 Take you back first to 2019. I know it seems like a lifetime ago. The better days. The good old 2019, yes. It does feel like you're looking backwards through a tunnel that you're still inside of. How are we after this this incredible in all senses of the word year? I have a lot of good memories from the summit. The thing I remember most about the summit was being able to spend a week on the campus of that art institute. We were in an amazing setting. We were at a beautiful location in San Francisco. All of our partners together in one place just so inspiring to be able to sit down at a table and have lunch with our partner from Chile and Taiwan and South Africa. I often describe this event as more of a reunion than a conference. You have voices from civil society around the world. I really enjoyed the opening session where everybody said hello from their country and their enthusiasm and recognition and you know sort of applause for each other and the way that it really brought everybody into the room. I thought that was pretty terrific. There was just the opportunity to feel a buzz and energy but yet have many separate conversations. Just seeing people that you know care about so much that we've been working with for many years and others who are new and having the first time to make those connections. This is our first time being part of the TechSoup network. It's both overwhelming and very very exciting. It was a great introduction to all the work that you do all the work that you do supporting nonprofits small on large. It is a special group. People who work for the same vision like making a better civil society with the help of technology. Being in the same place together for several days makes us really feel so much more concretely how global the work is that we're doing. So when we come together we're able to deliberate issues that one no single organization could do on its own. And we are all aligned around the kind of work we're trying to do. That exchange of best practices and collective learning has enhanced our programs and projects and allowed us to generate more impact. It's a pleasure being part of this conversation. TechSoup is the beginning of everything. Very forward thinking and practical people and organizations represented that that try to to move the needle just a bit further in terms of creating a better ecosystem of support. I think that the most amazing thing we saw is the power of the network and how influential it could be to really address the social problems in the world. So we are proud to share our knowledge and our interest with so many countries and organizations in the civil society around the world. There were over 400 people registered for the event. At least 50 countries. 39 languages are probably represented in this room. Seeing people build their plans around that kind of community and that sense of being together was really a wonderful experience. You see the scale. You realize you're a part of a very big diverse organization like with your own eyes. Definitely in a nonprofit space we're learning from so many other people who organizations that have been in the space for so much longer. I particularly felt very connected with the teams in Italy and in Germany. And this is something that had never happened before. We all have a different perspective because of the languages that were in the way the problems surface in our individual countries. But at the summit you get to hear more of the stories behind it. What they're thinking about happening next and what they're worried about. And you're also deepening your relationship with these other human beings. So it makes it easier to have the follow up conversations after the summit whatever they're about. The relationships that we built at that summit is what carries us on over the last couple of years because we can go back to those shared experiences and build upon the relationships that we formed there. I want to say that you know we're in this together. Together we can make a difference. So bias coming together to connect some of the ideas that we are sort of facing in a very pragmatic way. The shrinking space in civil society globally. The lack of access to resources. The end goal of all these things that we're doing especially in this summit is to come up with solutions to social issues through technology. We also heard from an Asia Pacific partner who is building technology to help the aging population in Hong Kong. It's a great moment to share all our work our new ideas. Our knowledge experience programs and that's huge. And most importantly promoting education. Promoting education for the young people. Promoting science. Promoting the arts. That's the purpose of what we do and people want applications to help them do that and do that better for more people. Every organization is becoming a technology organization. Technology no longer is overhead. Technology is something that moves the mission forward. Non-profits need to evolve. Non-profits need to get trained up. Working with an organization like TechSoup helps me get one step closer to hearing the questions that actually are happening out in the sector and think about how I could best serve those questions with my solutions or with something that we haven't even thought of yet. Where we see it going is much more focused on addressing the question that the non-profit has when they're coming in. One of the themes that we have there was understanding that we needed to help organizations move to more resilient solutions. So I think we built some of the better rock of the programs that we wanted to launch. Hopefully that helped some organizations be able to weather kind of the pandemic a little better. So when we look back at that year right after the summit, the idea that it is a network, not a franchise, right? It's not that everybody's doing the exact same thing everywhere, but they're