That targets someone with a bunch of falsehoods. You could you know, a YouTube video can go up in seconds or on TIKTOK. So, yeah, anybody who doesn’t like what you’re doing And I suppose this would apply to corporations and all kinds of things has at their fingertips the ability to to smear you, smear your work, you know, liable You all kinds of and threaten you. So that’s right. You don’t even have to be doing something controversial. If one person or a group of people like you saw with the coordinated activities off of Reddit. Decide you’re their target. Well, this is very easy to do to somebody.

[00:08:21.84] spk_1:
Yeah, and the one person we can look at Walmart, Walmart in El Paso. The synagogue in Pittsburgh. Um, other examples, Uh, the black church, the black church. Mass murder in South Carolina. All individual individual actors. Um, Mickey, I want to turn over to you. What? What do you What do you want to do? What do you want to ask? Well,

[00:08:43.14] spk_4:
I have a number of questions, actually. But let’s listen, I’m trying to actually narrow it down to one. Um, and I don’t know who exactly to address this too, because I think it applies to both Heidi in your experience, Um, that the two questions that I kind of wanted to touch on briefly are, uh do you have any quick insights and to into what leads people to extremist behaviors? And, um, is there a way to to separate and quantify the odds of real life crime versus cybercrime?

[00:10:52.64] spk_2:
Those are good tough questions, Vicky, Uh, honestly, we don’t really have great research on what causes one person to become an extremist who is exposed to a whole bunch of terrible ideas and somebody else doesn’t necessarily go down that path. You know, Tony just mentioned the attacks in Pittsburgh and in El Paso and in Charleston. In those cases, each of those individuals had imbibed a bunch of white supremacist ideas. That’s what led to them to commit those attacks. But those particular ideas, sadly, are rampant across a lot of different social media and websites. So the question becomes, Why Dylann roof in Charleston, right? Why? Why the guy in Pittsburgh? Why does this particular individual snap? You know, there are a lot of theories, especially coming out of the FBI’s behavioral unit, on people who collect grievances, perhaps have domestic violence in their past. Or alternatively, in many cases come from broken families. So they look to white supremacy as a way to sort of replace that in a way that’s similar to maybe kids joining gangs, right kids of color. But it’s the data is not very sophisticated, and we don’t know a lot about it, And this is part of the reason why the federal government looks like it’s going to be pouring some serious money into research on this front so we can tease these things out better. Uh, and there’s a lot of work that needs to be done with, you know, big online data sets to try to figure out what are the triggers. Look, the one thing we know is that in the last few years, the ranks of white supremacists have grown, and the age of the people joining them has been falling. So very young, particularly white males are getting sucked into this universe. And so, you know, there’s something about the online thing that has more of an impact than when you used to experience these ideas out in the real world. There’s something going on there that’s particularly dangerous. Okay, Mickey. Now I’ve have forgotten what your second question was. Can you tell me again?

[00:10:58.90] spk_1:
I do that all the time. I’m so glad to questions like, write it down or I have to do the exact same thing. What was the other part?

[00:11:11.94] spk_4:
The other part is, um, is there a separation? Can you measure the fractions between real life in person? Crime versus cybercrime?

[00:11:16.34] spk_2:
Uh, what motivates it is that we,

[00:11:18.53] spk_4:
uh, frequency of incidents.

[00:11:21.44] spk_2:
Oh, gosh. I mean,

[00:11:23.06] spk_4:
that’s kind of redundant, but

[00:12:44.64] spk_2:
Well, I mean, the big thing that I spent time studying is how the online moves to the offline. Right? So how is it that it triggers domestic terrorist attacks? Basically, And so we’ve already mentioned a few of the big ones here. We can also talk about Christchurch, New Zealand attacks. There were two attacks, uh, in Germany in the last year, driven by white supremacy. I mean, the one thing I can tell you we know is there’s a particular type of propaganda. It’s called the Great Replacement. What it argues is that white people are being genocide in their home countries. I know this sounds lunatic, but this is what these people believe and being replaced by Muslims, immigrants, non white folks, often Jews are blamed for orchestrating this whole business. That particular ideology has motivated a ton of terrorist attacks. So we know that. But, you know, we could say the same thing about Cunanan, right? This cookie conspiracy about Democrats involved in child sex trafficking, no basis in reality didn’t exist five years ago, and last year, the FBI labeled that particular conspiracy theory as violence inducing, and we saw a lot of cute non supporters at the Capitol on January 6 during the insurgency there. So we know something’s trigger more violence than other things. But again, I think all of this requires a lot more research. And, you know, we’ve only had this social media capability for a very short period of time. So it’s not surprising that we’re kind of behind the eight ball and figuring all of this out.

[00:13:10.84] spk_1:
Heidi, I want to follow up with you on, uh, acceleration ism and what that’s about. But let’s bring Pete Clay in. Pete. What? What worries you on the on the cyber side? I mean, I’m not sure nonprofits are properly invested in cybersecurity thinking about it. Uh, have a plan. What? What? What concerns you on the around Nonprofits and and cyber

[00:16:55.54] spk_0:
tony. Let’s let’s keep it focused. First of all, on on Heidi, right? I Heidi. I live 10 miles outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. Um, so I kind of understand, um, and it’s fascinating to me because exacerbating that is, one person can appear to be 10,000 right online. And so when you start to look at what accelerates in these groups, you know, it’s there’s There’s several fascinating studies that were done about the early days of Wikileaks, where it looked like there were tens, hundreds and thousands of people that were working on Wikileaks and it was two guys, right? And the same thing with these movements and one of the attractions of the movement is I’m with people that think like I do. You don’t know if it’s one person or 10 people or 1000 people, right? It’s just people that think like I do, So all of those things and and highly, you know, Please protect yourself. You know how to do it. But protect yourself online, right? Because what we’ve seen and I’ve gotten pulled into several of the conversations here locally, people long after Charlottesville were over. We’re getting doxed and having fake news done. And as the trials played out locally and the Antifa supporters would show up at the trials, is this stuff just kept going on for years here? And so it’s so important to understand, Even before you talk about organizational protection, it’s so important to understand how to protect yourself, right, and it and it really starts from a personal protection standpoint of understanding that basically everything that you do online is tracked somewhere by someone. And and if that sounds really big brother ish, I don’t mean to alarm people. But, you know, I was just reading an article a little bit earlier today that says, now that two thirds of all emails have, um, tracking software tracking pixels built into them so they know when they were open. They know how long somebody looked at them. They know where the I P address was and all of those sorts of things. And so for anybody in Heidi’s line of work, it’s so incredibly important to practice good information, security protection because, first of all, the work that she’s doing is so incredibly important. But then, second of all, just to protect herself from online hysteria and nonsense turning into real world threat. And so all of those things can apply to, particularly for for nonprofits that engage in in Let’s call them that the anti hate approached to the world. If you’re going to annoy somebody, you have to have more than just antivirus and, you know, a cousin Bob that kind of does something for somebody, um, to kind of protect you because it is so simple. The vast majority of attacks today are automated attacks that somebody launched days ago. They may not even be pointed at you, but because you have a weakness they can exploit, they’ll run the attack through automatically. They’ll pull the information and then figure out what to do with it and how to monetize it later. And that goes for individuals or small nonprofits or big companies. So all of those things kind of kind of come into this one space together,

