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Saturday, 30 May 2009 11:46 |
 A weekend thought about software and technology. At blogging buddy Heather Gardner-Madras’ suggestion, I’d like to return to a theme I started on earlier -- tai chi and technology planning. Doing tai chi or chi gung (qigong), it is remarkable how many design and software folks you find, part of the “walking wounded” of our high tech era. One thing these practices can help you work on is relaxing the eyes. Nothing like sitting in front of a computer screen for hours to put tension into... |
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Thursday, 28 May 2009 15:41 |
 I'm doing a bit of research of late about using online tools to find out what people think about your organization. It's an interesting area - there's a vast number of tools (many very similar to each other) that can help you monitor and listen to what people have to say online and a big body of useful best practices and case studies about how to use them. (By the way, Beth Kanter's information in this area is even more useful than her usually very useful stuff!)
I have a substantial... |
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Thursday, 28 May 2009 05:43 |
 Database Designs isn’t just about databases but I still spend a lot of time thinking and strategizing about them. Recently, I have noticed that, with some exaggeration, you could divide up much of the population of database managers into those trying to get data out of spreadsheets and those trying to get data back into them. From dust to dust, from spreadsheets in to spreadsheets out, data collection seems like burdensome toil for many. Maybe those flying closest to the sun, with large... |
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Wednesday, 27 May 2009 11:55 |
 When comparison shopping, we have come to expect that companies will make outlandish claims about their stuff. Sometimes it's frustrating, but most of the time, I continue on numb to the distorted claims clinging to the brands all around me. For nonprofits in the business of providing a social benefit, its especially disheartening when I read similarly exaggerated claims about their accomplishments.
I see credible communication as a social benefit. Sandra Stewart, a colleague over at... |
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Wednesday, 27 May 2009 10:18 |
 The last installment of the Meet the Bloggers series is with Michelle Murrain. Unfortunately we didn't get the chance to sit down together in person at the Nonprofit Technology Conference this year but we plan to remedy that at the next one in Atlanta.
Michelle Murrain
On Connecting Nonprofits & Technology
Michelle's work with nonprofits and technology began in parallel. Her college major was in Biology, but even then she was focused on computers and the tech end of things. At the same... |
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Tuesday, 26 May 2009 09:31 |
 Photo by ferricide
It's been a big month for Online Community Management in my circles. I attended a session at the Nonprofit Technology Conference on the subject; then, a few weeks later, ReadWriteWeb released a detailed report on the topic. I haven't read the report, but people I respect who have are speaking highly of it.
Do you run an online community? The definition is pretty sketchy, ranging from a blog with active commenters to, say, America Online. If we define an online... |
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Monday, 25 May 2009 00:18 |
 I stumbled across a neat new data resource at Data.gov. Its a new initiative of the executive branch to make more public data accessible. It has a limited data set at the moment, but has a lot of tools that make the data easy to manipulate for both armchair analysts and serious researchers alike.
The datasets are easily filtered by topic and agency, by file type and/or keyword. Each detail page (such as this one tracking USA river levels) contains a very easy to read description of the data... |
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Thursday, 21 May 2009 10:41 |
 Lots of terrific resources released recently...
eNonprofit Benchmarks Study 2009
If you're not familiar with the eNonprofit Benchmarks reports, you should be. They're fabulous, with a ton of useful benchmarks as to what you can expect in terms of email, online fundraising, and other online metrics based on actual research. They've just released the 2009 version, which has a number of new areas of exploration as well as updates on the old.
Online Seminar Series: Client and Service Management... |
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Wednesday, 20 May 2009 16:40 |
 Another in the Meet the Bloggers series, this one from a very fun interview with Eric Leland. As in all of the interviews, time was too short and I look forward to having more time to chat and get to know him in the future.
Eric Leland
On Connecting Nonprofits & Technology
Eric started out as a part time assistant for Amnesty International with just one computer running outreach. A lot of the work was sending out letters to student to participate, so the organization was just getting... |
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Written by Administrator
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Tuesday, 19 May 2009 13:05 |
I'll admit it: I'm a research geek. I really care a lot about tings that most people don't, like methods of data analysis and obscure types of bias. But that said, I also think that people should care a lot more about research methodology than they seem to. If you're going to be acting on the results of research, or particularly if you're going to conduct it, there's some basic tenants you need to know.
