Greetings, fellow Net2 attendees!

I arrived in San Jose last night, and am eagerly awaiting the NetSquared conference!

After the conference, I'll be going on to San Francisco for a few days. My home base there will be the SF Nonprofit Technology Center (http://www.sftechcenter.org/).

I'm interested in all ways that needs and resources can be brought together seamlessly through information and communication technologies.

On August 17th, my blog suddenly started receiving an amazing number of hits; its intense popularity lasted a couple of hours.

When I looked at the web analytics, I saw that readers were surfing in from the front page of del.icio.us, because an article of mine ("What do small nonprofits need to know about fundraising for technology?") was featured on the del.icio.us hotlist.  I was pretty flattered, because the hotlist usually features web pages that have been bookmarked by thousands of del.icio.us users, while my article has only been bookmarked 64 times as of this writing.

All of this extra traffic inspired me to think about the Slashdot Effect, which is a crash or malfunction that occurs when a link is featured on Slashdot web site and becomes so popular that reader demand far exceeds the web server's capacity.   Thanks to my blog host, Tucows, I had no such difficulties.  But now I'm wondering whether in the future we'll be speaking of web sites that are "delicioused," just as we now refer to web sites that are "slashdotted."

As I've previously mentioned in my blog, I'm helping out with the Immigrant Organizers Information Technology Network, and the current challenge to create a workshop that will help these small grassroots organizations incorporate funding for technology in their overall development strategies.

This seems to be the most pressing issue for any nonprofit executive - finding the money to support the technology infrastructure that sustains the organization.  In small nonprofits, lack of money is the deal-breaker.  Before they can make decisions about technology staffing, databases, web sites, network servers, the organization's leaders need to have a plan for paying the bills for these and other mission-critical technology

Unfortunately, I don't have a magic formula for funding technology that I can offer these folks.  In the world of nonprofit technology, the rule of thumb is that most donors and grantmakers give money to organizations with great missions; with a few notable exceptions, funders are seldom passionate about writing checks to buy technology products and services.

So that's the bad news.

The good news is that last year I attended a terrific workshop on this topic at the Boston regional N-TEN conference.  It was organized by fellow Technobabe Theresa Ellis, so I went to her and requested permission to replicate her idea.  She very graciously agreed, coaching me about how to proceed, and encouraging me to recruit as many panelists as possible from the session that she designed.

Here's the plan.  Four of our panelists will be from the philanthropic world, folks with plenty of practical experience:

The latest reason why I love it is that you can now go to TechSoup to see a list of  upcoming nonprofit technology events.

I'm a little disappointed that there isn't a TechSoup RSS feed exclusively devoted to these nonprofit technology events.  If one becomes available, I will certainly add it to my blog.  And of course it would make a perfectly splendid addition to the NPtech Meta Feed.

Disclaimer:  Although I have been a consultant to TechSoup on its NetSquared project, this effusion was not solicited, approved, or subsidized by TechSoup.  I am merely writing as a humble fan.


 

This article was originally published in my blog, "Technology for the Nonprofit and Philanthropic Sector," under a Creative Commons  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License.  

 
Image by Beth Kanter


As an adjunct to the Second Life / Real Life mixed reality event that TechSoup will be producing on July 18th, the Ethos Roundtable will be holding a mixed reality gathering based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Ethos Roundtable is an informal group of people who are interested in using technology tools to support positive social change.  We meet once a month, usually in the same location as (and just prior to) the Boston 501 Tech Club.

But next Tuesday's meeting will be special:

This is a terrific volunteer opportunity for anyone who cares about knowledge in the public interest or online collaboration.  The following is my redaction of the publicity blurb:

Wikimania 2006, the 2nd annual international meetup and conference of the Wikimedia Foundation, will be held August 4-6th, 2006, on the Harvard Law School campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The conference will feature presentations from Jimmy Wales, Larry Lessig, Brewster Kahle, Eben Moglen, Yochai Benkler, and Clay Shirky; along with some of the most active contributors to Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikisource, and the MediaWiki platform.  Presenters and attendees will discuss the present and future of Wikimedia Projects; the dynamics of Wikipedia and related communities; publishing and verification of information; and technical updates and Mediawiki hacking.

Wikimania will be a chance to meet the people behind one of the extraordinary successes of the internet - a multilingual volunteer community of a hundred thousand people who are passionate about creating high-quality free knowledge for the world.  For community members, it will be a chance to meet fellow Wikimedians, learn about what's happening today, and discuss current issues and the future of the projects.