[00:17:27.74] spk_1:
so you need to have protections built. I mean, you need to have someone in your organization focused on this, Um, and again, it’s not just it’s not only the, you know, the folks doing important work like Heidi is doing. I mean, it could be an organization that’s to any to 99 a half percent of us would be just mundane work helping in the community. But somebody in the community doesn’t like it.

[00:17:30.54] spk_0:
Well, big, big,

[00:17:32.05] spk_1:
the potential threat is broad.

[00:18:00.24] spk_0:
The potential threat is huge, because again, what Heidi is doing in and Heidi, I I’m not trying to use you as an object lesson, but but you are a lightning rod in this sense. Right? Because the vast majority of non profits aren’t going to be specifically targeted. It doesn’t. You don’t have to annoy anybody to be the victim of a cyber attack. You just have to have the wrong configuration in place to be the victim of the cyber attack.

[00:18:30.44] spk_4:
It may make sense to describe exactly the difference between an opportunistic cyber crime versus a targeted cyber crime. You know, we’re Pete. If I’m not mistaken, you’re talking about someone who is basically just pinging tons of i ps to figure out where the vulnerabilities are, and then they can come back later and exploit them versus an activist or an extremist out there who is specifically targeting an entity that they don’t like in order to damage their system or to take their money or something like that There. Is there a difference between the way those two things are perpetrated,

[00:18:49.14] spk_0:
tony, Mickey, and again decide right there, man, I’m just going to use that. I’ve been decide right there. Um, I can scan the entire Internet every connected device on the internet for vulnerability in 45 minutes from the desktop that I’m sitting at

[00:18:59.44] spk_1:
can,

[00:22:48.24] spk_0:
right? Yeah, Anybody can you can. Any of us can write every 45 minutes? What that means is if I have knowledge and can do some very, very simple things. And in fact, you can actually buy kits for ranging from a couple $100 for not very good, one to a couple of $1000 for some pretty good ones that will actually take the information from that scanning and plug it into and just automate an attack that just works 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. And it just runs continuously. It’s completely non personal. If you have this vulnerability that it can exploit, it will exploit it, bring the information back and do whatever it’s going to be done with it, right? That’s a very different thing. Then when you see somebody you know the Southern Poverty Law Center. Um, I was doing some research about 10 years ago, and the Southern Poverty Law Center website was one of the top 15 most attacked websites on the entire Internet, and it was continuous. It was a continuous barrage. It was a continuous everything Yeah, that’s got those automated attacks in there. But it’s far more dangerous because people that understand how to break into systems are actively trying to take the information that they get from the Southern Poverty Law Center or from a website that they don’t like. And they’re actively using it to try to break in, to deface the website, to change messaging on the website, to get inside the system, to exploit um, sensitive information. And so all of those things are happening on an ongoing basis and where the cybersecurity markets have not done a good job is there are way too many products that are being sold out there as just buy our stuff and don’t you don’t have to worry about this anymore. There is no product in the world that actually that’s a true statement, for you have to take multiple products and kind of put them in the right position with the right architecture to be able to protect yourself. There are some that can cut a lot of risk, a good firewall. It’s almost worth its weight in gold if it’s properly configured and monitored, because the other thing that we see all the time is when we go in and we look after these great big data breaches, you can almost right. It’s almost like a metronome at this point. Such and such company had a data breach. I don’t know what happened here, the suspects that possibly broke into it because we all want to think some nation states actually breaking into everything when most of the time it’s honestly, something like one of those automated attacks that did something. Oh, the alerts all went off. Nobody responded to the alert. If your fire alarm goes off and you don’t respond to the fire alarm, it’s kind of on you at that point, right? So what’s really critical in cyber security is not just buying some products, but it’s having people that are at least understand how to respond to the alert and are responsible for protecting the organization. As it stands. It also gets a lot more complex because a lot of those services that Heidi talked about earlier are hosted and served by a different company, and you have to understand where their security stops and where your security has to begin.

[00:23:21.34] spk_1:
Pete, what kind of person is a nonprofit looking for, uh, I know the listeners to nonprofit radio, and I imagine that’s true for Mickey Show as well. Non profit snap cast. You know, there’s small shops they’re not going to have A. They may not even have a director of information technology, let alone. They’re certainly not going to have a chief information security officer. What are they? What are they searching for? What kind of expert are they looking for to to help, to advise them.

[00:25:19.74] spk_0:
So what they’re looking for is, First of all, one of the fastest growing areas right now in cybersecurity is for the first time in my 25 year career, cybersecurity experts are starting to show up on boards of directors, right either as advisers to boards or as board members themselves, because it’s considered to be critical. This is happening in the Fortune 500 as well as for much smaller companies. The second thing is to sit down and talk to your managed service provider. If you don’t have any of your it done in house, talk to the people that are providing your manage your manage security. If there are managed service provider, if they’re providing your your laptops and your endpoints. Chances are they’ve got some stuff that they can help you with at that particular point. What we found and the gap that we’re really filling in that market is we take big company information. I don’t want to turn it into a commercial. We take big company, enterprise level cybersecurity capabilities, and we deliver those two small companies at a very effective price. And so we are trying to make it as simple as possible for people to do the right thing. But before you go hire anybody before you go do anything, there is one thing that you can do that will take a ton of risk out. And that is train your people in cybersecurity. There’s a ton of stuff on YouTube. There’s a ton of free training out there and point after point after point. Before you buy firewalls and anti virus and endpoint protection and all of this stuff. Train your people because training your people has the most positive impact on reducing your cybersecurity risk that you can possibly imagine.