bringing their best capabilities and strength into this joint effort. We need to make each other smart about what is needed to have success. Later in that year, in 2019, I went to Europe and I actually visited the TechSoup to in Italy, the partner in Germany. These ideas of marketing boot camps that we've done that started in Africa, we all had a real concrete idea that stemmed out of a, you know, conversation we had in the same room. A lot of the content of the summit was about preparing us as a network to guide us to this area of more cloud and more services and training and other new ways of bringing value to the community that depends on us. And many of them proved to be excellent for what was to come in the following year, which of course none of us could have known. You know, looking ahead now to this year's summit, it's going to be a little different. How do you feel about the setup for doing it virtually? You know, there's part of doing it virtually. It's just this like giant math problem. It's like, okay, there are going to be some people that are like snuggling through their first cup of coffee and other people that have already worked a full day and they're ready for bed. An online meeting is still a meeting, it's still a connection, and we need those more than ever. Under ideal circumstances, we would love to be able to get everybody to San Francisco to do what we did two years ago. But we can still see each other share and we can connect and we can reflect together. There are a couple of positives to doing it this way. One is that we're going to be able to get more people engaged this time. Having all these events in a virtual format, I think it has democratized the access to knowledge and to information. Two years ago, it was four of us going to the summit, which is a lot. But right now, potentially, all of Makaya's team could participate in the summit. Sometimes in the virtual meetings, you can do that a little bit more. There's not the hub, there's not the interruption. The critical piece is what happened in their world? What happened to the audiences they were serving during this year? During this summit, I'm just really excited to see all the work that you all have been doing over the last two years. I mean, the world has changed, the world has changed dramatically. And I'm looking forward to sort of all of us checking in. I feel just confident that it will be that same exchange of ideas, which is what we look for. We need to find our way and it's always better to do it together. It's really a moment right now that is unlike any other moment that most of us have lived through. The pandemic is very much real and still going on. But I think it's a good moment as well to adapt and reflect. I will be just absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to hear from so many people across the network. We're doing some global sessions where everybody in the world is going to be online at the same time. And so we'll have that sense of being together. The theme of this summit is to create resiliency and to engage community. We're in a process now of a real rapid transformation. And this is a global gathering that will bring unique perspectives, both from the local level and also globally together. My expectations are that we're going to have a lot of good conversations. I'm open and excited to the virtual format. Hopefully that brings a more diversity of, you know, team members who are able to participate in some ways. It's also an extended period of time together to think about this big project we're all engaged with. I think we all are on the right path together and we've got to share values and share dreams. It is the highlight of my year. I'm really looking forward to just reconnecting and connecting with new people. This might be a little savage, but I'm especially excited to see our partners. Because, for example, I don't know, I really miss the Romanian team. We used to do a lot of projects together. I am sure that whenever I see a familiar face, maybe the team from Italy, I'm sure we're going to chat and we're going to have side conversations. My favorite part of the summit each time is learning what the partners are doing, learning what they're focused on, learning some of the incredible initiatives that they're working on and some of the real social issues that they're responding to within their own countries. We are hoping that we'll be able to open up to those conversations in supporting last-mile connectivity. So again, during this pandemic, there was also that fear of uncertainty. So what makes for the partnerships? I'm looking forward to from the knowledge of where the organization is and what other people are doing, maybe getting inspiration for my own work. I do the work that I do because I'd rather have hope that the world can be a different and better place. Just the idea that everybody has the same reason that they're here is so uplifting and so validating. This is the profitable thing for you. If you work and associate you on the community, you gain the impact. One of the biggest reasons that I work in this field is first of all, I want to have a just society, having really diverse opinions to be respected, not just my work, but as my life. I actually find it pretty rewarding to do, so that's probably the why. I feel really, really good about the fact that you're helping, that you're making a small difference in an organization that's going to do, you know, so many other amazing things for society and for the sector. I also work here because I find it offensive that there are people that go to bed without enough to eat and without a safe place to sleep and without justice systems that work for them and without access to information. And I don't want to work on any one of those issues. I want to work on all of them. And that's what I get to do here. Welcome to the TechSoup Global Network Summit 2021.