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 20 May 2009 19:19 |
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Written by Administrator
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Monday, 18 May 2009 09:59 |
 At the recent Nonprofit Technology Conference, I attended a somewhat misleadingly titled session called "Cloud Computing: More than just IT plumbing in the sky". The cloud computing issues discussed were nothing like the things we blog about here (see Michelle's and my recent "SaaS Smackdown" posts). Instead, this session was really a dive into the challenges and benefits of publishing aggregated nonprofit metrics. Steve Wright of the Salesforce Foundation led the panel, along with Lucy... |
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 20 May 2009 19:18 |
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Written by Administrator
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Tuesday, 12 May 2009 11:17 |
For anyone who's ever asked how WordPress compares to Joomla, or Joomla to Drupal... we have your answers in demo form. It's the return of the Open Source CMS webinar!
TOMORROW (Wed) at1-2:30 Eastern, Idealware's conducting the online seminar Comparing Open Source CMSs: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Plone, for a $40 registration fee. View more or register now>
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 20 May 2009 19:20 |
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Written by Administrator
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Monday, 11 May 2009 15:19 |
 The third interview of the series is with Peter Campbell and I had a good time putting a face with the twitter conversations we've been having in the past year, as well as finding out more about how he came to write for the Idealware blog.
Peter Campbell
On Connecting Nonprofits & Technology
Peter's decision to combine technology with nonprofit work was very deliberate. Well into a career as an IT director for a law firm in San Francisco he had something of an epiphany and wanted to do... |
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 20 May 2009 19:24 |
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Written by Administrator
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Monday, 11 May 2009 09:59 |
 The technology trend that defines this decade is the movement towards open, pervasive computing. The Internet is at our jobs, in our homes, on our phones, TVs, gaming devices. We email and message everyone from our partners to our clients to our vendors to our kids. For technology managers, the real challenges are less in deploying the systems and software than they are in managing the overlap, be it the security issues all of this openness engenders, or the limitations of our legacy systems... |
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 20 May 2009 19:24 |
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Written by Administrator
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Monday, 11 May 2009 09:05 |
 Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) is an important concept for nonprofits. The idea is to have all your information about all your constituents together in one place, so you can see the full picture of each person's interaction with your organization. Instead of having all your donors in one system, your volunteers in another, and your event registrants in a third, you have everyone in a single system... or at least a way to sync up those systems. You can then see that, for instance... |
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 20 May 2009 19:27 |
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Written by Administrator
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Saturday, 09 May 2009 09:56 |
 John Palfrey would probably call himself a “digital settler,” someone comfortable enough with technology to help open up the new realms of pervasive digital media and online social networking. I just heard him speak about the emerging population of “digital natives,” those among the 1 to 3 Billion people born after 1980 with access to the new web and/or mobile technology and who have been exposed to the ways and means of its merger with daily life. ("Digital immigrants" make up... |
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 20 May 2009 19:28 |
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Written by Administrator
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Friday, 08 May 2009 11:42 |
We've did a soft launch of our most recent new report at the Nonprofit Technology Conference - but we're now eager to spread the word far and wide! If you haven't yet heard, Idealware in partnership with NTEN and NPower has just published A Consumers Guide to Low Cost Donor Management Systems (free registration required).
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 20 May 2009 19:29 |
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Written by Administrator
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Thursday, 07 May 2009 07:48 |
Okay, it's been awhile since I've done a resource roundup for the blog - too long!
The Pros and Cons of Skype for Business (Small Business Computing)
An even handed look at how well Skype - a free service to make phone calls and video calls over the web - works in business situations.
Unified Communications Options for Nonprofits (TechSoup)
Useful overview of options to manage multiple communications methods - so to forward office to cell phones, or have voice mail show up in email
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 20 May 2009 19:37 |
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Written by Administrator
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Monday, 04 May 2009 14:42 |
This is the second of a series of interviews with my fellow Idealware bloggers. Taking advantage of our proximity at the 2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco recently, I had the good fortune to be able to interview each of them personally. See Part 1: Steve Backman if you missed it. Laura is the founder of Idealware and I was already a big fan so it was fun to be surprised by some of her answers.
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 20 May 2009 19:37 |
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Written by Administrator
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Monday, 04 May 2009 09:32 |
 My esteemed colleague Michelle Murrain lobbed the first volley in our debate over whether tis safer to host all of your data at home, or to trust a third party with it. The debate is focused on Software as a Service (SaaS) as a computing option for small to mid-sized nonprofits with little internal IT expertise. This would be a lot more fun if Michelle was dead-on against the SaaS concept, and if I was telling you to damn the torpedos and go full speed ahead with it. But we're all about the... |
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 20 May 2009 19:42 |
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