[00:26:13.94] spk_1:
It’s time for a break turn to communications outlets like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CBS Market Watch and The Chronicle of Philanthropy. Do you want to be in places like that? Do you want them talking to you and quoting You turn to has the relationships with outlets like these and others. So when they’re looking for experts on charitable giving, non profit trends or philanthropy or something related to the work, you do the call turn to turn to, we’ll call you turn hyphen two dot c o Now back to domestic terrorism and your non profit. Mickey, you got you got something I don’t want to.

[00:26:14.94] spk_4:
Yeah, no, that’s cool. I want to ask Heidi again. There’s there’s a number of questions I think I want to ask you that sort of hinge upon. How did you get into this area of interest? How what inspired you to to get into, uh, intelligence of this of this nature?

[00:30:18.24] spk_2:
Sure. Let me just say something about what Pete just said on the training your people. I got to tell you that, uh, especially especially when I was at SPLC. That’s where we found a lot of the major attacks coming in. Like in other words, if people hadn’t been known, don’t click on this thing. Don’t go open this thing, Don’t do this thing. It’s like we would have just been opening ourselves up to. And you’re right, these many, many attacks that that we were constantly sustaining. So I’m just I’m reminding myself of all the little trainings that made me do there and actually, how smart it was, even though I might have been annoyed by them at the time. Okay, Mickey, how did I get into this? Uh, it wasn’t entirely planned. I was working on a PhD. I’ve been studying fascist movements in Europe for a really long time and in Latin America, and I actually I was at Purdue University, and I thought I was going to become a professor and in my sort of job hunt that first year, um, I ended up for a bunch of not interesting circumstances taking an internship at the SPLC. And, uh and so I was I literally, during my time there, I did every single job in the department that I was in, right? Started as an intern, then was a staff writer, you know, up, up and up. And what I found when I went to work there is First of all, I’d always had this, uh, you know, visceral dislike of fascist movements, of white supremacy of what it does to people, perverts, democracies. You know, Obviously it’s one of the worst ideas ever come up by humankind, and and I found the fact that I was in doing activist work. In other words, I was there to expose these groups right about them. Let the public know about the law enforcement, know about them. And if I could do something to tamp down their activities, I found that just so much more satisfying than writing academic publications. That may have been important but didn’t have that kind of real world impact. So I sort of got hooked on. You know what good non profit student, no matter what they’re into, which is impact right? Whether that’s feeding people or housing people or it’s trying to, you know, break up white supremacy is a threat. Two Americans, in this case at SPLC. So that’s what really hooked me on it. And because I had a lot of background on these kinds of people, these movements, these groups, it was easy for me to hit the ground running and and and that’s why I stayed. I mean, I just It was that satisfaction of knowing Okay, we’ve just written an expose on this really vile group that celebrates the Confederacy, is growing at a very fast clip. This is slowing down their membership drives or we have found information on criminal activity by a particular group, and we’ve handed it off to law enforcement and they’re going to take care of it. And that means fewer domestic terror incidents or hate crimes or whatever the case might be down the road. And the other thing, that was really interesting about it. And I should say the Anti Defamation League does a lot of this similar kind of work. There are other groups that do. It was that at that time, So I got to the law center in 1999 in 2001, of course, where the horrible terrorist attacks 9 11. At that time, people weren’t really watching white supremacy and it was metastasizing and growing as we all focus, understandably so on the threat coming from, you know, the Middle East and Al Qaeda and so on. And and I think back to that time And I think if the splc and the HDL and some others weren’t doing that work, we would have known nothing about it. I mean, there would have literally been nobody paying attention to these movements at that time, and that would have been an absolute tragedy. So, you know, I’m really proud of having been able to do that work and keep doing that work now. But it was the impact part, the ability to make something happen that would make life easier on others. That really kept me and kept me in the game.

[00:30:31.34] spk_4:
The reason I ask is, you know, coming from my own background in mental health, we learn early on that if you’re in a position to be touching the darker side of human nature, the shadow side, as some people call it with any sense of regularity, then that is a good recipe for burnout. Unless you know how to really deal with that, you’re in a position to see the same thing on a societal level. How did you not burn out?

[00:32:05.34] spk_2:
Well, I took. I did take a lot of vacations, will admit, and sometimes you just have to take a break from the material. I mean, for some people, it’s harder than for other people. Right when you’re watching racist material all day long or anti Semitism, whatever the horrible thing, maybe it can. It can get to you. I will say that once. I made the decision last fall to, uh, leave the center and start this new organization to focus on transnational white supremacy is what? Which is what it is. Um, I took, like, four months off. I mean, I just It was it had been I felt like I’ve been running a marathon in particular since Donald Trump ran for office in 2015, and I did take a chunk of time off, and it’s a legitimate thing. I mean, I think a lot of organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center and others who monitor this information are starting to realize that maybe this isn’t something you should be doing 40 hours a week, right? The key to have breaks, you need to have access to therapy if you need it, and that it would be good to spend some of your time working on something positive, right? As opposed to viewing negative things all all the time I’ve actually heard questions I’ve had a lot of people ask me, Um, like, for example, there’s an organization called Hope Not Hate in the UK that tracks the same kind of extremism over there. And we’ve all had conversations in the last year saying, Well, what is it that you do for your staff, right? How do you protect your staff? How do you make sure it’s It’s, you know, sustainable, that you don’t want burnout? So it’s It’s really important, Mickey. And honestly, it’s a conversation that I never heard the first decade, decade and a half that I was doing this work. It’s as though the issue didn’t exist, right? Or at least in this sector, it didn’t exist. And now I’m glad that it has talked about

[00:32:28.14] spk_4:
right well, and you let up exactly to the point that I was hoping you’d make, which was at least we kind of touched on it. You know, the acknowledging that the burnout is there, but being burnt out can make you a little more vulnerable

[00:32:34.66] spk_2:
to harm,

[00:32:46.64] spk_4:
especially if you’re in a little a personal position where your your actual physical safety is on the line because I think it does. I think it dulls your awareness, and I think it makes you a little bit careless in the way that you might conduct yourself and I don’t know, correct me. If I’m wrong, I could be completely

[00:33:45.84] spk_2:
off base with that. No, I think that’s right. I mean, I don’t think there’s been enough sort of thinking about what the impact is of being exposed to this. What’s interesting is that you’re now seeing it. For moderators on the big social media sites, right? There was a big lawsuit announced yesterday by Facebook moderators, who feel that they’ve suffered considerable harms. Now they unlike what my experience was. They don’t get the positive experience to know that what they’re doing is probably helping people right there. Just looking at heinous material of all kinds, right involving Children is not just about hate material and taking it down and not really maybe getting the satisfaction of feeling like it’s achieving something, but But we just haven’t talked about it enough. There’s probably a callousness that gets, you know, it probably reduces your empathy and sympathy in many ways, so there’s a lot of side effects that we need to know more about, Especially when it comes to really gross content. And and there’s a lot of parts of the world where you know, nowadays and nonprofits you’re seeing that stuff. Even if that’s not what you’re monitoring, you may be subjected to it.

