The previous month was filled with three fantastic and interesting conferences and a slew of other noteworthy items. Below are MoveSmart.org executive director Justin Massa’s brief reflections and links to coverage of NetSquared’s N2Y3, the National Fair Housing Alliance / Leadership Conference on Civil Rights annual conference, and the Community Media Workshop’s (CMW) Making Media Connections.

• NetSquared’s N2Y3 Conference and Competition was a hectic but fantastic 2.5 days. Beyond all of the amazing people that we met, the spirit of collaboration and excellence that ran throughout the event was quite special. We’ve been to a number of conference before (too many) and N2Y3 stands out as an example of how quality content + attendee participation + great ideas can combine into something powerful. As if all that weren’t enough, this was also probably the most blogged-about, video-recorded, and participant-reviewed conference ever.
• The annual National Fair Housing Alliance / Leadership Conference on Civil Rights conference is always a highly informative and networking heavy event and this year proved the same. I sort of live blogged the event (there was awful WiFi service at the Capital Hill Hyatt), a first for us. Especially exciting were the links that coverage received from fellow civil rights / activist bloggers as well as all the tech evangelizing and surprisingly interested and excited audience at the conference.
  
• Unfortunately, we were only able to spend a few hours at Making Media Connections, hosted by the Community Media Workshop. At first it was both an honor and somewhat nerve-racking to have non-profit social media guru Beth Kanter live blogging from the session I moderated, but the session turned out great. Fantastic questions from the audience and a panel that not only gelled but were conscientious about their time.

• Thanks to Alex and MakeSomethingHappen.net for featuring us on their second MSH podcast. You can listen to the interview here [Play]
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  . We’ll be guest posting to MSH next week - stay tuned.
• MoveSmart.org friend and supporter Holly Campbell turned us onto Crib Notes, a new blog on housing and diversity. The post on “transitioning blocks” is not to be missed.
• Knowledgeplex’s DataPlace website has been completely redesigned and relaunched, with more features promised soon. They also started a blog - their post on “The Problem with Data” is fantastic.
• Finally, NCRC vice president Jim Carr has added his voice to the growing choir of fair housing activists and advocates who think that fair housing enforcement should be taken out of HUD and turned into an independent federal agency. You can read his very interesting testimony to Congress here.