Register for Digital Workplace 24 right now for goodness sake. Literally.

The Digital Workplace Group (DWG) will donate $1 to Apps for Good for each person who registers for Digital Workplace 24 (DW24) between now and Thursday, February 12th. DW24 will take place on May 20th and 21st and is free to attend online from anywhere in the world.

We at DWG are so excited about Digital Workplace 24 (#DW24) that we’ve decided to donate $1 to a nonprofit organization for each new person who registers between now and Thursday, February 12th, up to a total of $1,000.

We’ll report on progress on the DW24 main page, and will announce our final donation on Friday, February 13th, just in time for Valentine’s Day.

For this donation we have selected Apps for Good, an open source educational movement founded by the Center for Global Inclusion (CDI) in Brazil.

Free (for you) to register and attend

Anyone can register for and attend Digital Workplace 24 for free. This global virtual conference will provide rich content for every time zone, with a focus on intranets, online collaboration, enterprise mobile, HR portals, the broader digital workplace and the future of work.

Each prime-time hour of DW24 will include two parts: 1) a live site tour of some aspect of the digital workplace at a leading global organization; as well as 2) a fascinating and informative interview with an industry thought leader. Confirmed live tour presenters already include companies with innovative digital workplaces, including Adobe, Barclays, EY and IKEA.

A free DW24 registration provides oodles of flexibility, so attendees can:

• tune in for just an hour at a time,
• tune in for many hours all at once,
• dip in and out of DW24 throughout the day (and night) or even
• join for the entire 24 hours straight (that’s a real thing – in 2013 we called the hardy digital workplace enthusiasts who accomplished this the “Wide Awake Club”).

We also highly encourage you to plan a group viewing of DW24, for which we have created a handy guide.

A donation to Apps for Good

DWG has selected Apps for Good as the recipient of DW24-related donations. Apps for Good is a nonprofit based in the UK that aims to “transform the way technology is taught in schools; to empower students from all backgrounds to seize the opportunities of our digital age and create solutions to the problems they care about, using technology”.

Apps for Good’s roots lie in the favelas of Brazil where their parent organization, CDI Global, started computer-based learning programmes in the 1990’s. Their future is to become a global platform for creative learning through technology.

Apps for Good is currently working with almost 500 schools throughout the UK, in 2014 worked with over 20,000 students, targets schools with higher rates of “free school meals” in order to reach children from poorer communities, and last year 48% of enrolled students were girls.

We at DWG work with some of the largest organizations in the world to improve their digital workplaces. But we come at it from a fundamentally humanistic perspective: we want to make work in the digital age meaningful, engaging and satisfying. We do that by raising the bar for the design of digital workplaces, but there’s so much more to be done to build a positive digital future. Apps for Good is working towards that positive digital future, and we are proud to support them.

Learn more about Apps for Good:

Show your love of the digital workplace before Valentine’s Day

We’ve found over the years that intranet and digital workplace professionals carry a unique passion for their work. I’ve even taken to calling myself an “Intranet Nerd” (which may not be a name someone would self-apply where you come from).

DW24 is a chance for intranet and digital workplace practitioners from around the world to come together and share their love of their profession with the global community.

And now those same people can do an extra bit of good just by signing up for the best free event that celebrates the work they love.

So please, if you’re considering attending DW24, register by Thursday, February 12th and drive up the amount we donate to Apps for Good.

DWG Member registration

Our total registration count will include signups by both Digital Workplace Group members and clients, and colleagues from our wider industry circles.

Members of DWG can register (for free, of course) via the private DWG Member Extranet event page for DW24, rather than through the DWG website.

Full disclosure: My selfish intent

For those of you skeptics out there who are wondering about the conniving plan behind this effort, I have to be honest and admit my selfish rationale.

In previous years, most DW24 registrations have come through during the last week in the run-up to the event and even on the day. This creates a huge challenge for our team: we have to process a mighty flow of registrations at the same time as we’re finalizing the vast and varied logistics for this epic event.

So, if we can get people to sign up for DW24 earlier rather than later, we can make the final week before the show a bit more sane. So yes, this donation-driven effort is a bit self-serving. But what better way to be selfish than to contribute to a worthy cause?

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