[00:35:13.84] spk_1:
Right? I d I experienced something like that myself in the I guess in the in the days when Richard Spencer and white supremacy were more talked about than they are now, Um, what was that like, I guess 2017 2018. Something like that. I started listening to a podcast called The Daily Show. Uh, what you say? Yeah. Yeah, the show. Uh, nobody knows. There are very few people know there’s the show is the Hebrew word for holiday for the Holocaust. So it the name of the show is the daily Holocaust. And and I wanted to get to know you know what? These people what do they talk about? How do they rationalize their thinking? What do they who Who are these folks besides Richard Spencer and and I after, um, I guess I binge listen for, like, a weekend or something, but I had to I had to put it down for a for a couple of weeks because it’s it’s so hateful and hurtful. Um, I experienced that. Personally, I I as much as I was still curious and I did go back to it. But, you know, like you’re saying, you know, you took a four month break. Your work is a lot more intense than mine. But just on my little microcosmic way, listening to one podcast for a bunch of ours, I couldn’t take it any longer, Had to put it away for a couple of weeks. Uh,

[00:36:09.13] spk_2:
I had a colleague. I have a colleague, not not name to be mentioned who have suffered some serious post traumatic stress. After watching, you might remember the Christchurch attacks at the two mosques where 51 people were killed were run on Facebook live, right? The guy livestream this and I have a friend who was, of course, we were monitoring these attacks as they were happening right at the Southern Poverty Law Center, and he told me for weeks and weeks after because we watched the video multiple times right to figure out what we could see what’s going on here, where they’re more Attackers, etcetera, etcetera. He said he was having nightmares. I mean, it really deeply, deeply affected him, which we shouldn’t be surprised by, right? I mean, and there’s probably I mean, I think about the victims and some of these attacks or the populations who are targeted by them. What that must feel like I can’t even imagine. Mm.

[00:36:22.93] spk_1:
Let’s go back to the to the nonprofit threat. I I did want to ask you about acceleration ism what, what, what that movement is and and how that could potentially be a threat to to the nonprofit order,

[00:38:27.22] spk_2:
well, acceleration ists who are typically neo Nazis. There’s a couple of big groups that people may have heard of the base. That’s the English translation for Al Qaeda. Actually, you know they’re Nazis, Autumn wife in which is a group named that means atomic weapons in German. What’s the What’s problematic about these groups in particular? Is that what they mean when they say they’re acceleration? Ists is their goal is to accelerate the end of democracies or social systems or social orders. They want to actually blow them up, rip them down, destroy them, replace them with, you know something neo fascist or whatever They’re fancy. They’re dark fantasies might be. And they’re involved in a ton of violence. A ton of violence had dozens of them arrested for plots involving murder, attempted murders, murders, killings. I mean, it’s really, really bad stuff. If you get in the if you end up in the sights of somebody like that, Um, you know it, it’s going to cost you. I mean, and the and the and the These are online movements. I mean, one thing I’m thinking about when Pete was talking about being targeted. These are not numb schools when it comes to Web technologies. These are people who are early adopters. They understand their messaging has to get out online. They know how to use tools and all kinds of things to affect the work of nonprofits and others who they don’t like. They dislike everybody that they perceive to be on the left, right. So this isn’t just about doing anti hate work. It could be any kind of entity that’s doing what I would consider social justice work or or, you know, work for the public good, especially if you’re something like black lives matters. You could easily be a target of these people, and they’re and they’re pretty scary. Um, you know, probably one of the ugliest websites in the country. It’s kind of they advertise. The Daily Show is called Daily Stormer, Right, named after a Nazi newspaper. Their Web master is on the run, living in Transnistria, part kind of an unregulated part of Moldova. And he runs a bunch of American websites, and he orchestrated attacks where he took over fax machines in universities around the world and put out anti Semitic propaganda. This guy’s clever. He’s clever, and he’s probably capable of doing just about anything. If he sets his mind to it online,

[00:38:44.12] spk_1:
we should we should go back to, you

[00:38:46.38] spk_0:
know, you shouldn’t what Heidi is talking

[00:38:49.65] spk_1:
about. You

[00:38:51.10] spk_0:
know, I tony, I appreciate it, man. I really do.

[00:38:57.72] spk_1:
It’s important for groups to know that, you know, they got to protect themselves online and how to do it.

[00:41:22.31] spk_0:
Yeah, but I’m also telling you that the map over my back right there, right is Oxford University. I spent my junior year there, Right. Um, my fascination was Germany 1923. Where did all this stuff starts and you know, also as a transplanted, grew up overseas and grew up other places. And so when we moved to the American South kind of adopted the whole mythology of the Confederacy and states’ rights, Not the slavery part of it, but the whole mythology of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and all the rest of that. And I’m such a history freak. I won all of those arguments for 30 years, right? It was all about states’ rights. It was all about this stuff. And I ran into a You have a professor and over the course of about a three hour meal just got totally demolished in every argument that I made. And so it’s a fascinating concept that suddenly we have the Confederacy, which morphed in about 18 90 because they basically rewrote it in the Arthurian legend, right? Which is what we all learned in high school and college growing up. But now it’s been grafted onto nothing but pure Nazism, right? Moving forward and how that happened and and how that’s happening online, I think is it is at uh huh. Actually, one of the great stories of the data the military been talking to friends. They can’t tell the difference between the recruitment techniques used by Isis and used by Al Qaeda and used by by the white supremacists. The techniques are exactly the same with the same result. So what? Heidi? Heidi, I got your back. I’ll protect your organization wherever it is. You just got to tell me what you need. I got you. Okay, that’s that’s not the problem. Um, please don’t include that in in in the piece. But I’m just saying there’s no more important. This is what’s going to determine the outcome of our democracy in the next 2025 years.

