Resonate + Box, a love story…
By: Donna Sinar, Operations Fellow
September 15, 2014
This summer, I helped Resonate transition to box.com, an online file sharing system. Box does a number of cool things like update documents to the latest version in real time (no more deleting / reposting or saving drafts as “v1; v2; v3…”) and lets you collaborate within the platform by commenting, tagging, and assigning or completing tasks. I geek out on it because it’s a centralized space for team collaboration and massive productivity. Resonate loves box.
Three months ago, box.com rolled out box.org. Box, like Salesforce, decided to offer ten free licenses of their product to eligible nonprofits. Resonate was one of the first nonprofits to benefit from box.org’s generosity, and we were very excited to be invited to their annual conference.
Last week I attended BoxWorks 2014 in San Francisco on behalf of Resonate. It was a blast! The conference center was freshly carpeted in a cobalt blue. Aaron Levie, the CEO, announced box’s newest product launches and later chatted with Jared Leto and compared box’s tech award to Jared’s Oscar. In different conference rooms, panelists spoke about the platforms’ specialized features and its capacity to transform diverse sectors such as healthcare and music. On the conference’s main floor, several tech partners manned booths with free swag and box compatible products. My favorite was the (non-techy) box photo booth and headshot station.
One of the last and richest panels of the day, the nonprofit partner panel, brought together an impressive representation of tech savvy change makers: Kiva President Premal Shah, Planned Parenthood CIO Tom Subak, Salesforce.com Foundation VP Cheryl Porro, and Teach for America CIO Sandeep Chellani. Box.org’s new Executive Director, Bryan Breckenridge, asked speakers how they leverage technology to propel their mission. The conversation repeatedly landed on storytelling. Each leader of their respective organization spoke to how technology let’s them tell their organizational and participant story. Technology enabled organizations to harvest, shape, and share stories more easily.
For Resonate, box.org provides us with a platform to centralize and organize our information so that we can be more effective in training others to tell their own stories. I look forward to more spaces where tech and meaning converge and I hope that more innovative companies, like box, lean in to the impact space.