The 2010 National Conference on Service & Volunteering (NCVS) is nearly here!

It will be held on June 28th – 30th in New York City.

Thanks to social media, there are lots of ways you can participate online– whether you’re there or not!

1. Facebook

“Like” the so that the official wall posts show up in your Facebook news feed.

You are welcome and invited to post thoughts, ideas, etc. to the The National Conference on Volunteering & Service Facebook page.

2. Crowdvine

In order to help you meet and connect with as many people as possible, we’ve set up a conference social networking site where you can see who’s coming, find out what they have to share and make plans to get together.

Create your own NCVS attendee profile here and see who else is coming.

Meet up before you even get to New York!

3. Eventbrite

This free tool will allow you (or anyone) to organize an event around conference and invite anyone.

Want to host a breakfast to discuss the topic of your dreams?

Want to organize an affinity group meetup?

Want to suggest an afterhours meet up spot?

You can do all of this with eventbrite.

Check out what your fellow conference attendees are organizing so far.

4. Blogging

You are invited to write a blog post (for your own blog or as a guest post on ours) about a session you’re excited about leading up to conference or reviewing a session you attended afterward.

Blogging is a great way to share what you’re excited about and/or what you’ve learned.

The HandsOn Blog editorial guidelines are here and the National Conference Blog editorial guidelines are here.

If you write a post for your own blog, send us a link to it at

5. Twitter

to hear all the official conference tweets.

Additionally, follow the conference conversation by .  (The search bar is located in the right sidebar of your Twitter homepage.)

Each NCVS workshop session and forum is assigned a unique session #hashtag.

While the overall conference conversation will take place on the #NCVS hashtag, you can follow individual session twitter streams by searching on the unique session #hashtag.

For example, the Social Media for Social Good Forum hashtag will be #SM4SG and, if you follow that hashtag from 2:30 – 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, June 29th, you’ll hear what everyone in the forum is saying about it.

Join the conversation by adding “#NCVS” to your tweets — adding that hashtag in your tweet is the way to have your tweet show up in the conference twitter stream.

You can also follow HandsOn Network as well as our NCVS Featured Tweeps list.

Here’s a hint from Chris Jarvis of Realized Worth – If you want, you can cut & past twitter list name in to Tweepml.org and follow everyone on the list with one push of the button.

(Make yourself an NCVS Featured Tweep by tweeting “Make me a featured tweep “)

It’s super easy to follow twitter conversations using your cell phone so before conference, you might want to download a cell phone application for managing Twitter.

See all the conference tweets organized by session on our Tweet Notes page.

6. FourSquare

FourSquare at conferences can be fun.

Want to know who’s in the room with you at any given NCVS session?  “Check-in” using FourSquare and you’ll be able to see who else is there.

Maybe you’ll even unlock a swarm badge!

7. Delicious

Delicious (formerly del.icio.us, pronounced “delicious”) is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks.

On Delicious,  users can tag each of their bookmarks with freely chosen term.

A combined view of everyone’s bookmarks with a given tag is available; for instance, the URL “http://delicious.com/tag/ncvs” displays all of the most recent links tagged “NCVS”.

Its collective nature makes it possible to view bookmarks added by other users.

See all the great NCVS content saved to Delicious and add your own!

8. Flickr

Share your NCVS photos with everyone using the HandsOn Network Flickr group.  You can upload your favorite conference shots by clicking on the words “add something.”

9. YouTube

Send links to your favorite NCVS videos and we’ll add them to our NCVS playlist on .

Send your video links to .

10. LinkedIn

Start a LinkedIn affinity sub-group on .

You can hold forum style discussions here on topics before conference and / or continue discussions that were initiated at NCVS.

See you in New York – or online!

#NCVS!