[00:42:25.40] spk_4:
That’s it. If I can. If I can steer us back to some practical things that nonprofits can do to contend with this, you know, we’ve we’ve we’ve sort of been dancing around the issue of awareness of the magnitude of the problem and the various things that nonprofits might experience. Uh, Pete and I did a really excellent, uh, short snap cast episode on doing cyber security on a budget, so I don’t want to rehash that, but maybe it does make sense to sort of touch on some basic things with, uh, you know if we’re if we’re talking about nonprofits, that probably the vast majority of non profits are not going to be specifically targeted for their work of their ideology. Uh, probably the vast majority of non profits might become a victim of opportunistic crime. Um, but is the is the effort to defend themselves Are the steps that those nonprofits can take the same.

[00:46:22.78] spk_0:
The steps are the same. Now, Heidi, this is the part where you need to tune out. Not listening because you’ve got a different set of a different. You’ve got a different risk profile, Shall we say to use that term of art? Okay. But we can take care of you to we’ve got you covered. Um, first of all, figure out what is the least amount of it you can use to do your job and do it well and do it effectively. Right? So if you don’t have to turn everything on with your machines, the idea is is what is the minimum I can use because of the less you use, the fewer of those automated attacks you’re going to get hit with. Okay, The second piece of it is passwords aren’t terribly useful anymore. Okay? We used to think we used to be really, really silly people and we would run around and tell people You have to have a 12 character password with upper and lower case and special characters and all the rest of the stuff, and you have to change it between every 45 90 days and all the rest of that stuff and what we realized was we drove people insane and they quit listening to information security. People like me talk because we were snatching their lives away from them. What the bad guys were doing was they were capturing those password files and just replaying the entire hash. They don’t even decrypt them anymore. So you need to have two factor authentication for your bank account and for any of your communications, right? Any of your personal communication because that’s where those risks are. And if you’re multi factor authentication, in some cases now with really good stuff can be biometric where you type in your password, and then they just use the biometrics on your phone or whatever other devices out there, or cameras and everything else, and we’re seeing huge leaps forward in that stuff movement going on. Finally, you have to get past the idea of thinking that hackers are these hoodie wearing geniuses that can get into anything at any point at any time in the world, Right? There are people that work for nation states that what they do looks like magic, right? They’re all backed by huge research departments and huge capabilities that it takes a nation state to do that level of research. This stuff that’s come out about the solar winds attacks for the last in the last couple days. Make no mistake. Yes, they may have found a very simple password that an intern left years and years and years ago. By the way, that’s the most terminally stupid excuse ever given by a CEO for losing a major hack. Right? Let’s blame the intern. Um, but the guys that did that attack and the ramifications of it were backed by literally hundreds, if not thousands, of very highly trained engineers. Those guys are typically not coming after you unless you’re Heidi. If you’re Heidi, they may be coming after you. Um, but if you use multi factor authentication and you use and you patch your machines and you use good any virus and things like that. Do those things that are available to you. You’re going to stop the vast majority of those attacks. And then the way you deal with those attacks that just standard tools aren’t going to stop is you become what’s called resilience. Okay, resilience. Which means I have good backups of my system. You want to take over my laptop? Great, erase everything. Restore from backup. I’m back up and running in a couple hours. You haven’t stopped me. Okay? And that’s those are the important steps for any any, um, non profit out there to to kind of put together and to really think about.

[00:46:31.48] spk_1:
That’s cool. Pete, I’m not taking out the part where you pledge to have Heidi’s back. Your the information security guy with the heart. How can I take that out?

[00:46:47.68] spk_0:
Uh, I’m just telling you, I I got it. I got to meet one of my heroes today, and I didn’t even know Heidi’s name it. I’m dead serious. It’s, uh it is critical

[00:46:49.97] spk_1:
evidence of humanity. We’re not cutting that

[00:46:51.77] spk_0:
out. I’m a cybersecurity guy. I’m not human. We need to bite your tongue.

[00:47:01.98] spk_1:
You know all the evidence we can get for humanity. So, No, I think

[00:47:03.87] spk_4:
you’re right. I think Pete has the vapors, and we need to keep that in. Okay.

[00:47:08.27] spk_0:
No, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, it’s appreciate you got a fan and a follower. Um, and and dead serious. If you need help, just reach out. We got your back. Okay, Um,

[00:47:22.98] spk_1:
it’s just but, uh,

[00:47:29.48] spk_0:
it’s hiding my only challenges. I know how they do it. So it’s really hard for me not to do it to them.

[00:47:33.18] spk_1:
That’s vindictive. Wow. He’s got a heart. But he’s vindictive. Double hedge, hedge

[00:47:42.32] spk_2:
effective. Not predictive,

[00:47:44.01] spk_1:
right. Friends stay friends with him. I

[00:48:04.77] spk_4:
have I have one quick question for Heidi, though. I mean, we’ve we’ve sort of talked about a ton of cybercrime and how to prepare for it and deal with that. But what if you become the target of of in life offline physical violence? How does a nonprofit decide to decide that their risk for that is significant enough that they should do something about it, and then what should they do about it?

[00:50:28.36] spk_2:
Okay, well, I’m not the expert at where the threshold exists. But I can tell you that when I was at the SPLC, there were a handful of people who were the targets because we were sort of the faces of the organization, right? Anybody who was doing media would be in that position, including my colleagues who are still there right now, right that are doing media against these kinds of folks. We brought in outside security experts with our security team to take a look at the volume of threats and the level of threats they spend a lot of time looking at, sort of almost like when you hear the chatter and Al Qaeda is increasing right and that would be a time when there might be a possible terrorist attack. You know, you hear the government say that we looked at those same sorts of trends and we had a very close relationship with the FBI field office in Montgomery, Alabama, and where other offices were so that we were constantly sending in threats and material and and we had very good protocols around bomb threats and other kinds of threats. These were just we had to train people just like he was talking about about protecting yourself with all this stuff online. There were trainings that were required for that. And if if somebody was, you know, very prominent, maybe this is a lawyer in a case right against a hate group, and so their faces plastered everywhere at a particular time. And the chatter was growing up. Going up. There were times when we actually had to put physical security on people as a measure. But I wasn’t really the expert who decided where that threshold was, but it was a proactive thing to do. And I think anybody who’s involved in activities that are seen as controversial or hated by a group of people, you know, I don’t know if it’s right, left or center. I don’t care where you’re coming from, but if you’re in that kind of basket where you’re going to, you’re going to face those kinds of threats. You really have to think about that physical security and there are differences between material posted online that’s demeaning or ugly or vile and what is a direct threat, and you have to really keep your eye on that. Like I remember at one point I got mailings at my home in Montgomery from Klansmen that were very cryptic and weird. That was a far more serious situation than people, you know, saying mean things about me on, you know, on Twitter. So you know, those are all. But I would say, you know, you need to talk to security professionals or at least local law enforcement, have a good relationship with local law enforcement. Um, if you’re doing work that could could lead to offline harms basically.