For others, Wikimania 2006 will be a once-in-a-lifetime chance to participate in shaping the future of Wikipedia and collaborative knowledge production generally.

All sorts of volunteers are needed.  If you're interested in getting involved, please go to the Wikimania 2006 Volunteer Teams web page, or send at email to wikimania-info @ wikimedia . org.

Image by Beth Kanter

Here's a great new item for the Jargon File:  "mixed-reality event."  When I first saw this term, I thought, "Hey, isn't that what occurs whenever any two sentient beings interact?"

However, it turns out that according to Wikipedia, mixed-reality "is the merging of real world and virtual worlds to produce a new environment where physical and digital objects can co-exist and interact."  For example, a mixed-reality event can take place simultaneously in real life and Second Life.

On July 18th, there will be a mixed-reality mash-up that should be fascinating for all of us who are interested in technology for the nonprofit sector.

In the mix will be:

I just love the idea of a workflow management application, especially one that's integrated  with filing, calendar, email, and all the other systems that keep my worklife in order.

It so happens that one of my esteemed clients is looking for a way to integrate fiscal sponsorship accounting, document management, digital signature, and workflow management into a seamless system - so I spend a lot of time thinking about the human and technological requirements that might be involved.

For my client's purposes, there are basically two kinds of workflow management - a generic kind that helps any group of people coordinate the actions that need to be taken on any project, and workflow management that is tailored to accounting tasks such as initiating requisitions, approving invoices, and cutting checks.  These further sub-divided into those applications that come with document management modules and those that don't.  And of course, one can drill down to distinguish between client-server products and web-based service providers.

The ones that I really like allow the user to log in and see a workflow management dashboard, such as the one that ExpenseWatch provides for accountants, with status reports and task lists laid out in a very clear and appealing manner.  Furthermore, the really good tools make it easy to set up a queue for passing along the work in progress - so that everyone who needs to contribute to, revise, review, or approve a project can do so - in an order that can be edited to reflect a change in plans.  I also like the idea of automatic escalation routines, which alert you if a project has been parked on one person's desk for too long.

The only question is...if you build it, will they use it?

I recently had an experience that shed a little light on this question.  An esteemed colleague who has access to my electronic calendar printed out my task list in preparation for a planning meeting.  I hadn't added (or checked off) much of anything in months. 

I love setting up systems.  I love playing with systems.  But the empirical evidence shows that when it comes to maintaining a simple online task list (never mind one that's part of a sophisticated workflow management system), I'm not necessarily showing up for it on a day-to-day basis.  And if the systems geeks don't do it, how can we expect normal people to be enthusiastic users?  We have to think really carefully about building in incentives to participate, and measuring the positive effects that such an implementation actually has on the amount of time, energy, and money that it takes to get the job done.

In the circles I frequent, we talk a lot about nonprofit technology.

After all, our professional association is the Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network, we refer to ourselves as nonprofit technology assistance providers, and this of course blog is called "Technology for the Nonprofit and Philanthropic Sector."

One of my favorite projects these days is the "Immigrant Organizers Information Technology Network," which a joint undertaking by the Center to Support Immigrant Organizing and Third Sector New England, and is funded by the Boston Foundation. Right now, I'm helping to put together a databaseclinic for a cluster of immigrant organizing groups in Massachusetts. 

The grassroots workers affiliated with these groups are the best in the world at advocating for immigrants, and they juggle an awe-inspiring amount of information about constituents, donors, policy makers, service providers, activists, and other stakeholders.  Most of this juggling is done in their heads, or on paper, or with Excel spreadsheets - very few of them also have expertise in database development.  What to do?

In June, TSNE offered these groups a "Databases 101" workshop, designed for smart people who are starting from scratch in learning about databases.  This month, the goal is to follow up with a clinic that will enable them to get down to cases about their specific needs. 

We've invited mavens from three local organizations - Database Designs Associates, The Data Collaborative, and Organizers Collaborative - to serve as "clinicians."  These folks all have extensive experience with both database development and grassroots organizing.  So far, so good!

But the remaining challenge is to craft the clinic in such a way that all of the immigrant organizers come away with a feeling of confidence, a practical understanding of how databases can help them, and a list of action items to take back to their offices.

Among adult educators, there's considerable consensus that subjecting people to yet another PowerPoint presentation just isn't the answer, so I am currently on a quest for better ideas.