[00:50:32.86] spk_4:
So I should invite my beat cops over for breakfast every once in a

[00:50:36.53] spk_1:
while. I was going to ask about not only local, but FBI or Department of Homeland Security. I mean, on your depending on your visibility.

[00:51:59.26] spk_2:
Well, FBI is probably your best bet when it comes to threats in the world that I was in, because it’s also their responsibility to take care of domestic terrorism and extremism and whatnot. Right? So they had a knowledge like the local sack knew, knew a lot about the movement. It might be different depending on where you are in the country. We also did you know Well, I still do. Did law enforcement training on extremism, So we had a lot of contacts in federal agencies. We had good access, actually, to the people who knew these movements and understood the threat, which was lucky. But, you know, I’ve known people. I knew some folks were working in immigrants rights in Maryland who got vicious, vicious threats. Um, you know, by people who despise immigrants, despised Latinos and so on. And they didn’t have as good of access. And there were many, many times, many times over the years I’ve been reached out to by groups like that saying, What should I do? And it’s shocking, actually, that people don’t even know that the first thing you should do is pick up the phone, call your local law enforcement, call the FBI and preserve the evidence. It’s amazing how often people delete threatening emails threatening everything direct messages and voicemails. And you should never do that. You’ve got to collect that evidence and you’ve got to let law enforcement know.

[00:52:08.55] spk_1:
Honey, what’s a sack you mentioned? I’ve jargon jail on nonprofit radio. What’s your

[00:52:12.62] spk_2:
special agent in charge? Sort of. The head haunt show in the Montgomery FBI

[00:52:20.45] spk_1:
in a regional office. Special agent charge. Okay. Thank you. all right,

[00:52:21.35] spk_4:
jargon. Jail. That’s interesting.

[00:52:25.65] spk_1:
Yeah, we don’t like jargon. What do you think, Mickey? We tap these tap. These two experts.

[00:52:34.55] spk_4:
Yeah. Uh, you know, I don’t think I want to abuse them anymore. Um, but it’s up to you. I’ll defer to you if you have any other anything you want to touch. I think this has been a really good conversation.

[00:53:12.85] spk_1:
I think we I think we covered it. I think they covered it. Um, I’ll let you take us out. I just want to remind folks that they are Heidi. By Rick. She’s at High Heidi Barrick and her organization is at global extremism dot org. And Pete Clay, the chief information security officer who’s who’s a human being, has a heart. You’ll find his company at cyber ops dot com. Cyber oh, pz dot com. And so I want to thank Heidi and Pete and Mickey. Thank you very much again for thinking of this. Let you take us out.

[00:53:18.05] spk_4:
Thank you, Tony. It’s been a pleasure to work with you on this episode. Uh, that is tony-martignetti non profit radio, and I am Mickey. Decide with the nonprofit snap cast. Thank you for being our audience today. We’ll see you with another episode soon. Be safe.

[00:55:33.64] spk_1:
It’s time for Tony’s Take two. The podcast. Pleasantries Sometimes I’ve slipped up. I used to call podcast Podcast Pleasantries. The podcast Pleasantries are going out. They are. And they went out last week and they’re going out again. So So there you go. I’m grateful. I’m grateful that you listen to the show. I know the show helps you. I get emails saying I’m a board member. We listen, I listen, we talk about the stuff at our board meetings, I send it to the CEO. I get emails from C. E. O s saying they’re having their board members. Listen, I know it’s helping you fundraisers as well. Board members, consultants. I know we’ve got a smattering of consultant listeners. I’m grateful. I’m grateful that you’re listening, and I’m gratified that nonprofit radio helps you do your work. You’re bringing it to your CEO. You’re bringing it to your board. That’s terrific. It’s just raising conversations, right? Ideas, conversations and maybe often, I hope, action items. I’m glad. I’m glad. Non profit radio helps you do your work. So pleasantries to you, our podcast listeners that is Tony’s. Take two. We’ve got Boo Koo, but loads more time. Here is 21 NTC. It’s my pleasure to welcome back Amy Sample Ward. You know her? She’s the CEO of N 10 and our social media and technology contributor. Her most recent co authored book is social Change Anytime, everywhere about online multi channel engagement. She’s at Amy R s Ward for Renee and Anton is n 10 dot org. How are you, Amy? Sample words. Good to have you

[00:55:36.04] spk_3:
back. Yeah, it has been a while somehow. I don’t know. Time. Time is an accordion, and

[00:55:42.05] spk_1:
I don’t know how it

[00:55:43.07] spk_3:
works.

[00:55:56.94] spk_1:
Time is that that’s interesting. I hadn’t heard that, but yes, I agree. I do agree. And, uh, yeah, it’s been a few months. It was. I think it was late, late, 2020 when you were last on and we chatted. You doing okay out there in Oregon? In Portland?

[00:55:59.64] spk_3:
Yeah. We are doing okay today. It feels like

[00:56:03.71] spk_1:
today That’s an important qualification. That

[00:57:30.03] spk_3:
today Yeah, they feel like we’ve had from fires to win to ice to pandemic. You know, it’s certainly been, uh, rough and unpredictable Number of months But we are just, you know, just short of the conference being live, and it feels so great. Because last year, of course, we didn’t get to have the conference. Um, but it also feels so weird because normally, uh, you know, we kind of call this the cupcake panic. I think folks who do events may understand this term of you get so close and there’s, like, so much to do and, you know, fun sponsors and committee members are like sending cookies to the office, And you’re just like, Well, I guess I’m eating five cookies right now. Like this is my lunch. I’m just in this time, I’ve got to do everything. And normally we would be doing that in an office filled with, you know, two pallets worth of boxes that we’re shipping up to to send to the conference. And you know, Stafford. Oh, my gosh, I just got through this person who can help me and kind of getting into it with each other. But now, of course, everyone’s just in their home quietly typing away on their computer and feeling like, Gosh, it feels like there’s a whole lot to do. Am I the only one that feels that way because you don’t really get to see each other in the same way. So

[00:57:42.33] spk_1:
all right, so let’s talk about 21 NTC. It’s coming up. Let’s make sure everybody knows the dates. When is it?

[00:57:46.43] spk_3:
It is March 23rd through 25th.

[00:57:48.87] spk_1:
Thank you. So

[00:57:50.02] spk_3:
a Tuesday through Thursday

[00:57:52.83] spk_1:
and we go to n 10 dot org to register

[00:58:06.02] spk_3:
yes and 10 dot org slash ntc is everything you need. Program registration, information about community events, anything you want.

[00:58:17.32] spk_1:
Okay. And 10 dot org Yes. And 10 dot org slash and TCC. Alright, So what are we facing this, uh, in this pandemic Virtual 21 NTC. What are we looking at?

[01:00:35.91] spk_3:
Well, you know, I think, um even though this is our first year doing an entirely virtual NTC, we’re really trying to take the same approach that we’ve taken and I think been known for for the 20 previous years, right, that the NTC is a conference, but it’s not like other conferences you go to, you know, it is it is about community and connection. And you know, the things that make you who you are not only your job title. You know, the lunchtime tables to find other people who like West Wing or, you know, whatever it might be. We’re trying to really design the conference from that as the center. So, um, at an in person, NTC we actually have, you know, had around 125 or more sponsors and exhibitors, and people can engage with them or not. I mean, quite honestly, because it’s in an in person conference. You walk wherever you want to walk, right? Um, and this year we’ve actually limited it to just around 30 because we didn’t want to have to give up so much of that virtual space to sponsors honestly. And that was our one way of thinking. Well, how can we really make this feel like this? Is those community conversations? Of course, technology providers, platform providers, consultants. We still want to register and be part of the conference. But like also join that West Wing conversation. Don’t just feel like you need to talk about the service you provide, or the product you provide, right? So we’ve really focused on the community peace, and there’s, I mean, there’s like different folks limiting meditation sessions Every day there’s live bands every afternoon. There’s all those community conversations, you know, folks that want to connect on different things and still 150 breakout sessions. So, um, and you know that desire we’ve always heard from the community of I wish I could have my clone and go to multiple sessions at once. Well, one benefit of the virtual is all the sessions are alive, but they’ll also be recorded and then on demand. So you can attend one of them live, and then you can can attend the other, like 17 concurrent sessions at your leisure.

[01:00:56.11] spk_1:
You’re okay, so your registration includes attendance at all. The all the recordings that you want to consume.

[01:01:00.32] spk_3:
Okay,

[01:01:02.51] spk_1:
cool, cool. Cool. Um, NTC Beer is always a big deal. That’s always an event. It’s one night. It’s usually it’s usually the first night.

[01:03:06.10] spk_3:
Yeah, I think it’s usually, um, NTC. Beer is one of the only NTC events that intend staff have nothing to do with planning. Um, community members do that, and it’s usually, I think, the night before the first day, and we actually had a call with the NTC beer organizers. What’s going on with, You know, what does that look like in this virtual space? And, um, you know what? What is encouraging people to have a drink on camera together? You know, it’s very different to attend NTC beer, whether you choose to drink or not, because everyone’s like in one big room together, and it’s like a fun kind of entry way. But in this virtual space, I don’t know that there’s a way to do it. So instead, we’re thinking about just making very clear community members who have come to the conference before so that they can be there to help welcome folks into some of those more community conversations. And one way we’re doing that each morning, before breakout sessions start, there’s going to be a group of community members that are not intense staff, just like chatting, You know, like when you go to a conference and you get your coffee and you haven’t spoken out loud yet and you’re still waking up. But you get to listen to those other people at your table who are already having a conversation. We’re basically just broadcasting that, so there will be, you know, four or five people talking about what’s ahead on the agenda, what they’re looking forward to, what they great tip they heard yesterday in a session. Whatever. That kind of warms you up for the day. So even just moments like that, where we can make clear there’s community members that you can talk to, There’s folks who have been here before, um, and not try and do a direct 1 to 1 to the in person conference because it just felt like it won’t be as good if we’re trying to just compare it to the to the in person style. Okay,

[01:03:42.70] spk_1:
okay. And you start with a lackluster host. Of course. You know, rather than focusing on the sessions are the keynotes and I asked about the first thing I asked you about is NTC beer. So we should talk about the we should. I guess we should talk about the sessions and the key notes. Um, the sessions are gonna be outstanding. Of course I’m gonna be capturing. I’m hoping to get another 30 or 35 as I do as I have for the past six years or so. Um, interviews, which will be a lot easier to do because we don’t have to bunch them into 2.5 days. So

[01:03:43.10] spk_3:
we’re going to We don’t have to do them while we’re tearing down the exhibit hall.

[01:04:01.19] spk_1:
Exactly. The NTC has come down around my last interview a number of times. The lights dim the barrack, the not the barricade the, uh, the drape drape. Things are coming down. Those polls that the drapes are hanging on are coming down. There’s a forklift backing up in the

[01:04:02.94] spk_3:
background. We could recreate those sounds if you want to have to get,

[01:04:38.99] spk_1:
I have to spend a fortune on sound effects. Um, yes. So it has often come down around my last interview, but, um, so we’re not constrained this time, So there’ll be there’ll be easily 30 or maybe 35 interviews of smart NTC folks. So yes, So there’s 150 sessions. Um, let’s make the point that this is not only for technologists, we say this year after year, but you say it more eloquently than I do. This is not only for technology people who have technology on their business card,

[01:05:52.29] spk_3:
right? I mean, we just we’re hitting the 12 month mark on a pandemic that has forced everyone to work from home. So if if the last 12 months have not made the case to you that everyone in your organization uses technology, then I don’t know what could make that case. You know, the NTC is people of every job type every organization type every budget size, you know, and people of all different backgrounds, people that have a computer science master’s degree and people who have never had the opportunity to have that kind of education in any way. So everyone is welcome. And ultimately, I think the thing that makes it really accessible regardless of what your job type is is for the most part. Sessions aren’t trying to tell you. Here’s how to do X, y and Z with some product or some very specific type of project because they’re saying, How do you think about fundraising in an online environment? How do you think about program delivery? You know, using different tools? What does it look like to use mapping technology? They’re really about decision making and creating a plan to do something well with technology, and they’re not about any tool that you might already have at your organization.

[01:06:20.18] spk_1:
Okay. Right. Thank you. So it doesn’t matter whether you, you know, or don’t know drew people from WordPress from Jumla from C plus plus from HTML from https. And, yes, you don’t have to know that it’s a technology for its a conference for technology users as well as technologists who have master’s degree in computer science. Okay.

[01:08:16.27] spk_3:
And this year, I’m also really excited because in addition to getting to have 100 and 50 sessions like we have in the past, we’re having three key notes instead of just one. So, you know, that is maybe great in this virtual world because I don’t know that we could have gotten these three amazing people to all fly on the same, you know, in the same three day window to a location to do three key notes. But maybe now we’ve set the bar for ourselves, and we have to always have three going forward. But, um, there’s information about all these folks up on the site, but I’m sure when I say their names, you know, folks listening will recognize them. Rouhani, Benjamin, uh, wrote the new Jim Code. If you have read that book. If not, I recommend to read it. Nokia Cyril, founder of the Center for Media Justice, and Nicole Hannah Jones, of course 16 19 project from the New York Times. So just incredible people thinking and talking and working at the intersection of technology and media and data and race and equity and justice. And what what is happening when we’re using technology for good, for better, for way, way worse. You know, how are we building our tools to replicate the things we’ve already harmed each other with? And how do we kind of get out of that and use technology in better in different ways, which I think as a whole, you know, the thousands of NTC attendees we have every year? That’s the conversation they’re showing up for right every day in their work, not just at the NTC. So I’m excited for the opportunity to have kind of three different takes on that conversation from these folks. And I think that again will really kind of set the bar for NTC s in the future. Now we’re going to have to have three people every time.

[01:08:54.27] spk_1:
All right? Well, you can compromise somewhere else. Maybe in the future, we can compromise somewhere else. Um, I will confess. I only know Nicole Hannah Jones. Okay? Right now. But she’s a luminary. Uh, when that 16 19 came out in the New York Times, whatever was the magazine? What? I mean, I subscribe online, so I read it, and she’s she’s a luminary. She’s on, she’s on, lots of she’s done. She’s done lots of lots of media. Um, and I’m sure the others are very, very well known as well in their in their field. I just I just know Nicole Hannah Jones. That’s all three. Terrific. Excellent.

[01:09:45.17] spk_3:
Congratulations. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I think it will be really awesome. And part of building a virtual conference with the community in mind is we’ve We’ve kind of shrunk the number of hours in the day that we’re saying is officially ntc time. Um, back in the in person conference, it was like registration opens at 7. 30 in the morning. You know, today, 30 we’re doing a reception all the way until 5. 30. Then we’re going to some party. You know, it’s like just so many hours, But now, knowing that we’re across time zones knowing that so many participants are going to have other people in their house off of their video right that they are needing to coordinate with in some way for life. And we kind of shrunk the number of hours in the day. And then we’ve also like, each day the keynote is at a different time, so that if folks really can’t join in the morning their

[01:09:58.09] spk_1:
time,

[01:10:47.46] spk_3:
they on a different day, they could join the keynote live, you know. So first day there’s a morning, middle day, there’s a middle, and last day there’s an end of conference keynote. So folks across times and honestly, we are really hoping that folks, you know, unplugged their headphones and kind of turn the computer to their whole family. And, you know, these are conversations you should totally invite your kids in to listen to or your partner or your parents, you know, whoever you live with, um, both for these awesome keynotes. And like I said, at the end of the day, there’s going to be art sessions live bands like sit down for dinner and just, you know, unplug your headphones and let the band play while you have dinner. We really wanted to feel like the NTC

[01:10:48.39] spk_1:
family. It’s a family affair.

[01:10:50.00] spk_3:
Bring your family.

[01:10:51.35] spk_1:
Bring your family for no extra cost. No extra

[01:10:53.57] spk_3:
cost. Exactly.

[01:11:12.66] spk_1:
Yeah. All right. All right. Cool. Um, it’s exciting. Well, all right, the last thing I gotta ask you about this is how can is there was there anyway, would you were able to conceive of any way to replicate the food experience of an in person NTC. That’s such a great all registrants being shipped a food item to share. How could we or it just It just wasn’t possible.

[01:11:50.86] spk_3:
Yeah, it’s such a good question because we did actually talk about it, and I have no part that’s a challenge or that presented. The biggest challenge for us is the food expectations that we share with our partner. And whatever Ben you were working with is, you know, very high percentage of the food is allergen free is, you know, can match various both, like religious or allergy needs all of these things

[01:11:53.14] spk_1:
and you do gluten free, right? So being

[01:12:55.25] spk_3:
able to find, like a packaged product that was packaged and could be shipped and still not be bad, it was like, what would we send, you know, just like dehydrated lettuce or something like, I don’t know what could match everything and be packaged. So instead, we have put together an attendee kit that if you register by early next week, you’ll receive yours before the conference. After that, you’ll still receive one but shifting this on you, who knows when it will arrive? But it’s got, you know, all all kinds of, like, the fun, great, reusable, environmentally friendly kind of swag that you maybe would have picked up in the exhibit hall. And so instead, we’ll ship it to you so you can still join And, you know, hold hold up your stuff with the logo on video, but no food, because that felt like I felt like a real gamble.

[01:13:05.15] spk_1:
I understand. I understand. All right, well, we’ll have to look, we look forward to 2022 because the food is exemplary. So I had exactly absolutely. All right. All right. Um, I think we just leave folks with the u R. L go to n 10 dot org slash ntc, but you just go to n 10 dot org. It’s right on the homepage to its right up top and

[01:13:30.15] spk_3:
registration. I mean, it’s a virtual event. Registration doesn’t have to close before the event, so come on over. We have decided to keep the member rate low and not raise it for late registration. So, pro tip. Just get your membership, which is on a sliding scale of the amount you can pay. And then you get the low conference rate any day.

[01:14:15.04] spk_1:
Okay, Prototype. Thank you. All right. And 10 dot org slash ntc. I endorsed the conference year after year. This is my sixth or seventh, Um, and you’ll hear lots of smart folks from, uh, from the NTC Speaker roster on on nonprofit radio, but attend the conference. I mean, for no other reason. Well, there’s lots of reasons, but part of it is supporting in 10 support the community. It is. It’s a It’s a diverse, supportive, in itself fun community. And that is a type of community that we should be supporting.

[01:14:22.44] spk_3:
Awesome. Thank you, Tony. You are always an amazing supporter.

[01:15:34.24] spk_1:
Plus, you’ll learn a shitload. There’s that. Thank you. All right. My pleasure. Absolutely. Thank you. Amy. Good to talk to you. You’ll find her at Amy at Amy R s Ward. And, of course, n 10 and 10 dot org. But you want to go to intent dot org slash ntc. Thanks, Amy. Good to talk to you. Thanks, tony. Next week. Relationships with Funders by Shavon Richardson If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot c o. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff Shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty, You with me next week for nonprofit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah.