Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

Why Crowdfund this book?

mpm — Thu, 02 May 2013 20:09:20 +0000

There are a number of ways that organizations in the nonprofit technology field fund writing projects. Some are internal to an organization, others are funded by grants from foundations, and some are funded by vendor sponsorships.

Book Excerpt #2: Very Drafty Piece of the Introduction

mpm — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 19:46:47 +0000

I promised a few excerpts during the indiegogo campaign, and here is another one - a part of the Introduction.

Book Excerpt #1

mpm — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 22:59:38 +0000

I'll be posting a series of short excerpts of what I've already written of Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology. I hope this will whet your appetite for more. Please consider supporting me to get this book written.

This is a part of the chapter "Strategic Planning for Software and Internet Projects". The section is entitled "CRM and the Myth of Uniqueness."

NTAP Report from NTEN

mpm — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 19:38:58 +0000

There hasn't been much fanfare about this, but NTEN released a report recently, called "Nonprofit Technology Assistance Providers Sector Reach." You can read it here.

It is definitely an interesting study. The problem is, glaringly missing are the open source focused and vendor-neutral NTAPs, such as Aspiration, the Progressive Technology Project, and others. The only vendor-neutral NTAP included was Idealware.

More about that book

mpm — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 23:24:48 +0000

As I said a while back, I'm writing a book about nonprofit technology. It will be titled (this is no surprise) "Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology". Having been at the #12NTC (Nonprofit Technology Conference) really got me excited about the book. I met people who I would like to talk to about the book, and I got some good ideas about what I might want to delve into. I'm 10,000 words into the book already, although I have a lot of research to do.

Example Projects and Portfolio

mpm — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 00:27:44 +0000

Here are some example projects of my work over the years.

(Roles when in a team: PM=Project Management, SA=Systems Administration, IA=Information Architecture, DD=Drupal Development, DB=Database Management, Dev=Code development)

2012:

Rework of Animating Democracy (PM, DD, DB)
Rework of Mindful Peacebuilding (PM, DD)

2011:

Zen and the Art of Getting Your Website Done

mpm — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 00:26:28 +0000

I've had my sleeves rolled up for most of the last 15 years in building websites and web-based databases. It's in my blood. I've used most back-end web technologies invented at least once, and I've dived deeply into a number of them over the years. Right now, my focus is on Drupal and websites, and setting up and administering the LAMP/R stack. I know more than most Drupal folks about integrating Drupal and Salesforce.

Interesting new twist on Android/iPhone divide

mpm — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 20:11:26 +0000

I'm not at all an Instagram user. Since I am much more language-driven than image-driven, it's just not something I've used. But I came across this article about the really weird response of iPhone Instagram users to the reality that they released an Android version.

A Book!

mpm — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 08:00:00 +0000

As I said, I am done. Blogging, that is. But I’m a writer, and the writer in me decided that “Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology” is going to be a book. I’ll leave you just with that little tidbit. In April (after my lenten social media fast), and after I relaunch my personal site (I’m moving all of the tech stuff there, and this URL will have stuff for the book,) I’ll fill everyone in with a lot more details. I’m actually really excited about this project, and have begun to line up folks for interviews, and do research, and all sorts of stuff.

The. End. (for now)

mpm — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 20:27:56 +0000

I've been thinking about the purpose of this blog in my life for the last few months. I started blogging specifically on technology just over 6 years ago, took about a year hiatus in 2005-2006, and have been writing consistently here ever since. But the time has come for me to stop. Mostly, it's because I've run out of things to say. On one hand, the technology issues I cover are well covered elsewhere. There are some amazingly good blogs out there focused on the use of Drupal and other open source tools.

Interesting sites I'm looking at (weekly)

mpm — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 04:32:34 +0000

Google+ Tips and Tricks - Google Docs

Interesting sites I'm looking at (weekly)

mpm — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 04:31:59 +0000

SparkleShare - Sharing work made easy

tags: storage collaboration opensource toblog

Interesting sites I'm looking at (weekly)

mpm — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 04:33:16 +0000

Welcome - Synergy

tags: toblog kvm software opensource

Interesting sites I'm looking at (weekly)

mpm — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 04:33:43 +0000

A web-focused Git workflow | Joe Maller

tags: git workflow toblog

Interesting sites I'm looking at (weekly)

mpm — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 04:32:38 +0000

CodeChix

tags: toblog women technology developers

Why all (major) operating systems suck

mpm — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 10:22:58 +0000

I've been a user of a ton of operating systems over time. In the past ten years, I have been an everyday user of the big three, Windows, Mac OS, and Linux, for long stretches of time. I switched from Apple to Windows/Linux last year, and I've largely been OK with it, but I've complained enough about all three that I realized that they all suck. Of course, they suck for completely different reasons, which is part of the frustration. And each have places where they shine. Why can't there be a nice combination of all three?

Interesting sites I'm looking at (weekly)

mpm — Sun, 29 May 2011 04:32:27 +0000

IndieGoGo

tags: crowdfunding toblog

Real Social CRM

mpm — Tue, 24 May 2011 15:27:58 +0000

So I do have social media ennui, but I am also somewhat of a data geek, and cool ways of moving social media data into one's nonprofit data workflow is pretty important in my most humble opinion. This post on Social CRM is not going to contain one buzz phrase. It's going to talk about one particular, interesting example of how to move social media data into a real live CRM -the one you might even be using now - Salesforce. This example uses an app from the Salesforce AppExchange, called "Salesforce for Facebook and Twitter." To make things just a tad confusing, this is also called "Salesforce for Social Media" and "Salesforce for Twitter." There are likely many more options, but this is one I've seen that is pretty cool, although it has its weak spots. It definitely is geared more toward the "Service Cloud" than the "Sales Cloud." You can set up multiple twitter and facebook accounts, and each facebook account can have access to multiple pages. It's all done via OAuth, which is cool. Once you set up the accounts, you can then grab conversations: You can filter and sort, just like records in any other SF object. You can choose whether or not to send Twitter or Facebook identities to Leads, Contacts, or Person Accounts. You can choose to create cases from tweets or FB posts as well. You can tweet or post to facebook directly from Salesforce: And it works: You can schedule tweets and facebook posts as well. There is a lot more you can do - it's a pretty cool tool. The one thing I can't seem to find - and I don't know whether this is in development, or they won't ever do it - is import your social graph into salesforce - your facebook fans or your twitter followers. I'm not sure why this is, exactly. It seems a big gap to me. But then, it is the folks who engage with you who you definitely want to make sure to keep track of. Anyway, if you are a user of either Salesforce, the Nonprofit Starter Pack, or Convio Common Ground, this is definitely a tool to know about.

Interesting sites I'm looking at (weekly)

mpm — Sun, 22 May 2011 04:32:32 +0000

24 ways: Contract Killer

tags: consulting toblog freelancing

Social Media ennui

mpm — Tue, 17 May 2011 16:15:37 +0000

I have a confession to make. I have social media ennui. I'm tired of reading and hearing about about social media and nonprofits, and I'm annoyed that social media is taking up so much of the air space in the #nptech world. As you know, I'm a bit of a technology curmudgeon, but I'm far from a luddite - I'm an early adopter, for the most part. I'm a fairly active user of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and some other social networking sites, and have been for years now.

My Tools: Writing

mpm — Wed, 11 May 2011 15:18:12 +0000

I'm mostly doing this last post on my tools to pimp Scrivener. I was a loyal Scrivener user on my Mac for years, and then when I moved to Windows last year, I mourned my loss terribly. But then! Then someone started to work on Scrivener for Windows and Linux. Almost enough to make a grown woman cry. I do just about all of my novel writing on Scrivener. It's great for outlining, for research, for writing scenes, etc.

Interesting sites I'm looking at (weekly)

mpm — Sun, 08 May 2011 04:32:39 +0000

OpenLike is a protocol for sharing the things you like on the web.

tags: social toblog opensource

Tools I use: Personal Web Presence

mpm — Fri, 06 May 2011 15:04:32 +0000

I've had a web presence of some sort since way back when most personal URLs looked something like: http://somecollege.edu/~username. In 2002 or so, I ditched HTML for a series of CMS systems for my personal stuff. I started out using the CMS I wrote in Perl, called XINA. (Those were the days.) Anyway, that was then, and this is now. Here's what I use. Software:

WordPress - you already know it and love it. I use it for this blog, only.

Interesting sites I'm looking at (weekly)

mpm — Sun, 01 May 2011 04:32:48 +0000

Streaming POPVOX comments on YOUR site | April 27th, 2011 | POPVOX – Blog

My Tools: Development

mpm — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 16:23:57 +0000

Since I am a web developer, the core of my development workflow is, for sure, a browser. But not just one browser, or any browser. Several. Chrome has become my everyday browser, although Firefox is making its way back into my heart, now that Firefox 4 is so lean and zippy. But I am very often in both. I use Opera on occasion, and, of course, I use IE only when I absolutely have to (and it generally means rebooting into Windows, which I do less and less these days.) My other core tool is a console window. In Linux, I use the generic version. For Windows, I use SecureCRT, which is well worth the $ since putty is not up to the task (I know, it's open source, which is great. But it just doesn't cut it if you need to use it pretty much all day every day with multiple servers.) My text editor of choice is Emacs. Yes. Emacs. For Windows, I love Notepad++, a sweet open source text editor. I like Eclipse as an IDE, its awesome. I think it's better than the proprietary Komodo, but that's just me, I'm sure people beg to differ. Other core tools are git for version control and github for code sharing. I haven't found a GUI git client I like, so I just use the command line. IRC and Pastebin rock my world for getting help in troubleshooting problems, and IRC is great just for chilling with other developers.

Open Source vs. Proprietary: Web Server Software

mpm — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:43:32 +0000

By Web Server Software, I mean the software used to serve websites/pages. This includes databases, operating systems and other software that is involved in that process. On the proprietary side, there are two options. Proprietary Unix, and Microsoft Windows, and associated Microsoft Software. The current version of MS Server in use is Server 2008.

Tools I use: basic workflow

mpm — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 19:28:07 +0000

I was perusing Social Source Commons (something I don't do nearly often enough,) and catching up on the SSC blog, and I thought it might be worth sharing with this audience what tools I use for basic consulting workflow. I'll do another few posts for other areas, like development, system maintenance, personal web presence, and writing. (If you want to look at my Social Source Commons toolbox, it's here.

Bing and Google

mpm — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 20:26:46 +0000

I do a fair bit of SEO work for clients. I'm not one of those very serious SEO folks, but I do know my way around the not-so-black-magic that SEO is. This blog is the one of my many personal sites that I pay the most attention to SEO (although I think that will change soon,) I tend to focus a lot on Google, since according to my analytics (and yes, they are Google analytics. I'm wondering whether I should check out my server logs...) 99% of the traffic to this blog that comes from search engines comes from Google.

Interesting sites I'm looking at (weekly)

mpm — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 04:32:34 +0000

Jackson River Drupal Modules | Jackson River

tags: drupal modules salesforce toblog

Open Source vs. Proprietary: Graphics and Video

mpm — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 21:15:40 +0000

There are some very interesting comparisons to make in this realm, and, I'd say first off, that the proprietary tools are in the lead, for sure. I'll start with basic graphics - graphic manipulation tools. Of course, on the proprietary side is the ever present and predominant Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

Web Application Frameworks

mpm — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 17:39:15 +0000

If I got a dollar for every time I heard something like: "we're trying to choose between Ruby on Rails and Drupal for our new website" or "our developer convinced us to do our new website in Ruby on Rails and we can't update it," I wouldn't be rich, but I'd have some money for a very nice meal at an expensive restaurant. I know a lot of pretty serious geeks read this blog, but I also know some folks who aren't do too, and I figured it was time to do a quick outline of web application frameworks, and how they differ from things like a CMS. A web server, in the physical sense of the phrase, is

Open Source vs. Proprietary: CMS

mpm — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 17:43:16 +0000

Content Management Systems are an essential part of the communications function of nonprofit organizations.

Interesting Sites I'm looking at

mpm — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 04:34:44 +0000

HipHop for PHP

tags: php webdev toblog opensource
MailChimp | drupal.org

Drupalcon Highlight Reel

mpm — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 17:58:55 +0000

I didn't make it to Drupalcon Chicago, but, thanks to the organizers of the conference, it doesn't mean I need to miss the sessions.

Drupal/Salesforce Integration

mpm — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 16:17:17 +0000

A bit over a year ago, I wrote a post about the status of Drupal/Salesforce Integration.

Open Source vs. Proprietary: Nonprofit CRM

mpm — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 14:18:56 +0000

CRM systems (which I am defining rather loosely, rather than tightly, for the purpose of this post - as the tool or set of tools used to track constituents, donations, perhaps even events and volunteers) are arguably the most important technology tools that nonprofits use.

Alternatives to MySQL

mpm — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:40:15 +0000

For those of us that depend on MySQL everyday, the buyout of Sun (which had bought MySQL) by Oracle did not bode well. A decidedly biased survey by the folks behind PostgreSQL suggests that many people worry about the health of MySQL in Oracle's hands. I've mentioned this before, and I do think the conventional wisdom is that open source software (which includes OpenOffice.org, MySQL and Java) will not flourish at Oracle.

Open Source vs. Proprietary: Browsers

mpm — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 14:08:09 +0000

The browser wars between proprietary and open source browsers have changed in some ways from the days that it was simply Internet Explorer vs. Netscape. There are more players on both sides of the field, with some interesting complexities. On the proprietary side, still, sits Internet Explorer, now about ready to pop with version 9. It definitely depends on who is gathering the data, but IE has about 44% of the market. This is down significantly from its high point, back in the dark ages of 2005, when it garnered over 90%. It has been dropping steadily since.

Take this short survey

mpm — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 16:14:13 +0000

The Ada Initiative is a nonprofit organization that works to support women in open culture (open source software, open standards, open content, etc.) Really great stuff. They have a new census that they are encouraging people to take. So please take it, and spread the word.

Open Source vs. Proprietary: Desktop Productivity

mpm — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 17:21:12 +0000

I recently wrote a blog entry about LibreOffice (LO), the fork of OpenOffice.org (OOo) that came after the acquisition of Sun (the old holder/maintainer of OOo) by Oracle. For the purposes of this blog entry, at this moment in time (early 2011,) LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org are the same.

My Browser Stats

mpm — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 16:43:11 +0000

I was looking at my Google Analytics report for this blog, and came across an interesting thing. The browser share of those visiting my site, and the North America browser share from Statcounter. Here are my stats: Here are the stats from Statcounter: It's a bit hard to see, but my stats have IE as third, where as the Statcounter stats have IE as out front, by a fair bit. Also, my stats have Chrome in 2nd place, and they have Chrome in 3rd, even with Safari, and a fair bit below Firefox. This falls into the category of "things that make you go hmmmmm..." Although in some ways, it makes sense, given that my audience is much more tech-savvy than the audiences of most websites. (For instance, my personal site, that gets much less traffic, and is likely a less techy crowd, has stats much more similar to Statcounter than this blog.) So, anyway, way to go readers, making Firefox first! And for those 37 of you who visited this year using IE6, shame on you. Be nice to web developers and ditch IE 6, please?

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly RFPs

mpm — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 11:17:31 +0000

In my time working on web development for nonprofit organizations, I've seen more RFPs than I can even begin to count. I've even written a few. And, especially since I've primarily been someone in the role of having to respond to an RFP, I've gotten pretty good at spotting RFPs that I feel don't serve either the organization, or the developers well. Here is, in my estimation, the good, bad, and ugly in the realm of RFPs. I'll start with the bad.

Open Source vs. Proprietary: Overview

mpm — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 19:15:22 +0000

Since I wrote my post on "Open Source vs. Proprietary" last week, and especially after Thomas Taylor's very apt comment that the battle is not over in many corners, I decided that, well, what the heck, it was a good time to write a series about open source software options, and their comparisons to proprietary, in 2011, more than 12 years after this whole thing started.

Changes ...

mpm — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 13:14:45 +0000

"Nothing endures but change" - Heraclitus Sometimes, change happens when we're not looking for it, or we don't really want it. Sometimes changes that we don't want lead us to places that make more sense for us. This is one of those times. I've been struggling with health issues (life-altering, but not life-threatening, thankfully) for almost 6 months. They have led me to make a significant change in my work life.

Technology and the Environment

mpm — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 14:24:17 +0000

This is an issue I've been struggling with for a long time. I'm an unrepentant, unabashed technophile. OK, well, not so unrepentant or unabashed since I'm writing this post on the varied factors around technology and the environment, and have been thinking about this issue for myself for a long time.

Why Zen?

mpm — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 20:04:57 +0000

"Only the present moment is real and available to us. The peace we desire is not in some distant future, but it is something we can realize in the present moment." --Thich Nhat Hahn

I have been thinking about why I decided to call this blog "Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology" recently.

LibreOffice vs. OpenOffice.org

mpm — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 15:12:12 +0000

I hope that everyone reading this blog has heard of OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice.org is a free and open source cross-platform office suite, which can read and write MS Office .doc, .xls, and .ppt files. It actually has more to it than that, there is a drawing program, a database, a math equation editor and more.

Open Source vs. Proprietary. Who won?

mpm — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 19:01:01 +0000

This epic battle between Open Source software (or Free software) and proprietary software is coming to a close. Some might argue that FOSS won the battle. Others would argue that proprietary software won. I'm going to argue that both won, and both lost. The Desktop About 10 years ago, the very big FOSS vs. Proprietary battle was between Linux and Microsoft. The "year of the Linux desktop", where Linux becomes a dominant force in the desktop computing world, was predicted, but never came. It never will come. Er, well.

How to deal with technology change

mpm — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 13:43:59 +0000

I saw a call for a ColdFusion developer on an email list I'm on, and I couldn't help but think about technology choice and change, particularly in the website world, and how nonprofits deal with technology change (or, don't deal with it.) ColdFusion has been around for 15 years (more than a century in Internet time), and although it has improved and developed, technologically, it has been surpassed by its successors (including PHP, Java, Python, RubyonRails, and even .NET.) But this article isn't about CF, it's about technology change. Tec

Reader solicitation

mpm — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 11:56:09 +0000

As you can tell, I've been writing more lately, and I plan, for the time being at least, to really step up my blogging game. I've got a list of posts of my own I want to write, but I realized that some long-time readers of this blog might want me to write about some specific things that fit under my basic purview. Research you've been too busy to do, something you want my unique opinion on, something you're curious about. So, I'm soliciting ideas.

eBooks #2: So you want to e-publish? Mechanics...

mpm — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 20:21:06 +0000

As most of you know, I'm a writer. I write a fair bit of science fiction, and also write other stuff. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about what I want to do to get my novels out in the world, and have been greatly influenced by Cory Doctorow in terms of copyright (or, more accurately, copyleft). Obviously for me, publishing eBooks is going to be something I do at some point, perhaps sooner rather than later. I'm talking in this post about self-publishing eBooks.

WordPress vs. Drupal ... fight!

mpm — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 19:06:38 +0000

As a user and developer of WordPress since 1.x something, and a developer and user of Drupal since 4.7, I figured that with the release of Drupal 7, this would be a great time to do a comparison of the two. If you want a really detailed look, please read the very exhaustive, recently released, updated Idealware report on OpenSource CMS, which includes Drupal, WordPress, Joomla and Plone.

eCommerce #1: Options

mpm — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 22:19:56 +0000

Nonprofits don't use e-commerce much, but I've had some experience (on both sides of the profit fence) doing e-commerce, and for some reason, shopping carts are intriguing me at the moment, and I figure its a good time to know what's out there, especially in the open source shopping cart world. What would I use if someone came to me wanting to set up a store? The last time I looked closely at this (which was a few years ago) it was a different situation - there wasn't much in the way of open source shopping carts.

What IPv6 means to you

mpm — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 14:26:03 +0000

For those of you that don't know about IP addresses, here's a very quick lesson. In order for one computer to talk to another computer on the internet, it needs an address, the same as you have an address so that people know where to send you junk mail catalogs.

Drupal 7

mpm — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 09:57:40 +0000

I've had a bit of time now to work with Drupal 7. I've been playing with it since it was still pretty experimental, but I finally put together a whole site with it recently, and am pretty happy with it. It's gotten a big leg up in terms of usability - this was a major focus for this release. The basic user interface is much improved over Drupal 6, and unrecognizable if you've only been using Drupal 5 or earlier.

eBooks #1: ePub is to eBooks as MP3 is to music?

mpm — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 14:50:44 +0000

If you've been around the block as long as I have, you remember the days before an audio codec was settled upon. EBooks are moving into adolescence, and the question is, which format will win, or does one format have to win? For a while there, the two big players on the field were Amazon on one side, with it's Kindle and proprietary format, which is an offshoot of MobiPocket format, and a reader that has a fairly limited range of formats it can read.

Email is dead ... long live Email?

mpm — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 15:49:07 +0000

Reports of the death of email are, of course rampant, for the past, oh, 10 years or so. First, spam was going to kill email. It certainly is true that most email sent these days is spam, but that hasn't managed to kill it. More recently, facebook and twitter were considered likely candidates for killing it off.

Salesforce.com and Ruby on Rails

mpm — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 12:38:13 +0000

Programming languages and I have issues. By now, I've learned quite a number of them (I think 9 by last count), but for some reason, I seem to choose my work on them just at the top of the curve, or as they are going down. I have yet to manage to pick one early. I learned C at the height of its popularity, just as C++ was beginning to rise. I learned Fortran when it was almost dead, mostly for fun. I learned Pascal toward the tail end of its reign. In the late 90s, I chose to write a CMS in Perl instead of PHP.

Plotting my return to Twitter

mpm — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 14:42:17 +0000

In April of this year, I left twitter. I had good reason to leave twitter. And, after a few months, I didn't miss it. And, frankly I still don't miss it. But I had a bit of an epiphany lately that you social media mavens out there will very much appreciate. I figured it was worth writing on this blog about. I joined Twitter in the beginning, because my colleagues were.

A couple of tidbits

mpm — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 16:06:02 +0000

A couple of tidbits on the environment today:

A post on Read Write Web entitled "Cloud Computing good for the environment. Really?"
Another in the series of "The Story of Stuff" on Electronics.

Leaving Apple Behind

mpm — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 21:55:28 +0000

I've been through a pretty interesting transformation in the last 2 months. I've gone from being a Mac/iPhone user, to being a ThinkPad/Android user, and not looking back. I'm actually quite happy - I can run both Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux on my laptop, and I like Android (and my Droid 2 phone) a lot. Once I sell my iPhone (fairly soon) I will be free of Apple hardware for the first time in 25 years (yikes!

Salesforce as a CMS?

mpm — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 18:40:51 +0000

Salesforce is a very powerful platform onto which one can build a large variety of interesting kinds of custom applications. I've already talked on this blog about Salesforce integration with Drupal, Plone, and others.

Does Social Media Work?

mpm — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 11:31:29 +0000

I know for many of you this is old news. But since I'm not on twitter anymore, and I don't read my RSS feeds as often as I should. In July, Idealware published the Nonprofit Social Media Decision Guide. It's great - chock full of good information, and some very, very interesting research.

Women Who Tech Telesummit

mpm — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:57:17 +0000

I've been involved in this Telesummit now since the beginning.

When data gets political

mpm — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:05:32 +0000

Most days, data is pretty straightforward to us here at OpenIssue headquarters. Names, addresses, email addresses, the pesky notes field (today's bane of our existence.) But sometimes, data is political. Or, I guess more accurately, data models.
In most CRM systems, especially older ones, and ones that are less flexible, some fields can be points of contention for some of us. Gender is one, marital status is another. CiviCRM, to it's credit, allows for an arbitrary number of genders - you can define them however you like.

Git

mpm — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:43:35 +0000

I became sold on version control fairly far back in my programming life. Back when CVS (C0ncurrent Version System) was the standard. I learned it, although there were varied gaps in my use of it, so it never became second nature. As I learned more about newer version control systems, I tried them out. For a while, I was using SVN (Subversion), which is similar enough to CVS, but has some nice improvements.

Three months without Twitter

mpm — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:54:53 +0000

As you know, I left twitter 3 months ago today. I figured it was a good time to do a reflection of my experiences over this time - what I miss, and what I don't miss. What I don't miss

Distractions: I find myself more productive, for sure. I never was very disciplined about turning twitter off, so I was constantly distracted. The lack of distraction has been a really good thing.

Information overload: how did I keep all that stuff in my head?

I'm not changing the world

mpm — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 15:21:37 +0000

I've been working with nonprofit organizations on technology issues (strategy, implementation) for about 15 years now. I remember the heady days, when most nonprofits didn't even have networks, and some of them still didn't have internet access. In those days, most nonprofit techies were progressive, and we were sure that what we were doing was going to change the world for the better. Now, 15 years later, I'm pretty sure I'm not changing the world. You're still more likely to find a progressive nonprofit techie than a conservative one, but there are plenty of conservative ones now.

What Drupal and Salesforce have taught me about coding

mpm — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:42:20 +0000

I've been spending a fair bit of time in the last couple of years learning to code in a new way. It reminds me of a transition I made in coding from having written stand-alone applications for varied computers, to writing code for the web. When I was in college, grad school and early in my academic career (this dates me - from the early 80s to early 90s), I spent a lot of time writing stand-alone applications, mostly in Pascal and C.

Amazon S3 for web server backup

mpm — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:25:53 +0000

I've been getting to know Amazon S3 lately, and there are some great things about it. I think it is one of the long list of unpredicted successes that resulted from the near-ubiquitousness of open source software on the server side. We've been using it for "offsite" backup for drupal sites for a while now. We have a script going which runs by cron daily to do the backups. There are a number of ways to do this. We started using S3fs as a way to mount an S3 bucket in the filesystem, then just copy the files to S3.

Last 10 delicious.com links

mpm — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 08:01:06 +0000

Again, a little peak at what I've been up to, reading, and thinking about. You can also see what I've been reading by looking at my shared items on my google profile.

Mule ESB - Open Source ESB Community w.

Social CRM, part 2: Metrics vs. CRM

mpm — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:14:38 +0000

So while I've been off twitter, I've had time to research social CRM (funny, that.) And what I've found is pretty interesting. CRM stands for "Customer Relationship Management" (not to be confused with "Cause Related Marketing"- it came from the for-profit space. In the nonprofit world we use this acronym to mean "Constituent Relationship Management", generally.

External, alienated, busy-busy

mpm — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:18:28 +0000

As you might know, almost a year ago, I made a big change in my use of social media - I segregated my social graph - work related stuff moved to LinkedIn and Twitter, and personal friends only on Facebook. Now, I have taken the next step, and made somewhat of a momentous decision. I'm not alone - Jon Stahl did this before me, and I know there are others.

Betting the Farm

mpm — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 08:43:56 +0000

Countless nonprofits flocked to Ning to create social networks. Since I'm not a social media guru, I've generally kept my opinions about this to myself. But now that Ning isn't free anymore, I'm going to carp some. I think over the course of lo this last few years, I have blogged or tweeted about this very phenomenon what feels like countless times. Nonprofits find services for free. They start depending on them. The free services disappear, for business reasons.

Social CRM, part 1

mpm — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 18:01:18 +0000

This blog series is all Beth Kanter's fault. We (the two partners of OpenIssue) shared a cab from the Atlanta airport to the hotel when we arrived for the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference.

Off to NTC!

mpm — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 21:51:50 +0000

Tomorrow morning, I'll be leaving on a jet plane, to Atlanta, Georgia, for the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference. This will be my 7th NTC since 2001 (or, more accurately, my 5th. I went to two Circuit Rider Roundups.) I'm looking forward to it.

Why use contributed Salesforce modules for Drupal?

mpm — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:26:27 +0000

Lobo's comment on my post yesterday prompted me to complete this blog entry that I've been ruminating on for a while. I wrote a blog entry a while back on the state of Drupal/Salesforce integration.

The easier it looks, the more expensive it will be (or, how to avoid clusterfrack projects)

mpm — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 15:11:10 +0000

As most of you know, I'm a very long time veteran of web application building. I've been involved in web application development basically since they started - when a cgi-bin folder with some perl scripts to process simple forms was the norm. Until just a few years ago, there was very little sophistication about the user experience in web applications - what mattered most was functionality.

Drupal 7

mpm — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:48:26 +0000

I've been doing a bit of playing around with Drupal 7 in my copious spare time (not a whole lot of that!) I've also been keeping track, a bit of how the development process is going, and what things will look like.

Last 10 (selected) delicious.com links

mpm — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:10:53 +0000

The reason I post these is because 1) I think they might be helpful resources, and 2) you can get a feeling for what I'm working on, or thinking about (or wishing for.) For instance, the reason there are so many links about Amazon is that we are now beginning a project that uses amazon in earnest, with some others possibly on the way.

PolicyTool for Social Media

List of Nonprofit, NPO, NGO Websites Using

Drupal Commerce

mpm — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:54:40 +0000

Although it's not often used in nonprofit settings, the Drupal module (or, more correctly, a large suite of modules) called "Ubercart" is a pretty amazing tool if you need to create a shopping cart system. We've implemented it for organizations that want to sell fees for events, sell items, and take donations.

Last 10 (selected) delicious.com links

mpm — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:45:20 +0000

Yammer : Enterprise Microblogging

Git - SVN Crash Course

Pivotal Tracker - Free Lightweight Agile Project Management & Team Collaboration, from Pivotal Labs

Force.com Web Services API Developer's Guide

SOQL SELECT Syntax

You don't hear me talking much about social media. One of the reasons is that there are a number of really good bloggers out there who know the field far better than I'll ever be able to. I would argue that Beth Kanter is the best social media blogger there is in the nonprofit space.

Drupal and Salesforce

mpm — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:38:32 +0000

It's taken me a while to write this blog post, mostly because I have been working hard at various things (like building a business and building new websites.) This is the last installment in my CRM/CMS integration series, that started almost a year ago (wow!) And I'm skipping Joomla/Salesforce Integration because there isn't any publicly available documentation or code about the integration that PICnet did with Joomla and Salesforce, called

Got Research?

mpm — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:54:27 +0000

One of the great things about the nonprofit technology field is the collection of nonprofit organizations that provide what is often called "Intermediary" services to other nonprofits: information and resources that help nonprofit organizations do the work they do in the world, by helping them make good technology decisions. I've been involved in one way or another with a number of these intermediary organizations.

More symptoms of bigger problems

mpm — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:32:02 +0000

'nuff said.

Same crap, different day

mpm — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:45:41 +0000

I'm warning you - this is snarky. I was only vaguely following the brou-ha-ha over Causes leaving Myspace. Only vaguely because I don't really keep close track of the goings on in the Social Networking space: it's not my passion. I use them a lot, both for work as well as for personal use.

Open Mobile Camp report

mpm — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 08:52:07 +0000

Yesterday, I spent the day in Manhattan, at the UNICEF building, with a bunch of folks passionate about the technology in mobile phones, and the ways to use that technology for good. I've been a very long time cell phone user (had one since 1998), but I haven't been involved in implementing a mobile system for an organization, so I had a lot to learn. The place to find reports on what happend is on the wiki.

Last 10 delicious.com links

mpm — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:52:28 +0000

These are the last 10 sites I bookmarked on delicious.com:

VideoPress — Quick and easy HD video sharing for WordPress

Welcome to Aviary

Mozilla Labs - Weave Sync :: Add-ons for Firefox

How to Set Up an SMS System | MobileActive.org

[caption id="attachment_569" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Security Camera - Photo by Sirius Rust"][/caption] Beth threw down the gauntlet, and I had to pick it up. I'm sort of surprised I hadn't written about this before. I think a lot about both of these, not so much for myself, but for organizations that I work with whose work is fairly sensitive. First off, some definitions - I think that these two terms do get mixed up quite often, and understanding what's really being meant by them in a technical context is important. Security, in this context, is the concept that your personal computing resources and data are safe from both prying eyes, as well as hijack by crackers and spammers who will use those resources and data for their nefarious ends. In the case of your computing resources and personal data inside that box you call your laptop, or protecting the whole of your home or office network, security is a matter of using specific tools that prevent unprivileged outsiders from getting in. Wifi passwords, firewalls, password protected fileshares, virus protection software, etc. are the tools of the trade here. Security of your private data that is "in the cloud" is largely at the mercy of the software developers who hold your data. Luckily, most of them take security quite seriously. (That said, your data "in the cloud" can be compromised by lack of security on your network or laptop - someone installs a key logger, for instance, and grabs all of your passwords.) Privacy, in this context, is that you can control, in a granular sense, what information about you is exposed to whom. Privacy is, as Beth says, primarily a matter of human behavior, but there are very interesting intersections with technology and security. In some instances, services have default privacy settings that are a lot less private than someone might like - and it takes some know-how to figure out how to correct those settings. Privacy is, also, a set of decisions that get made - sometimes in haste, or without much consideration. Your drunken decision to post that picture of you (or a co-worker) dancing in your underwear on a table at a party, the cat is out of the bag, and may never be able to be put back. Security and privacy in the context of online communities, as Beth points out, are different beasts. The software that drives online communities (such as Drupal, phpBB, and others) have options to allow for varied levels of security. You might need to have a password to see anything. Or you might just need a password to make comments. You might not be able to just register for an account - you might need to go through an admin. These days, most software driving communities have roles you can assign people to, with specific privileges granted per role. But privacy is made up of policy (the policy of the organization running the community) as well as the behavior of the members - their collective agreement that "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."

Data Ecosystems

mpm — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:46:09 +0000

Not so long ago, nonprofit organizations had software tools, that dealt with specific parts of their organizational process. They had fundraising tools, client management tools, volunteer management tools, HR tools, accounting tools, etc.

Evaluation and being a learning organization

mpm — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 10:15:59 +0000

Beth Kanter tweeted about an article by Gale Berkowitz relating to evaluation, which I found really fascinating - it is a must read.

Links

mpm — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:21:54 +0000

Some great tech and nonprofit tech stuff I've come across lately:

There's a great new feature available for nonprofits on YouTube: annotations to external sites

Some great ideas and advice on content strategy.

The CiviCRM 3.0 beta process is well underway. Yay!

Specify Story, not details

mpm — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:42:41 +0000

I've been a fan of user stories for several years now. User stories are a way to describe a set of functionalities of an application in a way that is focused on results - it's easy to connect to mission. An example from an events management application:
The organization should be able to create several different kinds of events, and determine for each kind of event which detailed information will be taken. Those events can be displayed in a list or calendar format.

Diversity and Open Source

mpm — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 10:49:23 +0000

The python community has started a conversation about diversity, with the ultimate goal of creating basically a welcoming statement. It comes out of Kirrily Robert's keynote at OSCON about women and open source.

The wonders of libcloud

mpm — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:52:05 +0000

Here at OpenIssue, we think a lot about the web. I mean, a LOT. And we've been thinking a lot about web hosting, and the varied flavors it comes in. We're working to figure out what makes sense for us to use and implement, and what makes sense for us to recommend to our clients. A while ago, we decided, like many folks, virtual private servers were going to be the preferred hosting set up.

Tidbits

mpm — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:05:51 +0000

Here's a broad ranging list of interesting tidbits I've found recently.

Heard of RDFa? A List Apart has a great introduction to it.

Have a Mac? Have an iPhone? Want to use it as a remote? Learn how.

Interesting strategy for wireframes: add color shading for emphasis. Example 1.

Newly discovered project management tool: Redmine

mpm — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:11:42 +0000

Any consulting shop that does significant amounts of implementation and development (as we do) needs a project management and ticketing tool. Basecamp seems to be a standard that many people have reached for. We were using Intervals for a while, which is really a fabulous tool if you do a lot of hourly consulting. We also have been using Google spreadsheets for some elements of project management. All tools have their strengths and weaknesses.

Why we're not friends anymore: the nptech echo chamber

mpm — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:54:38 +0000

I did a kind of radical experiment a couple of weeks ago: I de-friended almost all of my nptech and client Facebook friends (cutting my friend count by more than 60%). I had a few reasons for this, and over the past couple of weeks that I've been living this experiment, it's made me quite happy.

Avoiding Trainwrecks

mpm — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 22:16:17 +0000

I spent a big chunk of my day dealing with a project that is, in no uncertain terms, a trainwreck. The client has sunk a ton of money into a product which is in, its current (first phase supposedly finished) state, unusable (client and vendor shall remain unnamed.) My role in the project has been strategic and as a liason, not technical, which to some extent gives me a bit of a distanced view. Web development trainwrecks are, sadly, far from isolated cases - they happen all the time, even when all of the parties have good intentions.

Links

mpm — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:13:39 +0000

As you can tell, I haven't had much time to blog lately. Here are some great links I've come across that I thought were worth sharing:

Get the NTEN IT Staffing and Spending Report. Good stuff!

Take a peek at Google Wave. This is a great preview of some really fascinating technology

Learn about the state of MySQL - it's an interesting read.

CiviCRM Developer Camp

mpm — Sun, 03 May 2009 12:39:39 +0000

I got to spend one day at CiviCRM developer camp this week. Unfortunately, it came after 4 long days of conferencing, after many exhausting days of work, so I wasn't at my peak. But I learned a lot, and thought I'd share some of what I took away from that day. First, the core team shared some of the new stuff coming out in version 2.3, and it is awe-some. One of the major reasons CiviCRM gets dinged as a CRM/DMS is that it doesn't have reports.

Be like a three year-old

mpm — Sun, 03 May 2009 20:52:43 +0000

I don't have kids, but I do know how young kids ask questions. They are innocent, and free of assumptions, and keep asking "why?" In the end, the poor adults either get tired of the questions, or realize that there are assumptions they've been making for all this time that might actually be worth questioning. Human processes mold around software. We see this all the time. A CRM gives you these 5 canned reports, and you get used to making do with what's there. A legacy client database requires a certain order of data entry, and your intake forms have been produced to copy that order.

Where I'll be at NTC

mpm — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:09:02 +0000

NTC is coming, and I don't have to pack! That's a good thing. But I will be BARTing my way into SF everyday, from Saturday for Penguin Day, Sunday through Tuesday for NTC, and Wed and Thursday for CiviCRM Developer Camp.

Why you should care that Oracle is buying Sun

mpm — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:15:55 +0000

In general, the activities of the big tech corporations have somewhat limited and indirect effect on nonprofit technology. For large enterprises, the activities of the big players is a much more immediate and important set of issues to deal with. For us, it's generally much more removed. However, today's news that Oracle is going to buy Sun Microsystems has some very important implications. Why?

Blog shout outs

mpm — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:16:02 +0000

On the right is my blogroll, that needs updating, but I thought I'd do some shout outs to blogs I've lately been loving and really learning a lot from, who are probably not on that list (yet).

Wireframes Magazine - I've been doing Information Architecture for a very long time, now, but it's great to learn new tricks and tools.

Flowing Data - OK, I'll fess up, I'm a data geek. And I love data visualizations, and ways to make data easily accessible.

CRM & CMS integration: Web pages and forms

mpm — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:06:44 +0000

Third to last in my series on CMS and CRM integration (next up, Joomla and Salesforce, followed by Drupal and Salesforce) is using web forms. I wanted to talk about this because it is arguably the most common form of "integration" between CRM and CMS that's out there (besides the manual kind). You've got a CMS, and you've got a CRM somewhere else, and you need some way for data from users to make it to your CRM. Of course, it's not really integration - there is no sharing of data between the CMS and the CRM in any useful way. But webforms can really help you get things done.

Penguin day comes again

mpm — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:47:07 +0000

I love Penguin Day. One of my favorite days of the year. Always comes right around NTC. This year, it's before NTC, on Saturday, April 25. It's a day dedicated to conversation and community around nonprofits and open source software.

Drupal security, and other CMS Report comments

mpm — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:24:59 +0000

Now that the Idealware CMS report is out, I get to have my say about it. Here's the first post, there might be more to come. The thing that is prompting this post is the little storm about the security metric that we used to try and get a handle on the security of the 4 different systems we reviewed.

New kid on the block: BlackbaudNow

mpm — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:58:43 +0000

Blackbaud announced, just in time for AFP, their new product, called BlackbaudNow, in partnership with PayPal. It is a curious service. It is an extremely low-end, low-cost online website/online donation package from a vendor that spends most of its time on the very high-end of the scale. It is simple. An organization can sign up for a free account, get a 5 page website, including a donation page, about page, etc. Editing a page is basically point and click - it highlights the part of the page you can edit it, and you edit it with a WYSIWYG editor.

Exciting changes afoot...

mpm — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 19:57:06 +0000

I have some exciting news. For the last few months, I have been working on a new collaboration called OpenIssue, which is a growing, diverse, self-reflective and constantly-learning team. We are focused on delivering quality web technology solutions to nonprofit organizations and social enterprises. As you know, I have built a long-time expertise in open source software and web applications, particularly Content Management Systems (CMS) and online database systems, including CRM.

CRM & CMS Integration: Plone and Salesforce.com

mpm — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:48:09 +0000

Today, I was reading up on what the Plone community has done with integrating their CMS with Salesforce.com.

Salesforce and CiviCRM

mpm — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:30:27 +0000

This morning, I looked at both Salesforce.com, with the second nonprofit template, and CiviCRM with a small group of colleagues. All of us implement, or have used, one or both of the systems. But each of us has expertise in only one of the systems.(I'm one of the CiviCRM folks). It's pretty interesting to compare them. The nonprofit template has certainly helped to make it easier for nonprofits to do the brain surgery required to use a for-profit sales tool for nonprofit CRM purposes. Salesforce.com is, of course, much more sleek and polished.

DrupalconDC Final Report

mpm — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 10:33:58 +0000

It's been a few days since I got back from Drupalcon, and I've had time to let all of the things that happened settle in. It was a great time, and I'm really happy I went. We had a fabulous (and quite large) nptech/progressive exchange/community organizing BoF. There was a show-and-tell session for nonprofit websites (which I didn't make it to).

DrupalconDC Report #1

mpm — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:05:34 +0000

At the end of day one, I figured I'd give a little report on how DrupalconDC is going for me. I'm having a good time, and learning a lot. I went to three pretty intro talks (two of them were a bit too intro for me, but I got a few good tips) and one advanced panel.

Themers Toolkit- I've only done a few themes, and modified a few, but I guess that was enough for this panel to be too beginner for me. But I did learn a few tricks I didn't know, so it was useful.

What I'll be writing about (and not writing about)

mpm — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:37:21 +0000

I get a lot of email all the time from people hawking various wares, fundraising ideas, new ways to use Web 2.0, or this and that. I'm sure that this post probably won't make much of a dent, since I suspect that at least 70% of the people who send me stuff (I get 6-10 emails a week that fall into this category) have never read this blog (even though they might say they love it.) I realized, in getting this stuff, and trying to figure out what to do with it, that I needed to be better at understanding myself what I was doing, and articulating that clearly.

New leap for open source CMS vendor

mpm — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:59:07 +0000

Mpower Open, the vendor who took their high-end CRM/DMS product, MPX, open source last year, has adopted a new name, Orange Leap. They have also released two new products, called Orange Leap and the Guru. The combination of Orange Leap and The Guru are a web-based CRM/DMS and reporting system aimed squarely at Salesforce.com and Convio Common Ground.

CRM&CMS Integration: Blackbaud Raiser's Edge and NetCommunity

mpm — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:05:01 +0000

What? She's talking about Blackbaud? Yes, it might be surprising, but I got a friendly email from fellow NTEN Board Member Steve McLaughlin, who also happens to be head of all things internet (more formally, Director, Internet Solutions) at Blackbaud. He gave me a demo and overview of their NetCommunity tool, which has been around for a while, and I figured it deserved a blog entry. It is, in fact, a great example of integration of a CMS and a CRM.

CiviCRM and Drupal (& Joomla)

mpm — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:45:38 +0000

CiviCRM was the first nonprofit-focused open source CRM (one of only two, at this moment.) It is a great tool for small to medium-sized organizations who are looking for a CRM to track members and donations, register people for events, and do mass mailings. There are also some other features, like grants management and case management that are more nascent, but promising for the future.

Integration of CMS and CRM - Preamble

mpm — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:01:11 +0000

As I talked about in my last post, there are a variety of strategies one can use to move data between your CMS and your CRM. I'm going to choose a few examples to look at in some depth. Some of these are examples I've been working with clients on, or I've played with, some are just examples I know about, but are prominent, useful examples to talk about. I'll talk a bit about mechanics, and talk about strengths and weaknesses, and under what situations you might want to look at it.

Integration of CRM and CMS

mpm — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:10:33 +0000

If there are two acronyms that are at the center of nonprofit communications, it's these two, CRM (Constituent Relationship Management - and I'm making this broad enough to include fundraising) and CMS (Content Management System). And because of this, it makes sense that integration of these two is something that is a need to be filled. What's involved in this? First, the what - what to integrate? Most often nonprofits want to capture information from web users.

Looking forward to NTC 2009

mpm — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 23:18:55 +0000

I love NTC (NTEN's Nonprofit Technology Conference). I would be dishonest if I said I didn't have a sweet reminiscence for the Circiut Rider Roundups of old. But they are long gone. As fields often do, ours grew up and professionalized. And what has taken it's place is valuable to a much wider audience (and a much larger one!) And, this year, for the very first time, I live in the same city in which NTC is taking place.

Tidbits

mpm — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:52:08 +0000

Some stuff from my inbox. (A lot of these are 2008 news, therefore, kinda old. But still interesting to me.)

Appirio releases their top 10 predictions for cloud computing in 2009.

The Dangers of Online Services

mpm — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:00:03 +0000

This week was a bad week for online blogging services. First the blogging service JournalSpace, with hundreds of users, just, well, died, because they didn't have a proper backup.

Top 10 blog posts of 2008

mpm — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 23:56:17 +0000

Here's the top 10 list for 2008: 1) Remember when 1 MB was alot? I wrote this post back in 2005, and it is the most popular in 2008! It's actually because someone included it in a Wikipedia Article (no, it wasn't me.) 2) Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants on July 27th.

My Top 16 tools of 2008

mpm — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 23:11:35 +0000

These span the range from tools I use every day or every week, to tools use more occasionally, but depend on. They also span the range of proprietary, SaaS, and Open Source. They are on this list because I think they are great, because they have undergone a lot of change or development this year, or because they are game-changing. Open Source Tools 1. WordPress. I use WP pretty much everyday, between my own blogs, and helping clients maintain theirs.

Can open source software save organizations money?

mpm — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:01:22 +0000

Next year, given what is likely to be a grim funding year, nonprofit organizations are going to be hunting for ways to save money on technology. There are, of course, arguments that IT budgets should be, at least, level funded during slim times, but the reality is that organizations are going to reduce budgets across the board. One question that will inevitably be asked: can free and open source software save organizations money? The answer, of course, is a solid maybe, but also a resounding yes. Confusing, huh?

The Power of Open

mpm — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:29:09 +0000

[caption id="attachment_398" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Songbird screen"][/caption] I've known about Songbird for a long time. It's a cross-platform music player based upon the Mozilla framework. I thought it was a brilliant idea years ago, but it was a buggy mess the last time I tried it (about a year ago.) However, Songbird has emerged, like many open source projects do, as a mature, stable, and, in Songbird's case, a truly awesome application, because of the incredible extensibility of the Mozilla framework (and the talent of the Songbird developer community.) I've only been running Songbird for about 20 minutes, and already it's linked with my last.fm account, is showing me a picture search based on the artist I'm playing, as well as showing me a list of all of the concerts happening in the Bay Area by artists in my library. I can read reviews, browse videos, and read the lyrics of the song playing. It's happily notifying Growl when new songs play. This qualifies as a killer app, and it will give iTunes a run for it's money. I don't really have a good reason to use iTunes anymore. Between open standards that allow songbird to grab data from all sorts of places, as well as the open architecture of Mozilla, allowing hundreds or thousands of people to write their own cool plug ins that we all benefit from, this really does show the power of open. Next question: can we get the nonprofit version of the killer open source and open platform app?

Digging deeper into the portable social graph

mpm — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 06:00:31 +0000

Facebook Connect was announced a few days ago, and, of course, it's the talk of the Web 2.0 world. Beth Kanter, as always, has a nice overview of what it is, and what it might mean. Google Friend Connect has been around for a few months, but they just opened it up to everyone last week. What do these two toolsets mean?

We want video!

mpm — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 08:53:49 +0000

YouTube is everywhere - you see videos as a common part of websites, and almost everyone has an internet connection with high enough bandwidth to play video. This means that a lot of nonprofits are interested in having video on their sites. So what does it take, and what considerations should you think about as you embark on adding video to your site? First, it is almost always a mistake to upload a video to your website without thinking about the ramifications, both in terms of bandwidth, as well as performance.

How's that donor database of yours?

mpm — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:11:44 +0000

In general, although I am sometimes asked, I tend to avoid assisting clients with choosing a donor database package. Mostly because, although I actually know the field pretty well, it's at the 10,000 foot level, rather than the 50 ft level that clients really need. And I know there are plenty of folks out there who know the field really well at 50 ft, and can step in with the best advice. As a 10,000 footer, NTEN's new Donor Management System Survey is of keen interest.

Drupal and Postgresql

mpm — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:26:12 +0000

A while ago, I joined a bunch of groups at groups.drupal.org, thinking I'd pick up some interesting ideas, and meet some folks who were doing cool stuff with Drupal. One of the groups I joined (along with "Drupal for Good" and "Drupalchix") was the PostgreSQL group. Yesterday, in my RSS feed, this post showed up.

Bleary Eyed and geared up

mpm — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:54:40 +0000

I don't usually title my tech blog entries with quite that sort of title, but that's how I feel after spending 3 days with one of the most fabulous groups of people I have had the honor of spending time with in recent memory.

The social network commitment

mpm — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 20:40:38 +0000

Getting involved in a social network, whether it be something like Facebook or Myspace, or a content-connected social network like flickr or delicious (I'm starting to get used to writing that without the dots,) is pretty easy. But there are SO many, and they all have their pros and cons. What I have learned, though, is that a social network is only as good as something that you have absolutely no control over: how many of your real friends and colleagues use it. Sure, you can join a social network, and "friend up" a bunch of people you don't know.

What is "organic" software?

mpm — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:37:14 +0000

I was perusing the program for a local "green" event, when I noticed a full page advertisement for Firefox, saying that it's software was "100% organic." I kind of chuckled. I thought, what does that really mean? For Firefox, it means, "open source, community-powered." And I realized that they had an interesting point.

Drupal Themeing, and other projects

mpm — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:51:47 +0000

I'm learning Drupal bit by bit - one of the first tasks was to learn how to make a new theme. It's one of those things which is actually fairly straightforward-seeming ... until you hit a snag. And then it's opaque. One thing I learned is that it is incredibly sensitive to typos. One space accidentally inserted between the "<?" and the "php" led to a completely blank page. Ah well. I'm certainly learning what mistakes can lead to what kinds of issues, which is good.

Going out on a limb

mpm — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:02:18 +0000

I'm going to go out on a really thin limb here, and feel free to saw it off in the comments. :-) If you haven't been to change.gov yet, you need to go. Now. I'll be here when you come back. There is little question that Obama was Presidential Candidate 2.0. And it's becoming increasigly clear that he'll be President 2.0. What made this possible? Of course, without his intelligence, and desire to be involving and inclusive, it wouldn't have happened. But there is no question that there is a technical aspect to what made this possible.

Cake vs. Symfony

mpm — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:47:35 +0000

In my new explorations of PHP web application development, it seemed a good idea to get a look at both CakePHP and Symfony. Both of them seem to be PHP's answer to Ruby on Rails. The approaches are similar and different to each other. I set up both on my laptop, and tried out some really simple app development.

Tidbits

mpm — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:30:43 +0000

One of the underlying stories of the 2008 election victory of Barack Obama is the really intelligent use of technology, in a way that will permanently change how campaigns are run in the future.

Open Source Hardware: can it be done?

It's the economy ...

mpm — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:22:16 +0000

As I said last week, today is my day to host the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants. I chose this as my question of the week: "Is your work changing because of the economy? How?

Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants ... Here! Monday!

mpm — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:30:15 +0000

Monday (the day before the election) I'm hosting the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants. My focus: is the economy changing the way you work, or the way you think about your work? In what ways? If you'd like to submit a post, do so by Saturday midnight.

Firefox add-ons to love

mpm — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:40:40 +0000

I'm in love with Firefox. I've actually been in love with Firefox since 3.0, when it seems like a few of the things that plagued it finally got ironed out.

OpenOffice.org goes Aqua!

mpm — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:05:18 +0000

As many of you know, I have been using OpenOffice.org, the free and open source office suite since before it was OpenOffice.org. That would be when it was Star Office. That was a long time ago. So I've seen it develop and change (and helped a tiny, tiny little bit along the way by submitting bugs.) The Apple OS has been the poor stepchild when it comes to OpenOffice.org for a long time. With Windows and Linux, there were native versions that were easy to install and use.

New community focus at MPower Open?

mpm — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:05:05 +0000

For a while, I've been watching MPower Open, the (not so) newly open sourced (but Windows-based) fundraising package. In general, I've been impressed by its feature set, and that they made the choice to go open source.

Drupal and WYSIWYG editors

mpm — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:06:01 +0000

I think that if I had to pick only one thing that would help people understand the character of Drupal, it would be the WYSIWYG editor that comes standard with an out-of-the-box Drupal installation. That would be NONE.

Nuggets of news from the open source world

mpm — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:38:52 +0000

This is old-ish news, but the acquisition of companies behind open source software by big behemoths continues with the acquisition of Jabber by Cisco.

Matt Asay makes some interesting points about the fact that proprietary vendors spend time and effort protecting their investments in their proprietary tools, rather than focusing effort on looking toward the future.

The joy of Drupal (and other tales)

mpm — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:44:33 +0000

I've been working with Drupal a fair bit over the last few weeks, with the ultimate goal to basically be able to really work with it to create sites. I converted my (very simple) consulting site to Drupal, without any bells and whistles. I'm working now on a site that needs some bells and whistles, like translated pages and a WYSIWYG editor (ah, the WYSIWYG editor thing in Drupal is going to get its own blog entry, I'm sure).

Build vs "Buy"

mpm — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:31:49 +0000

I keep being surprised by how frequently I hear clients tell me that a vendor has suggested they "build them a CMS," or by proposals from vendors that include custom building a CMS. I hear people suggesting building their own social networking website. I even occasionally still hear tell of organizations who want custom CRMs. The web software landscape has changed dramatically over the years. Five years ago, it was full of custom built systems of all sorts - and the "build vs. buy" decision was, I think, more difficult, because the available software to buy was fairly cruddy.

Next up ...

mpm — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 18:03:49 +0000

I used to spend most of most days hacking (mostly Perl) code. It had its ups and downs, although in retrospect, the downs weren't really about coding. I haven't done daily coding now for about 3 years, and I'm missing it, terribly. So ...

My tool is better than your tool...

mpm — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 20:04:24 +0000

Over the past year and a half, I've been fulfilling a definitely different role with nonprofit organizations than most times in the past. I've been an intermediary, rather than an implementor. In this role, it has been my task to provide advice for organizations around technology choice and vendor selection. Many times, I narrow down the technology options as a part of the RFP process. I do this based on my knowledge of the options out there, my own opinions about them, and, most importantly, the feature match.

NOSI and Aspiration join forces, yay!

mpm — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:35:11 +0000

I've been working with NOSI (the Nonprofit Open Source Initiative) for more than 5 years. In addition, I've worked with Aspiration a lot in the past few years as well. It is a great pleasure for me to announce that NOSI is becoming a project of Aspiration, and I am re-joining the board of Aspiration. I think the two organizations together will provide a really strong focus for advocacy and resources for open source development and use in the nonprofit sector. See the press release for more detail.

SaaS vs. Open Source

mpm — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:53:27 +0000

I just finished writing a post for the Idealware blog about choosing SaaS vs. Open source. I said in that post:
At one level, whether or not the software underneath the SaaS is open source is not relevant. You are not obtaining the software, and whether or not you can see the code, or modify it, is really not the key issue here.
And, at the level of most nonprofits choosing software, this is, in fact, correct.

Welcome to the new theme!

mpm — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:00:22 +0000

I changed my Word Press theme, mostly because I was getting a bit tired of the old one, and wanted something really simple. Also, it coincides with a new installation of Drupal for my consulting website, using the same basic template (called "Blueprint").

What are learning platforms?

mpm — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:11:04 +0000

Note: This blog entry was originally posted on Idealware's new community blog. I'm honored and happy to be contributing blog posts there. Nonprofits have become intimately familiar with Content Management Systems (CMS). Some, especially those that are very content/document heavy, have become familiar with Document Management Systems (DMS).

Find me in my "office"

mpm — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 11:59:34 +0000

NTEN has a great program, called "Office Hours", where folks can talk to people and get their burning questions asked about everything nonprofit technology. I volunteered to be the "expert" in residence for the "Program" track of Office Hours. The description: "Talk with Michelle about internal software systems - document and knowledge management, CRM, client management databases, intranets, etc." So, come join me. Fridays, 10:00am PT/1:00pm ET

Tidbits

mpm — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:51:43 +0000

Here are a few interesting tidbits that have come my way over the course of the last few days

There is a new online fundraising platform, founded by an ex-Convio person. It's called Kimbia, and it's got some interesting features, and seems to be focused mostly around creating campaigns. The interesting thing, too, is that their model is that they take a percentage of what you raise (5%.) No setup fees or anything else. That's an interesting model, and, if the software is decent, sounds like it could be a good option for some organizations.

Social Network Management Systems?

mpm — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:54:24 +0000

I have been thinking about the software tools we call "Management Systems" - like Content Management Systems, Document Management Systems, Learning Management Systems... I've also been playing a lot with an open source tool called Elgg, and have also played, in the past, with Crabgrass, another open source ... "SNMS"? What do these tools allow you to do? They allow you to create stand-alone social networks. Think a whitebox version of Ning, or Facebook.

Google Chrome

mpm — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:27:00 +0000

The hiatus is over with a short entry about Google Chrome, the new browser from Google that I learned about on the twitterverse while I was stopped at one rest stop or another. I can't test it, because my Mac that has a Windows virtual machine is packed. But I will say this: that doesn't matter. I won't be downloading it, or trying it, even when they release Mac or Linux versions. Why so curmudgeonly you ask? It is open source, after all.

Hiatus

mpm — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:30:51 +0000

As many of you know, I'm about to make a big move: to the left coast, to the big city of Oakland (or thereabouts). This is a good move for me, in many ways. In one particular way, I'm psyched to get to be in one of the hot spots of my field, and actually have a casual beverage with lots of colleagues I've gotten to know over the years, but have only seen once a year (or less often, even.) I'm driving cross country, leaving Friday, and arriving sometime during the weekend of the 6th and 7th of September. Taking a slow, leisurely drive.

Speaking of open social networks ...

mpm — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:13:34 +0000

I just joined identi.ca. identi.ca is a microblogging service based on an open source project, Laconica, and all of the updates are copyrighted by a Creative Commons (Attribution) license. You can log in using OpenID. All really great stuff. I imagine, too, because it's based on an open source platform, developers will begin to code in data portability (or have they already?) The documentation is a bit lacking, and it's clear that it's a very new project.

Tidbits

mpm — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:16:21 +0000

I love these tidbits blog posts. I come across a lot in my varied net wanderings, and people send me stuff, so it's a nice way to talk about some of it, without having to go into too much detail.

I was profiled on Linux.com. That's kinda fun! I "live the open source lifestyle." That must have been before the iPhone.

This blog is rated 8.2 (very good, they say) on Blogged.com.

WeAreMedia Project

mpm — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:58:49 +0000

Yet another great NTEN project is happening, spearheaded by Beth Kanter, to develop a Social Media toolkit for Nonprofits. It's called "WeAreMedia." I have been really slow on the uptake with this project (it started while I was on vacation, and I never caught up after I got back,) but I hope that I will be able to keep up, and participate more fully in it as it evolves and grows. The first set of modules, on the "Strategic Track" are already done. The next set of modules, that are more tool based (with case studies) are next to be developed. The project took a short break to catch its collective breath, and Beth has some thoughts and ideas that came out of that conference call. I'm excited about this project - it's gathering the knowledge and expertise of a great group of folks, and it will provide a free source of information and case studies so that nonprofits can best figure out how to step into the frothy waters of social networks. A note: Most people will notice that I have pretty much lost my curmudgeonly approach to social media. A year ago, I was bear-ish on Facebook, and said I wouldn't Twitter. Now, I tell my clients that they really have to think about a Facebook strategy, and that nonprofit staff can gain a lot from networks like Twitter. I'm up to 1,700+ updates on Twitter, and keeping up with my lifestream on FriendFeed is about as difficult as knowing where I'm moving to next. No, I didn't go soft in the head (well, some people might think so.) What has happened is basically a sea change in the landscape. Not only are Gen Y and Millenials engaged in these social networks, but a wider and broader range of people are. It's fairly clear to me that going forward, increasingly, social networks are a major way people are interacting on the web - and nonprofits need to understand how to engage their constituents given those changing realities. Of course, I've been a wiki fan since the very beginning, and I haven't lost the desire for true data portability, and open source alternatives to the current social networks. however, as you all know so well, I'm a realist.

My iPhone 3G

mpm — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:35:08 +0000

I once joined the "iPhone non-buyers" group on Facebook. I swore up and down I wouldn't get one. I said:
I will not be buying an iPhone until they sell an unlocked version that doesn’t need to be hacked to use third party applications.
Well, the iPhone 3G changed the equation, some. The iPhone 3G does have 3rd party apps, but they have to be vetted, etc. by Apple, which is a mixed bag.

What is cloud computing?

mpm — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:35:59 +0000

You've likely heard a lot about "cloud computing". And what's true is that the sales-talk about computing in the cloud certainly makes the conceptual issues behind it, honestly, well, cloudy. So I'm going to try and lay out the details of what cloud computing is, and how it's useful for nonprofit organizations.

Quick definition

Cloud computing is basically running applications on the web via "Software as a Service (SaaS)". That includes applications from Google Documents, to Salesforce.com, to Gliffy.com, (the service I used to create that graphic.) It also includes applications that you might develop (or have developed) that are hosted outside your network. That's really all it is - there isn't anything fancy about it. It still requires the hardware and operating systems, and databases that more traditional applications that are inside your network require, but, generally, you hand off that responsibility to the folks that host your application, and access the application through the internet.

Advantages to cloud computing

The basic advantages are that you don't have to maintain infrastructure for applications, saving you labor costs, as well as electricity costs. Also, you can access the applications anywhere you go.

Disadvantages to cloud computing

Depending on the vendor and the application, you are dependent on them to keep the application up and your data intact. Changes in the application happen without your knowledge or consent. Your data is not directly in your hands, but in the hands of a third party. You are dependent on your internet connection - which could be a problem for mission-critical applications.

What makes it possible

Cloud computing is made possible and easier by two trends, two that have happened closely in parallel, one that is relatively recent: High bandwidth to the curb and massive data centers.

High bandwidth to your home or office is a necessary requirement to cloud computing. Cloud computing just doesn't make any sense, or work in any reasonable way without it (have you ever tried to use Gmail on dial up?) As the bandwidth available increases (via FiOS, and other methods) cloud computing will get even more attractive to organizations and people.

Huge data centers are being thrown up everywhere, and more and more companies are getting into the business of providing hosting for SaaS developers. Companies such as Amazon are creating massive grid storage and computing services for applications in the cloud.

What makes it usable

Newer applications are using AJAX and Flash, to give the kinds of functionalities we've come to expect with desktop applications - so it's just like having a desktop application with our data - except it's "in the cloud" not on our desk. As the limitations of both AJAX and Flash are overcome (and as both develop further) expect even more usability for online applications. And, further, efforts like Adobe AIR, and Microsoft Silverlight, are bringing full-fledged desktop application functionality to applications in the cloud.

What you should do

Make an assessment - will using this online tool really save money or time, or facilitate collaboration in ways that is not possible with local apps?

Always read the privacy policy - if you have sensitive data, this might be a deal-breaker

Always maintain your own backups. If the provider goes belly up with your data, you're toast.

Make sure access is secure. Read up on the security of the application

How do you keep up?

mpm — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 21:59:28 +0000

I have been thinking for the last few days about what it means to "keep up" with the technology field, particularly 'net technology. I've been helping a client hire a temporary project manager, and so in the interview process one of the questions I ask is how people keep up with change in the field. In some ways, I have been blessed with the gift of osmosis. I'm a fantastic book learner, which means I'm a great blog/twitter learner, too. Also, one of the things I do is blog - so I regularly have to process and digest information to write decent blog posts.

Nonprofit Technology Link Love

mpm — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:02:29 +0000

Here are posts from a small sampling of bloggers I regularly read:

Holly Ross shows her geek cred in a great post about DNS. I love Holly's approach to technology.

Amy Sample Ward let's us know how to give green.

Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants

mpm — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:47:37 +0000

This week, it is my pleasure to host the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants. This week, I asked the question: What is the biggest mistake a nonprofit can make with their website. I got some interesting answers:

Ken, at the Nonprofit Consulting Blog, talks about transparency, and how it's a big mistake not to be transparent.

Tidbits

mpm — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 10:39:41 +0000

Between the Connection Cafe, and the new name for their fundraising database: Common Ground (formerly known as Aikido,) I have to admit that I'm beginning to think of coffee, when I think of Convio. Is this a bad thing?

Myspace is going with OpenID! That's a great step.

The "Open Source Software is Free" myth

mpm — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:31:13 +0000

I had a startling realization a few days ago.

My Theory of Practice

mpm — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:08:06 +0000

I finally had the reason to begin to more completely articulate my theory of practice. My theory of practice is different than my consulting philosophy. They certainly are consistent with each other, but they are distinct. A theory of practice, in my mind, outlines the methods and ideals behind how I get work done with clients. This theory includes the following elements that I think are key to my work:

Listening.

MPower Open keeps moving forward

mpm — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:40:05 +0000

This is old news, but I've been busy. What's kind of funny is that I was quoted on the press release, which was out 3 weeks ago or so, but it's taken me this long to blog it. Bad Blogger! (I think my clients thank me for being a bad blogger.) So what's the news? MPower Open is now on Sourceforge, they released their product under the GPL v3. These are good steps forward.

What software freedom means to me

mpm — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:19:28 +0000

I got some interesting comments on the last post about Linux desktops. I realize that I haven't talked about this in a while, and I'm not sure I've actually ever articulated this completely on this blog. So here goes. I got involved in Linux a long time ago.

Linux desktops?

mpm — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:37:44 +0000

I'm doing a webinar on Linux Desktops next month, and it's making me think a lot about my own experience using Linux on the desktop, and where I think things are going. If you've read this blog for a while, you've heard my various sagas around using Linux on the desktop. I migrated to making it my primary desktop about a year ago.

NPTECH Punk

mpm — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:43:09 +0000

Beth, of course, suggested this, and I'm jumping on her bandwagon. I realized, in being introduced to Edupunk, that I have been doing it for, oh, almost 20 years now. In 1989, I joined the faculty of Hampshire College (and stayed for 10 years). Hampshire's motto is "Non Satis Scire" - to know is not enough.

Frackin' Brilliant

mpm — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:31:38 +0000

That's what I said to Tompkins Spann, of Convio, when he told me last week (after I duly signed the requisite NDA) that Convio was going into the donor database business by building an app on top of Salesforce.com. Actually, I didn't use the Battlestar Galactica expletive, I used the one you're more familiar with.

Tidbits

mpm — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 20:30:35 +0000

The Tides Foundation is accepting applications for the 2008 Antonio Pizzigati prize, a $10,000 annual award for outstanding contributions to software in the public interest. The competition, judged by a panel of national leaders in public interest computing, is now entering its third year. The application deadline for this year’s prize: September 1, 2008.

What is private? What is public?

mpm — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:45:39 +0000

Today, someone on the progressive exchange list asked about a tool called Rapleaf. A story about Rapleaf in Clickz (a newsletter for online marketers) says this:
Rapleaf allows you to quickly and inexpensively find out the social networking footprint of those you're marketing to. Just send the company your e-mail list and tell it what social networking sites those on your list are using, their demographics, the numbers of friends they have, how many widgets they're using, even their interests. Rapleaf digs into the usual social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, etc.), as well as newsgroups, commerce sites (like Amazon), review sites, forums, and news groups, and even searches the general Web to find out where your people are and what they're doing online.
An interesting conversation ensued on the list - with some arguing that this was a problematic thing. I actually thought this could be quite useful for organizations to figure out how to allocate sparse resources in the Web 2.0 space. But that's not the point of this post. I realized that one of the most important things that we can do is educate the organizations we work with (as well as individuals) about privacy issues and data. When is data public? When is it private? How do we know? How can we assure privacy? It is important to understand that Rapleaf is just gathering public information on people, based on their email addresses. It is an inevitable result of our desire for social networks, as well as our desire for information to be portable (like in RSS feeds.) What's important is that we understand what is actually public, and what isn't, and how to keep what we want to be private, really private.

How's yer CMS?

mpm — Thu, 29 May 2008 18:39:19 +0000

NTEN just released their CMS satisfaction survey. There is some great food for thought, although in some ways, the results aren't so surprising. Most people (67%) want an easy to use interface. Most people (57%) also want ongoing support. The single largest CMS used was Drupal, at 15%, followed by Plone and Joomla (approx 8% each.) Wordpress (which was not originally in the survey, they parsed this data out from the "other" category) was at 2%.

Blackbaud buys Kintera

mpm — Thu, 29 May 2008 18:06:43 +0000

In retrospect, this probably was inevitable. And I'm sure that the very low stock price of Kintera's certainly made a buyout of it by Blackbaud easier. Today, Blackbaud announced the acquisition of Kintera. So, there is now one less nonprofit CRM vendor to choose from, and Blackbaud keeps getting bigger. But will it get better as a result? Hard to know.

Google Health launches ... and it's not HIPAA compliant

mpm — Tue, 20 May 2008 09:10:01 +0000

Yesterday, the big news is that Google Health launched. Google says:
"Google Health aims to solve an urgent need that dovetails with our overall mission of organizing patient information and making it accessible and useful. Through our health offering, our users will be empowered to collect, store, and manage their own medical records online."
Sounds pretty interesting, but hold on a second. Before you sign up, read the privacy policy carefully.

Tidbits

mpm — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:58:24 +0000

There are some really interesting tidbits of stuff out there. Here are a few: The blog at the Nonprofit Times, called "Don't Tell the Donor" has a very interesting entry on the flurry of benchmarking studies that came out recently. It's titled "Benchmarking With a Warped Stick." It takes aim at Convio's recent benchmarking study.

It's been a while...

mpm — Tue, 13 May 2008 00:25:48 +0000

As you've probably noticed, I haven't been blogging a whole lot lately. I've been pretty busy with a variety of projects. I'll be on hiatus for about another week, and will have some long awaited new FOSS tools, as well as other posts that have been brewing for a while.

Rate your CMS!

mpm — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:05:30 +0000

NTEN is doing some great work getting information about the use of different kinds of tools in the sector, and how people are using them. and how they like them. They are doing a CMS satisfaction survey, and the more info that they get, the better. So go rate your CMS!

Free and Open Source Tool #16: CiviCRM

mpm — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:10:42 +0000

In honor of the webinar that is happening in a couple of weeks, I figured I'd talk a bit about CiviCRM. CiviCRM is a nonprofit-focused open source tool, centered around membership, fundraising, events and such. CiviCRM was one of the first (of a now growing number) of nonprofit-focused open source tools.

Tidbits

mpm — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 22:00:31 +0000

I guess because I'm a blogger, I get these interesting tidbits in my mailbox. I don't always have a lot of time to investigate them, or figure out if they are useful, but I do like to not completely ignore the ones that look interesting. I do hope folks will comment if they know something about these, or have an opinion.

ReviewBasics is a collaborative editing and reviewing tool.

Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants

mpm — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:39:01 +0000

I like hosting the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants. Mostly, because I get to read blogs by people that aren't on my list of feeds I read regularly.

Free and open source tool #15: MPower Open CRM

mpm — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 19:31:48 +0000

I am so far behind, it's not funny. I've got to catch up. My goal is to catch up by the end of this month, so that I'll still be on track to make it to 100 free and open source tools by December. This post gives me the chance to finally write the very belated post on MPower I've been meaning to write since I got back from NTC.
MPower is not a new product. It's been around for quite a while, and has a solid user base. It is an enterprise-class client/server CRM, and has the kind of features you see in such packages as Blackbaud's Raiser's Edge. What's new about MPower is that it has very recently been released as open source. I had a great sit-down with Randy McCabe, CEO and Leo D'Angelo (CTO) of MPower at NTC. I heard a lot about the product, and their plans, and I was impressed with their thinking, and with the direction they are heading. Their basic idea makes a lot of sense to me, and it clearly is an idea that lots of companies that release open source products are thinking: don't increase revenue by trying to milk as many current customers as possible (which is, frankly, the goal of many proprietary software vendors, especially those with very niche packages without much potential for growth in customer base,) broaden the number of customers out there greatly by making barrier to entry low. They expect to make up the difference in revenue that they got from licenses from services sold to a greater number of organizations that would not have been customers otherwise. Lots of open source companies (RedHat, MySQL AB, Novell, Alfresco, SugarCRM, Canonical) are doing similar things. For you purists: don't get all upset. Yes, it's a Windows product. Yes, it's written in .NET and C#. Yes, it requires MSSQL server. So what? It's open source, and it is yet another option for organizations - and it is an open source replacement for Raiser's Edge. How cool is that? And it's open source - so someone who really cares can port it to work with MySQL, etc. And, it's got completely open APIs. All of that said, there are a few things I hope that they consider. I hope that they decide to go with an OSI approved license (they are currently using their own, which is a modification of the Apache license. Having looked at it, it's a fine license, but it would help them if they used one that is known already, like the GPL, or LGPL, etc.) They also have, at this point, no community. They have a partner program, which is like a lot of partner programs - you have to be vetted, yadda yadda. Not at all in alignment with the open source ethic. They need to open their doors, make installing MPower easy (it's not, at this point) and set up some community functions to help grow a community around the product, which will help it grow, and really help to begin to provide the avenues for developers to get involved, and continue to help build the product. I'll be following MPower closely over the next months and years. I have high hopes for it. And Blackbaud may well be shaking in their boots. Here's some other coverage:

Podcast from the Nonprofit Tech Blog

Post from Josiah Richie

Video Interview of Randy McCabe

I'm hosting the carnival next week

mpm — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:17:18 +0000

(Photo by frankienose) I'm hosting the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants here, next week. So send in your best of the week!

Twitter and Nonprofits

mpm — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:21:40 +0000

This actually was a post to the Progressive Exchange discussion list. I love twitter, which in some ways surprises me, and in some ways doesn't. It provides for me a sense of community, and a sense of what people I know and care about things I care about are talking about (in a certain realm, on other realms, not so much).

News in open source and open standards

mpm — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 19:50:01 +0000

Here's a few interesting tidbits gleaned from the net:

It appears that Microsoft's bid to get Office Open XML, their new office standard did get through ISO. Interestingly enough, lots of developing world countries voted against it.

Michelle, the consultant

mpm — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:50:58 +0000

Someone mentioned to me that from what I write on my blog, she wouldn't know what it is that I actually do in my consulting work. I kinda thought that was surprising, but in thinking about what I write, I realize that people could get the wrong idea (or, more accurately, fail to get the right idea.) And, I guess truthfully, the blurb on my consulting site is kinda dry. Gotta work on that. So, what do I do? I think of myself in these terms: I educate, facilitate, mediate, and problem-solve.

Free and Open Source tool #14: SugarCRM

mpm — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:08:18 +0000

Since I've been covering CRMs for the webinar today, I figured I'd switch categories on my free and open source software list. So for the next few tools, I'll be describing CRMs (Constituent/Contact/Community/Customer Relationship Management). The first one is one that I've been using recently for my consulting business - SugarCRM. Unlike CiviCRM, which is targeted to nonprofits, SugarCRM is a system targeted toward sales in for-profit companies. It has three versions: Enterprise, Professional, and Community Edition. That's the one I've been using. They also have a newer on-demand version (that is, software as a service, like salesforce.) I've been hearing good things about SugarCRM from organizations that use it. It also gets kudos from NTEN's satisfaction survey (it came in third, after CiviCRM and Salesforce.) Anyway, SugarCRM is basically "enterprise class" CRM, and is worth a look.

How to choose a CRM

mpm — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:30:53 +0000

I'll be doing a webinar on open source CRMs tomorrow. In the process of going deep into those CRMs, I've been thinking about how nonprofits might choose CRMs to begin with.

Post-NTC Ramblings

mpm — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:42:02 +0000

It was a great week. I got to see lots of people that I only see once a year (or even less often,) I got to meet a lot of new people, I had interesting and deep conversations, and I got to hear a lot about what people are thinking about the nonprofit technology field. I've got several posts on tap about specific aspects of the conference, or specific products and such that I'd come across during my time at NTC last week, so stick around. I want to give huge props to Holly and all of the NTEN crew for putting on a fabulous conference.

News from NTC '08

mpm — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:35:23 +0000

I've been having a great time here at NTC - running into lots of folks I'm happy to see again, and meet, learning about new things, being involved. I don't have lots of leisure to go into detail about what's happening here, but I thought I'd highlight a few things, and then when I get back home, and have time for it all to digest, I'll write in much more detail.

MPower Open, an enterprise CRM, is both open source, and has great open APIs.

On my way to NTC

mpm — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:21:28 +0000

Tomorrow, I step off the plane in New Orleans, to go to the Nonprofit Technology Conference, and see folks I only get to see once a year, meet new people, chat and hang out with people I've been emailing/blog commenting/twittering, etc. I'm looking forward to it. I'm on the Evaluating Open Source panel, with Laura Quinn and Catherine Lane, which should be great.

If it's good enough for the Navy ...

mpm — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:33:42 +0000

In a surprising move, the US Navy will stop buying proprietary hardware and software, and only buy open systems.
“The days of proprietary technology must come to an end,” he said. “We will no longer accept systems that couple hardware, software and data.”

Reflection and Evaluation

mpm — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 11:27:53 +0000

Michele Martin, one of my fave bloggers, has a great post today on Reflective Practice.

Free and Open Source Tool #13: Flock

mpm — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 21:41:22 +0000

I'm running behind, so I need to catch up in the next week or so. I'm still on internet clients, believe it or not, and still have some to go. Today, I'm talking about Flock. Flock is the "social browser." For bookmarking, it uses your del.icio.us account. It can bring in your photos (and the photos of your contacts) from flickr. It can keep track of your Twitter friends, etc. You can also use it as a blog editor, which I am going to start trying out. It's amazingly good.

Frustrations

mpm — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 21:41:43 +0000

As some of you who follow me on Twitter know, I ran into frustrations a few days ago with WPA. In Kubuntu, the distribution of Ubuntu I had installed, the WPA-enabled Network Manager isn't installed by default (or at least it seemed not to have been installed when I did it - could have been my fault.) I knew that I should do it at some point, but I hadn't encountered a WPA network until last week, so I hadn't bothered.

Talking at the Politics Online Conference

mpm — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 11:17:22 +0000

Somehow, given that tomorrow is such a big day in the political realm, it seems quite appropriate that I'm headed down to DC to give a talk at the Politics Online Conference. It's a conference that is an event of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. I've never been - online politics has never really been my focus. But I'm quite looking forward to it.

Why sometimes eating your own dogfood makes you want to throw up!

mpm — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:26:59 +0000

OK, so we all know that I have been eating my own dogfood (that is, using Linux on the desktop) for a while now. I even decided not to buy Leopard for my Mac Mini. And, for the most part, I've been happy. I've been able to do everything I need to do, and do it well. But there have been a few snags along this road, and I hit a very big one yesterday. I got this brand new, wonderful LCD monitor - 22", high contrast, 1680x1050 resolution - I was happy. I thought I'd be a pig in sh*t - I have been living with an ancient, ancient 15" LCD with dying pixels for a while. But Nooooooooo.

Free and open source tool #12: Miro

mpm — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:13:19 +0000

Miro used to be called "Democracy Player". Miro is basically a video player, which can recognize RSS feeds, and automatically download videos. There are channels for everything. PBS has quite a number, as do various and sundry video podcasters. I get Democracy Now, ABC politics, the Webb Alert (a daily geek news headlines show,) Bill Moyers Journal, and lots of others. It can download videos via Bittorrent as well. You can search YouTube, Google video or about 10 other video sites, and make those searches a new channel. It's a pretty amazing tool. And it makes disseminating your organizational videos easy as well. It's cross-platform (available on all platforms) and works really well (the old player was a bit buggy, but those have been really smoothed out, of late.) It is, I imagine, what the future of television will be.

No more custom CMS!

mpm — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 09:57:07 +0000

This is a rant. And it is a rant on behalf of the hundreds (thousands?) of nonprofit organizations whose website is stuck behind a custom CMS - one that was written by some web development shop or another, and migration off of that custom CMS is going to be a nightmare. As the author of a custom CMS (it did have the advantage that it was released as open source, but it never caught on, so it still counts as custom) I know what it is like to put my heart and soul (and time) into a CMS, and want my clients to get what they want.

Free and Open Source Tool #11: Azureus

mpm — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:22:27 +0000

Azureus (now called Azureus Vuze) is the best bittorrent client I have ever used. It's quite amazing. It's got a lot under the hood. Way more than I could even talk about intelligently. But that is great - if you know your stuff, you can get a lot of performance out of Azureus.

Tidbits

mpm — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:29:33 +0000

These are tidbits of things I've gotten recently from vendors, or gotten via feeds or twitter.

Kintera opens a Developers Challenge. Developers who code solutions that integrate with Kintera using their open API platform, Connect, can win $15,000 or $5,000 (not the $25 K their big logo seems to suggest - that's just the total they will award.) But first, of course, you must be "verified" as a Kintera Con

An interesting call from danah boyd

mpm — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 10:26:47 +0000

Those of you steeped deeply in Web 2.0 know danah boyd. She's a brilliant academic who studies social networks.

Free and open source tool #10: Filezilla

mpm — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 20:55:24 +0000

I decided that most of the tools I've been talking about so far (except WordPress and Joomla) are internet clients for one type of protocol or another. I figured I'd keep on this track for a while - there's lots to talk about. Next up, Filezilla. I've used more FTP clients in my time than I can even begin to remember, from command-line ftp, to WS-FTP, and lots and lots of others (I have this memory of a really old, clunky FTP client for Mac OS 7 or something that I was using a lot, when all filesharing was via FTP.) Sometimes, I wish I had something like Transmit for Linux - which is a Mac OS X client, and the slickest, most feature rich FTP client on the planet (but, sadly, not free in any sense of the word.) No, it's not slick, but Filezilla does the job nicely. It has shortcuts for all of your servers, has nice drag and drop for moving files around, allows you to do all sorts of remote actions on files, etc. It handles FTP, SFTP and FTP over SSL/TLS. I use it all the time, and I really like it. I do think that it's probably the best GUI FOSS ftp client for Linux there is. Oh, and there is a Windows version, too.

Data Portability update

mpm — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:05:43 +0000

If you're not so connected either to the "twitterverse" or the web industry, you probably haven't heard a lot about the buzz that is currently happening around the issue of data portability, and the dataportability.org organization and effort.

Free and open source tool #9 : Pidgin

mpm — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:14:20 +0000

While I'm on the subject of chat, I figured I could talk about Pidgin. Pidgin is a multiprotocol IM (Instant Messenger) client. It can handle quite the long list of chat protocols: AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, MySpaceIM, QQ, SILC , SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo!, Zephyr. A number of these I've never heard of. I don't use it for IRC (see last post,) but I do use it for AIM, GTalk, MSN, ICQ and Yahoo messenger (yes, I have accounts using all of those protocols.

Free and open source tool #8:XChat

mpm — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:41:31 +0000

This is, really a post both about a tool (XChat) and about IRC (Internet Relay Chat.) XChat is one of quite a few IRC clients. XChat is available for both Windows and Linux. There is a port of XChat called XChat-Aqua, that works natively on Mac OS X. IRC is an incredibly useful tool. It is basically group synchronous chat.

New tools

mpm — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 10:23:25 +0000

Last week, I spent too much time watching demos from DEMO, which is this twice yearly event that showcases the most bleeding edge internet technology.

Free and open source tool #7: Firefox

mpm — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:18:33 +0000

This almost feels like cheating, talking about Firefox. Firefox, is, of course, the FOSS application that is on more desktops than all the others, combined. Although among browsers, its market share is still way behind IE - but that's mostly, of course, because IE is the default browser for every windows machine. Firefox is arguably the best web browser there is. It is certainly better and more secure than IE. What makes it even more powerful, is that there are tons of add-ons that make it even better.

The search for good web conferencing, take 2

mpm — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 09:18:45 +0000

Back in August, I did a review of web conferencing tools, with a decidedly unusual slant - as a presenter, I had to be able to share my Linux desktop. It was, perhaps an odd perspective, but in any event, I figured it was time to revisit this, and review what I've found. Earlier, I'd found that the only tools that would work with presenters using Linux were ReadyTalk and WebHuddle.

What I'm up to these days

mpm — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:59:31 +0000

As you might have noticed, my blogging has diminished a bit. It's because, basically, I am about as busy as I've been in a very long time. It feels quite good, actually. And I have lots of thoughts about what I'm doing. I'm spending about 1/2 of my time being Coordinator of NOSI. As you've probably seen, we've been pretty busy lately.

Free and open source tool #6: Joomla!

mpm — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 20:09:27 +0000

I don't exactly know where the exclamation point came from, but if you want a scarily easy CMS to install, Joomla is a place to start. Like any powerful CMS, though, there is quite the learning curve in order to get a site up and running. But at least the first technical hurdle to jump over is a small one. Joomla is growing fast. They just released version 1.5, which, I must say, rocks. I'll be migrating my main consulting site over to it quite soon.

Free and open source tool #5: WordPress

mpm — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:56:21 +0000

It seems like a good day to talk about WordPress. Why? Automattic, the makers of WordPress, and WordPress.com, just got a big chunk of "series B" funding.

Free and open source tools #1 - #100

mpm — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 23:03:09 +0000

I just though I'd take a brief pause to explain my criteria for these 100 tools that I'll be covering this year.

Free and open source tool #4: GIMP

mpm — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:51:19 +0000

GIMP stands for Gnu Image Manipulation Program. I've come to depend on it, first because I couldn't justify paying for a Photoshop upgrade when I moved to an Intel Mac. Now, it's one of a very few choices that work on Linux - and it's the best by far. GIMP is a very full-featured image manipulation program. Just about all of what Photoshop does, it does. I'm not a designer or photographic expert, but it's a pretty amazing program.

This week in FOSS

mpm — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:48:06 +0000

Sun Microsystems buys MySQL AB for $1 Billion (yes, that's ONE BILLION DOLLARS)

Acquia (a Drupal company) gets a large chunk of change (no, actually that was last month in FOSS, but it's part of the picture.)

OpenAds, an open source ad server (very cool) just go

So where is open source in the nptech ecosystem?

mpm — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 14:18:57 +0000

I've had a few interesting things happen lately which is making me wonder about what's happening with open source, and the perceptions of open source in the nonprofit sector. As you know, NOSI is doing a survey on the use of FOSS in the nonprofit sector. It's been quite slow - we have only gotten about 85 responses (so please, please, if you haven't yet, fill it out.) I know that surveys only get small subsets of the communities they are trying to assess.

Free and open source tool #3: Dokuwiki

mpm — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:34:54 +0000

I have become a fan, nay, a devotee of DokuWiki. I've always liked wikis, and I have used MediaWiki a lot in the past, and I do like it. Dokuwiki is different in a number of ways, most primarily in that it is one of the wiki systems that stores things in files, not databases. This means that it is easier to back up and migrate, but doesn't scale well. Dokuwiki was designed for small scale installations, primarily documentation and such. The one feature that makes my day: draft autosave! I love it!

Update on social network portability

mpm — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 14:16:41 +0000

Last week, I covered the Richard Scoble dust-up. Thanks to twitter (hat tip to marshallk), I learned about today's big news: Google, Plaxo and Facebook joined the Data Portability working group.

Please take the NOSI survey

mpm — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:35:26 +0000

In my work with NOSI (the Nonprofit Open Source Initiative,) I've become really interested in how FOSS is used in nonprofit organizations. I think this is data we need to know, so that we can understand better what gaps are preset, and what we can do to fill those gaps. This is the first of an annual survey, and we'll be releasing a report next month with the results of the survey. It will take about 5-10 minutes to fill out.

Another good reason for nonprofits to use FOSS

mpm — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 11:34:11 +0000

This is an amazing example of the kinds of flexibility that is difficult or impossible to get with proprietary software. Miro, the free and open source media player, has released a Firefox plugin, which automatically inserts their affiliate code when you buy something from Amazon.

Free and open source tool #2: Limesurvey

mpm — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:03:12 +0000

I am in the process of writing a survey for NOSI, which you will hear all about next week. I had originally done the survey in Surveymonkey, which is a slick on-line survey tool. But, a very nice soul at MayFirst/people-link, where we house the NOSI site, set up Limesurvey for us, so we're using that. Limesurvey is actually quite powerful.

It's my social graph, darn it!

mpm — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 18:28:36 +0000

Some interesting things are happening in Web2.0 land. There has been quite the dustup, started by Facebook kicking Richard Scoble off, because he'd violated the Facebook terms of service. As a result, Scoble joined the group dataportability.org, which I've been monitoring for a few months now. Why did Scoble get booted (he has since been reinstated)?

Free and open source tool #1: Thunderbird

mpm — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:41:08 +0000

Before the holidays, I promised that I'd do 100 posts this year on free and open source tools. So, I'm starting with Mozilla Thunderbird. I use it every day, nay, almost every waking minute, since email is such a critical beast. Generally, Thunderbird falls into the category of free and open source software that "just works." It's easy to set up accounts, move mail around, and do sophisticated filtering of mail, and such.

Last minute tidbits

mpm — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 19:05:10 +0000

This will be my last post of 2007 - I'm taking some days off from work and blogging, and won't return until the beginning of the year. First, links for the day:

High Tech Trash - it's an in depth photo essay and interactive feature on the National Geographic website.

The power of open source VOIP

mpm — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 12:56:42 +0000

Today seems to be Asterisk day. What is Asterisk, you ask? Asterisk is the open source PBX application that works by using VOIP. It rocks. I wrote a case study about it in the NOSI primer - it can allow for really great flexibility in building phone systems. And today, I learned about two online tools written with Asterisk, which would have been impossible a few years ago. Committee Caller seems like an amazing tool.

Web 2.0 Experiments, snafus and stumbles

mpm — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 22:25:25 +0000

I seem to have lost my head. Really. I was all curmudgeonly until last week, when I started tweeting and got into Spock. You know why I started to twitter. Ages and ages ago, when Spock was still in private beta, I got an invite, and used it. I was underwhelmed, and forgot about it.

What was it, the question mark?

mpm — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 13:12:15 +0000

I feel misunderstood. Earlier this week, I wrote a post on about the NTEN CRM satisfaction survey.

Movable Type goes Open Source

mpm — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:56:12 +0000

This is old news, sort of. A ways back, Six Apart promised that it would open source MovableType, their flagship software product, and the software that underlies their TypePad service. Yesterday, they finally released it. This blog (and my personal blog) were on TypePad for years, and I rather like the MoveableType interface and feature set.

Open Source CRMs - people like them?

mpm — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 17:49:01 +0000

I had a good look at NTEN's CRM Satisfaction Survey (yippee for data!), and although the sample sizes were small, and not representative of the nonprofit sector as a whole, the people surveyed seemed to like the open source tools available. There were 6 open source (or sort of open source) tools that showed up on this survey.

LinkedIn suits up

mpm — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:34:57 +0000

LinkedIn, the serious MBA wielding brother to the Facebook fratboy and the MySpace rockergrrl, is really putting on the suit now. They've included some new features like a new personal homepage with things like "Company Updates" - news about your company, and other business-friendly features.

Why I'm twittering

mpm — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:19:28 +0000

Yes, it's hard to believe. I succumbed. I have said many times that I wouldn't Twitter. I've critiqued Twitter and social networks in general. So what's the story? Michelle twittering? There are a number of factors at work.

Open content business models

mpm — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 07:44:30 +0000

I'm at the Open Translation event, and we've just had a great session on open content business models. It was very useful, and interesting, and gave me lots of food for thought. I've been interested in issues of how we sustain open content for a long while.

What I'm learning

mpm — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 10:23:01 +0000

It's been mostly fun so far at the Open Translation event here in Zagreb. I'll leave the complaining about Croatian food and other things to my personal blog, when I get the time. The event itself has been fab. As one of those monolingual American types, I'm learning a huge amount about what it takes to create open content in different languages. It is actually pretty mind-boggling.

Wiki Syntax madness

mpm — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:06:09 +0000

As most people deeply imbedded in Web 2.0, I am an avid Wiki user. I have become a complete devotee of Dokuwiki, which I use locally on my laptop, for my to do lists, notes, etc. I love it because it's really easy to set up and back up (it's all files, not in a database,) and it's has draft autosaves (yay!). I have two other wikis (a public and private wiki) that are in Mediawiki, on my web host.

Why I won't be buying a Kindle

mpm — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 11:11:04 +0000

I think I might need a new blog category: why I won't be buying ... First Leopard, now, Kindle. Kindle, at first blush, sounds pretty cool. I've been waiting for devices using the e-ink technology for a while now.

On my way to Zagreb!

mpm — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 18:41:08 +0000

I'm going to Zagreb, Croatia to be at Aspiration's Open Translation event. I'm really looking forward to it. It will be my first international open source event, and it's an amazingly interesting topic. So I am so excited to be going. I have been tasked to be "use case librarian" which is very cool, since I am a real fan of use cases. I'll be posting pics to flickr, for sure!

Open source your Open Social Apps?

mpm — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:30:45 +0000

Beth's wonderful post about a decision tree for whether or not an organization should get into the social networking business had a link to a comment about OpenSocial.

Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants

mpm — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:37:26 +0000

Today, it's my turn to host the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants.

Linux Desktop Migration

mpm — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:02:35 +0000

Linux has proven itself as a server platform - no one really questions it. A large chunk (the majority?) of nonprofits already use Linux server-side - either in-house, or if not, their web host usually does. But can it really be a desktop platform for nonprofit organizations? Linux on the desktop has come quite far, in just a few years. And recently, there is increasing evidence to suggest that it can, indeed in large part, replace Windows on the desktop. Why should it?

Facebook Ad Platform

mpm — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 13:24:36 +0000

It always takes me a bit to digest new Web 2.0 news, so I'm just now blogging about last week's news that Facebook launched a new ad platform. The platform contains two parts, which I'll talk about individually. It's an interesting time, and there is a good question - is this something nonprofits should jump on? The first part of the package is Facebook Fan Pages. A company (or organization, or individual) can set up a public page (so it does not require a Facebook account to see it).

The evolution of web hosting

mpm — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:21:25 +0000

It seems like not so long ago that I helped an organization build a Linux email and web server, that we plugged into a college internet connection, so that they could begin to take advantage of the wonders of the internet. It was, at the time, the only affordable way to do it - there was no broadband, and a T1 was far outside of the realm of affordability for nonprofits. I even remember writing a grant to some federal agency that probably no longer exists to help create a local infrastructure to get nonprofits online. When was that?

Open Social != Open Data

mpm — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:33:05 +0000

As the hype (which, I agree I have contributed to) around OpenSocial dies down, the reality behind OpenSocial becomes clear. Tim O'Reilly has a bang-on post about the fact that OpenSocial does not mean that users can have data portability. Apparently, the data stays in the container (the social network site) and probably can't move beyond it.

Online Courses

mpm — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:32:43 +0000

I've been thinking a lot about giving online courses in the use of open source software. That was one of the big reasons I had been looking for good web conferencing a while back (I'm still looking...) I'm starting my foray into this territory by giving a free course in the database management system, PostgreSQL.

Open Social Networks

mpm — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 23:07:16 +0000

As I've mentioned before, there has been a lot of thought and interest in the issue of opening up social networks, outside of what has been, until last week, totally closed silos. I linked to a great thought piece a while back on opening up the social graph (that is, your network of friends.) Jon Stahl pointed me to a great article, also about opening up the social graph.

More good news from Google: Open Handset Alliance

mpm — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 15:16:26 +0000

This isn't actually, nptech news, per se, but it's good news for nonprofits: Google, along with other partners, such as T-Mobile, Qualcomm, and others, have created an alliance called the Open Handset Alliance, and a phone operating system called Android, which will put open source software on mobile phones. This is big. This means that anyone can hack their phones - and a raft of developers can create really interesting kinds of software for phones.

What OpenSocial Means

mpm — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 11:12:31 +0000

The buzz of the blogosphere is the announcement of Google's OpenSocial. I thought that it would be a good idea to describe what it is, and what it might mean for the nonprofit sector. Marc Andreessen, who is, of late, connected to Ning, has a great blog entry with details. OpenSocial is a set of APIs. It's aimed primarily at developers.

Why I won't be buying Leopard

mpm — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 12:29:54 +0000

As many of you know, Apple's newest version of the Mac OS, 10.5, shipped just a few days ago. I have been an Apple user since 1980, and a Macintosh owner since 1987. I have owned about a dozen Macintosh computers (or clones) over the course of 20 years. I still own a Mac mini, which I expect will be my last Macintosh, and I won't be upgrading that Mac mini to Leopard. Those of you who are loyal Mac users are gasping. I'd gasp if I read this a couple of years ago.

Satellite Internet gets the boot

mpm — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 10:03:06 +0000

Finally, I have real broadband. We moved last weekend to a town that has actual real cable high speed internet. Unfortunately, it is the apparently increasingly dastardly Comcast, but it is so way much better than satellite by Hughesnet, that I can't really find it in myself to complain. Traffic is flying at four plus times the speed, I can actually do remote shell sessions that aren't painful. I can Skype again (once I figure out how to use my USB headset on Linux.) I have to admit to being a very happy camper.

Making a better, more findable blog

mpm — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:50:43 +0000

I've gotten some nice kudos for my blog in the past few days, and it feels nice to know that people read the blog, and get something out of it. I want to make the blog better, and also, more findable.

Book Reviews

mpm — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 17:55:29 +0000

I read three books recently that I thought would be worth reviewing here. They fall into that category of "business" books that I basically never read.

Platforms break open, part II

mpm — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:50:14 +0000

The dust is settling. I looked over Allan Benamer's post on the Convio and Kintera initiatives, I looked harder at the Convio Open and Kintera Connect docs, and I also had a chat with some Kintera folk. I have a few comments. Allan is right - the Kintera API is more comprehensive, and provides for more flexibility than the Convio API.

Happy Birthday, Gutsy Gibbon!

mpm — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 10:51:33 +0000

Ubuntu Linux has a new release, version 7.10, called "Gutsy Gibbon." (Really I don't know where these names come from!) There is a great review at Wired that gives a good overview of what you'll find.

Platforms break open!

mpm — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 15:49:02 +0000

If you are new to this site, you might want to read more, and subscribe to my feed. One of the wonderful things that has happened since I wrote the Open API whitepaper way back in January, is that finally, vendors are realizing how important openness really is, and are beginning to implement things in a big way. Two new initiatives have come to light in the last coupl

Some lessons from the "enterprise"

mpm — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:04:36 +0000

One of the areas of technology I watch is the world of "enterprise" IT. Think big companies, lots of bucks, lots of boxes. Some nonprofits fit into this category, but most nonprofits that I work with don't. I think sometimes, interesting things come out of that watching. For instance, Gartner's top 10 technologies to watch in 2008. There's some great stuff there, like virtualization, social software, green IT, etc. The striking thing: open source software wasn't on their list. It was on their list for a few years, and has now fallen off.

NOSI Primer, released finally

mpm — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:07:57 +0000

I've been working hard on one project in particular over the past few months: the updating and expanding of the NOSI primer: "Choosing and Using Free and Open Source Software: A Primer for Nonprofits". It's taken a while, has some nice new features, and, basically, I'm pretty proud of it.

Getting Naked: Being human and transparent

mpm — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 11:11:51 +0000

If you are new to this site, you might want to read more, and subscribe to my feed. (Photo by rob_pym) I'm hosting this week's Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants! Sorry it's a day late. The topic I chose was a tough one, too: I asked people to talk about mistakes they make with clients, and how they deal with them. There weren't many takers on this one, but there are some real troopers out there in the nonprofit consultant blogosphere, so there's some great stuff to talk about. And, since it's a tough topic, I'll not take myself off the hook. The theme in all of the blog posts, and in my own approach to this issue, is transparency: we do all make mistakes, and what's important is being honest about them. Mark, of Sea Change Strategies, talks about five mistakes he's made in working with clients, includes things such as ignoring internal organizational dynamics, and getting too involved, or not involved enough. He has some really good thoughts worth considering as we work with clients over time. Michele Martin gets naked, that is, practices her transparency preaching, and talks about mistakes she's made, and goes into detail on her approach to dealing with mistakes. Michael Stein talks about three different kinds of mistakes that one can make in technology consulting, including some errors of process, and the "Hot Dog" syndrome. A great read for anyone who does development for clients. I've made most of the mistakes outlined in all three of these brave blog postings. I think it is easy to feel like we're the "experts" so we shouldn't make mistakes. It's all to easy (and I've seen it often) to do anything we can to avoid being wrong about something. Transparency, or, Michele Martin's phrase, "getting naked" is key, I think. Being transparent with clients about our own processes and weak points, and where we may falter, and, most importantly, being transparent and honest when we make mistakes, is what can make the difference between happy clients and ones that wish they'd picked someone else.

How not to treat an open source user community

mpm — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 11:33:42 +0000

I've been using activeCollab for a few months now. It's designed as a basecamp clone. It has some things missing, for sure, but it has been useful to me. I had hoped to more actively use it once the new version came out. However, that won't happen. activeCollab is going commercial.

Let your voice be heard

mpm — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:58:39 +0000

I've been writing a surprising amount about nonprofit CRM tools lately. It's such an interesting space, and there are some really intriguing things happening with software in that space. NTEN is trying to get a handle on all of this, and find out what people use, and how much they like what they use. I can't wait to get my grubby little fingers on the data on CiviCRM and Salesforce. So, let your voice be heard! Fill out the survey.

Social Networks and Digital Sharecropping

mpm — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 20:54:28 +0000

I was reading Deborah Finn's curmugeonly post about Facebook. I have been having curmudgeonly thoughts about social networks in general. My curmugeonly thoughts fall into three basic categories of sucks: time suck, content suck, privacy suck. Time suck: Social networks are a time suck. Signing up for new ones, making profiles, adding friends, adding applications, etc. etc. And, yet another login and password.

Tasty nuggets

mpm — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:15:16 +0000

A few things have come across my desk while I was on vacation, so I thought I'd collect them here:

Of course, there are new Web 2.0 tools that come out every single day. It's a bit staggering, sometimes. I am waiting for this bubble to burst, too, but until then:

Timebridge - this seems like a pretty useful scheduling tool. The cool thing is that it integrates with GoogleCalendar. I just did a trial meeting scheduling - and it worked pretty well.

Has Apple become evil? No, but they are getting stupid.

mpm — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 17:46:48 +0000

I had decided, a while back, not to buy an iPhone. Too expensive, for one thing. I like my 60G iPod that I've had for a while, and although I tire of lugging around three electronic devices (cell phone, Palm, iPod), and that my current phone is about to fall apart, the cost and the fact that it was so new made me decide not to go for it, even though AT&T is my carrier. But then, Apple dropped the price $200, and it made me ponder. But nope. No iPhone for me.

Forgot to say ...

mpm — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 12:55:30 +0000

I'm on vacation/fiction writing retreat this week. So, no blog posts from me here until I get back to work on October 1st. But I might write an entry or two on my personal blog, if you're interested.

How to find out about free and open source software

mpm — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 09:21:24 +0000

You've been told that insert_cool_open_source_software_project_here might be the ticket for a specific function or system you'd like to implement in your nonprofit organization. Or you're just curious about projects you've heard about. How do you go about finding out whether it's the right software, and whether the project has a healthy community, since you don't want to adopt a project that doesn't?

Check out the website. Make sure that the features that it outlines there match your requirements. See if they have good documentation.

Check out the forums of email list archives of that project. How busy is it? How easily or quickly does it seem that questions get answered?

Look at the "download" page (or "releases"). When was the last release? How much time generally passes between major or minor releases? (Minor releases are, for example, when a project goes from 2.2.3 to 2.2.4. Depending on project, going from x.2 to x.3 might be a major or minor release. Going to a x.0 release - for example from 2.x to 3.0 is always major.) Rule of thumb: projects that haven't had minor releases in a year or more are definitely in danger of becoming projects that are no longer under development.

Look at ohloh.net - they have great info on most projects - how many developers, lines of code, how active development activity is.

Send queries to nonprofit tech lists for experiences and information, like nosi-discussion, nten-discuss, riders-tech, and others.

Google it - you might find articles and reviews that might be helpful

Try it out. These are almost always free to download and try out - this is easier for some projects than others. Luckily, most web project have online demos, which will give you a feeling for the software without having to spend too much time configuring a server or webhost to use the software. Many standard virtual hosts have "one click install" or "fantastico" - which makes it easy to try out some kinds of web applications.

What do web stats mean, anyway?

mpm — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:40:40 +0000

There is an interesting discussion happening between Holly Ross, soon to be ED of NTEN, and Allan Benamer, about web statistics, and whether or not nonprofits should be "transparent" and publish their web statistics. Allan's argument is that because NTEN is in a leadership position in the field, it should lead in showing transparency by publishing its web stats.

Economically, open looks better than closed

mpm — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 10:45:16 +0000

An interesting study was released yesterday by an organization called the Computer and Communications Industry Association (with heavyweight members like Google and Microsoft) which shows that fair use exceptions to copyright generate more economic benefit than copyrights themselves.

OpenOffice.org to get a boost

mpm — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 12:31:38 +0000

I've been spending a lot of time with OpenOffice.org lately. I've been running OOo, as it is often abbreviated, for many years now (I used StarOffice before OpenOffice.org was created.) I have used it everyday, to do everything (all of my spreadsheets, worksheets, articles, presentations, I used it to write a novel, I used it in seminary for papers, etc., etc.,) for at least 4 years.

Tidbits

mpm — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 18:36:27 +0000

I have a few little tidbits, each don't make enough for its own post, so here goes...

Nicholas Carr (the Rough Type smart dude) tried out Adblock Plus, and has some very insightful comments about it. He even asks "What would Jesus do?"

O'Rielly has a new online series about Women in Technology, with some really great articles.

Microsoft Fails to get ISO fast-track for OOXML

mpm — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 08:00:27 +0000

For those of you that pay attention to open standards, this is old(ish) news. Earlier this week, ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, rejected Microsoft's bid to fast-track OOXML (Office Open XML) to standard status.

Reaping the Benefit of Open Platforms

mpm — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 21:37:43 +0000

One of the cool things about free and open source software is that often (not always, but often) they provide an open platform for add-ons. As a full-time user of both Firefox and Thunderbird, I'm really enjoying the benefits of these open platforms, and the immense creativity of people who create add-ons. And it's all free! A few Firefox extensions that I can't live without include a new one I discovered recently, called "AdBlock Plus." This is the best thing since sliced bread. It blocks banner ads, Google adsense ads, stupid dancing aliens for mortgages, etc. I love it. I know a lot of people get revenue from ads, and I sorta feel bad promoting AdBlock, but the truth is, I never click on ads, so no one ever gets any revenue from my actions anyway. It's nice to have clean, ad, free pages, and especially without the distracting moving ads. Plus, pages load faster without ads. The other Firefox extension that I use a lot is Google Toolbar. It's great to have easy Google tools at my fingertips. For Thunderbird, the two I've been trying out include XNote, which is kinda fun, it allows you to add sticky notes to email messages. Lightning, which is a Sunbird calendar plug in, that gives me a calendar integrated with Thunderbird. There are tons of other add-ons for all of the Mozilla Suite applications. I'm trying out some new themes soon.

Convio will join Kintera and Blackbaud as a publicly traded company

mpm — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 09:17:57 +0000

You've probably heard the news, and I'm taking a break from my break to write about it. Convio has registered to go public.

Mission Statement

mpm — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 17:44:59 +0000

I have not at all been tempted by the 31 days to a better blog challenge. Not because I don't want my blog to be better, it's just that I don't have the time right now. But, I have been following Michele Martin's work on The Bamboo Project Blog with some interest. There are a few pieces to that challenge I might take up, on occasion. One of them, I'll do now.

Varied and sundry before a brief break

mpm — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 18:14:57 +0000

I'm taking a brief 4 day weekend - not that it would be that noticeable on this blog, since I don't always post consistently. That is actually one of the things I'm going to try and change - to set up to do a post every weekday. We'll see how that goes. Before I took off, I wanted to mention a few things that have been on my mind (and on my plate.) First, some of you might know that the new version of the NOSI primer has been in the works. It's new and updated for the realities of the nonprofit technology and free and open source worlds of 2007. The primer, which will show up in just electronic form, also has a very cool implementation of a great open API that we'll be crowing about soon (my lips are sealed right now.) I keep discovering new and exciting free and open source web platforms. One of which is called Elgg. Elgg is a very cool community-building and e-learning tool - it's got the social networking combined with features like forums, etc. And further, there is an amazing integration of Elgg with Mediawiki. I wish I had an excuse to install and test it - but it really requires a purpose for bringing community together. I could think of several interesting implementations in the nptech world that would be fun (like it would make a great e-learning platform for, say, circuit riders, or folks like that.) Laura Quinn has a great blog entry about software "satisficing" - that is that sometimes we want to maximize the features that a particular software package has, instead of finding the one that works for us. It's very zen, and a great read. I've been doing a lot of technical writing - I just put the finishing touches on my third of three articles for LASA's ICT Hub Knowledgebase, I'm writing an article on Open Office Base for the next issue of Linux Identity Magazine, and, of course, I've been busy writing the NOSI primer. I also have been doing some interesting client projects. So I'm very busy, and enjoying what I'm doing a whole lot! Oh, and my consulting practice has a new logo, done by the fabulous ALR Design!

Vendorspeak

mpm — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:44:14 +0000

One of the things I've noticed recently is that my blog is getting the attention of software vendors. I guess that's a good thing. Maybe it means I have "arrived". Probably it just means that when the "Social Media Director" or the "Goddess of Communication" arrived in their office in the morning, they ran their standard set of google blog and technorati searches, and voila, there I was. It was, a while ago, part of my job to build technology solutions for people.

Free software and sustainable computing

mpm — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 12:08:53 +0000

I remember in the late 90s, in the heady days of getting organizations up to speed with technology, I would suggest to organizations that they add in their budget replacing 1/4 to 1/3 of their computers each year (instead of the much more common practice of replacing them all at once every 5 or 10 years when a grant happened.) This was for all the good reasons: computers are cheap, support is expensive, and it would cost more time and money to diagnose and fix a computer than replace it - so replacing computers on a regular schedule would actually decrease IT costs. Well, all of that is true.

The more things change ...

mpm — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 14:36:19 +0000

One of the great things about the nonprofit technology community is that the community, on the whole, has a great respect for women, in whatever roles we play - whether it be geeky not. The exceptions to this in my experience have been very, very few and far between. However, take one little step outside of our warm and fuzzy community into the larger technology community, and things change. Unfortunately, the open source community seems to find ways to ridicule, degrade and and belittle women quite often. Linux Journal ran the following advertisement by a company called "QSOL": And, it got 2100+ diggs, with the title "Best. Ad. Ever." It ran in 2000, with a lot of uproar, and they promised never to run it again. Right. In addition, Linux Journal has a column, called "Tech Tips from Gnull and Voyd" with quotes like:
Howdy. My husband is Chester Gnull and I'm Laverta Voyd, and I'm the lady to light a way for all you sweethearts out there who do fancy stuff with Linux. Me and my husband's gonna be bringing you tech tips just about every month now. ... I don't know nothing about Linux. Chester, he's the smart one, but he's not much of a talker. That's why I'm here. ...
One wonders how many bad stereotypes they can fit in one column? Anyway, if you read Linux Journal, please tell them how you feel. I did.

The search for good web conferencing

mpm — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 11:42:33 +0000

I decided, perhaps rashly, that one way of exposing people to, and training people on, open source software, was by doing web conferencing. I thought it would be a good endeavor to start with. One that could include free webinars, as well as paid training.

Tips for reducing IT costs

mpm — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 18:34:54 +0000

Nicholas Carr, who writes the blog Rough Type, is a smart dude. Although he writes about the technology field as a whole, and seems very tapped into the for-profit world, he has lots of words of wisdom I think we can learn from.

Kintera Connect

mpm — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 14:13:36 +0000

I listened in on the call with Kintera folks about their new platform, called Connect. I was mostly curious about how open this platform will be, and what the future holds for them.

Technology providers and Linux

mpm — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 12:46:44 +0000

In the course of working with some clients, I have been in the process of trying to find technology providers, specifically, server, desktop and network support organizations, that support Linux. Several years ago, they were very few and very far between - mostly individuals who focused solely on Linux. Now, there are many more, and traditional Windows shops are beginning to either add staff who know Linux, or learn it themselves.

Linux ready for the desktop?

mpm — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 21:31:09 +0000

It's been 7 weeks of using Ubuntu 7.04 (better known as Feisty Fawn) as my primary desktop. I figured it was time to give my final assessment. Well, it's not final, but I've come to what I imagine will be a steady state for a while. I'm relatively happy, and, surprisingly enough, I don't miss using the mac everyday. Here are the good things:

Even macs get weird sometimes, especially if they've been on for a long time.

Joining the NTEN Board

mpm — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 22:43:41 +0000

Katrin, the Executive Director of NTEN, announced today that I'm joining the Board. (So now's my chance to blog about it!) I've been connected in one way or another to NTEN for quite a long while.

A goodbye to Facebook and LinkedIn?

mpm — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 08:25:29 +0000

I've been experimenting with the non-content centered social networking sites LinkedIn and Facebook for a while now. (The content centered ones, like flickr, del.icio.us and our own Social Source Commons, are a different animal.) I've been playing with LinkedIn for probably a year, Facebook only for a couple of months.

Giving up, a little

mpm — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 11:46:23 +0000

As you might know, I migrated from using a MacBook Pro laptop as my primary desktop, to eating my own dogfood, as it were, and using Ubuntu Linux as my primary desktop. And, as you might recall, there were a few snags. My address book was a major one. And, to top it off, I had to make things more complicated last week, because I decided to get a Palm PDA again.

Time to find a fundraising solution that can't be bought

mpm — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:06:50 +0000

Blackbaud, which is one of the big gorillas in the CRM/Fundraising space bought a littler guy, eTapestry. This is not so far on the heels of the acquisition of Get Active by Convio. Blackbaud has done other acquisitions in the past. And, I'm sure there are more to come. There basically are three types of software acquisitions that companies make. The first is to acquire a company that does something that you do not. For example, Yahoo bought del.icio.us - it didn't have social bookmarking. In those situations, generally, the product remains largely the same (with some branding changes over time.) The second kind of acquisition is to acquire a company that does something you do, but much better. Like Google buying YouTube, or Yahoo buying flickr. In that case, the acquiring company eventually does away with its own product, and the acquired product becomes that companies offering in that space (with changes.) The third type of acquisition is when a company buys a competitor, which may or may not have technologies that it has. In that situation, the acquired company is basically engulfed by the acquiring company, and eventually (or immediately, in some cases) completely disappears as an option. This third type of acquisition has been the hallmark of the acquisitions in the CRM/Fundraising space. GetActive is no longer an option to choose from. Nor is Giftmaker (bought by Blackbaud.) True, eTapestry had a platform that Blackbaud does not - but don't mistake that as the first or second type. eTapestry as a separate choice is bound to go away. And this is a bad thing for the many small organizations that have been using eTapestry for reasonable prices (or free). You have heard me rant and rail about the fact that the vast majority of money (both from nonprofits themselves, as well as by investors) goes into developing, maintaining (and acquiring) CRM/Fundraising software. This is something that, honestly, we as a sector are complicit in. And there are fewer and fewer choices every single day. Fewer choices means less competition, which means that prices will likely rise. And nonprofits often feel they have no choice but to pay big bucks for fundraising/CRM packages. If nonprofits want to have a good fundraising platform that they can know won't be bought and swallowed and changed so that they'll have to shell out more, it's time to invest money and effort in an open source platform. One already exists that needs support and development to make it ready to compete with the big guys. Allan Benamer says:
Obviously, Blackbaud is taking a page out of Oracle’s playbook and applying it to themselves. Rapidfire acquisition of smaller players so that you can wrap it up into a system of systems seems to be their strategy for now. They now control the vertical fundraising environment for nonprofits from the base of the nonprofit market (eTapestry) to its apex (Target Software).
Blackbaud is publicly traded. It is important to think about the fact that dollars raised by nonprofit organizations are going to Blackbaud's investors whose major interest in Blackbaud is the profit it can produce. That is the driving force behind what Blackbaud is doing - maximizing profit. It is unrealistic to expect that acquisition mania in the CRM/Fundraising space is going to result in anything except fewer, more expensive choices. (Remember that as good and open and free as Salesforce is, it also can be acquired, and nothing is guaranteed.) We don't have to submit to the "Buyout Blues"! We have power and options in using open source solutions. Isn't it time we began to realize the power of community-owned and driven software that no one can buy?

Odds and Sods

mpm — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 11:57:48 +0000

(That's Brit/Canadian for odds and ends, if you were wondering.) I've been a bad blogger over the past couple of months, I know. I haven't been posting near as much as I'd like, mostly because I've been rather busy. It's not just consulting work, but other varied happenings in my life as well.

Where the gift economy rubber meets the road

mpm — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 10:14:10 +0000

In the process of reworking and updating the NOSI (Nonprofit Open Source Initiative) primer that was first written in 2004, there are several things that have emerged that have dramatically changed from then. First is the wholesale movement toward the three major open source CMS platforms/frameworks, Drupal, Joomla and Plone.

More on Facebook

mpm — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 10:29:47 +0000

Michelle Martin has a great post this week on Facebook. It introduced me to a new blog, called Read/WriteWeb, which I'm liking a lot. They have a roundup of what they are calling the 10 best Facebook apps for work.

Sweet tasting dogfood...

mpm — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 18:29:49 +0000

Part of the process I'm going through of "eating my own dogfood" that is, using free software (open source) tools whenever I can includes taking myself off of proprietary platforms whenever possible. One such platform was Typepad. Typepad is a paid service based on Movable Type, a very popular blogging platform, that is proprietary.

Welcome to the new blog!

mpm — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 08:33:15 +0000

As you will have undoubtedly figured out - this blog moved! I've moved it off of Typepad, and onto Wordpress. I've been rather impressed by how easy Wordpress was to set up and use, and how easy the migration process was.

About

mpm — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 08:43:03 +0000

Michelle Murrain received her B.A. in Natural Science and Mathematics from Bennington College, and her Ph.D. in Biology from Case Western Reserve University. She first started to work with nonprofits and technology in 1996, when she assisted a local women's health organization with a Linux server that provided email and a website. That was also her introduction to open source software, which she has used consistently since that time. Michelle has been involved in developing content and applications for the web, specifically for organizational, research and educational purposes, since 1994.

Eating my own dogfood. It sometimes tastes yucky.

mpm — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 19:48:10 +0000

So I talk a lot about both open source software, and the preciousness of one's own data. I rail against vendors who promote lock-in. I tout the benefits of open source software. So, here is a real life example of someone with a measly 195 records in her contacts database.

See a problem? Throw a website at it!

mpm — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 12:56:07 +0000

Deborah, is, as per usual, diplomatic in her discussion of the site "Sustainable Nonprofit", which is a new(?) website that is designed to: "create a unified place for nonprofits and experts to share their experience, pain, achievements, and discoveries."

Gender, Race and Open Source

mpm — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 07:08:25 +0000

My session on Free and Open Source software and the US Social Forum went great yesterday. Lots of people were there (I ran out of handouts - I was surprised to see how many people showed up.) The presentation is available on my wiki (it's at the bottom.)

An entire huge conference run on Free and Open Source software!

mpm — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 07:36:22 +0000

I've been rather remiss in my blogging lately, mostly because I've been crazy busy, and blogging seems to be lower on the priority list these days. Today, I'm at the US Social Forum, a huge gathering of activists from all over the United States, who have come together in the same model as the World Social Forum. The slogan for the US Social Forum is "Another World is Possible. Another US is Necessary."

Facebook the last frontier?

mpm — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 11:50:44 +0000

OK, so I finally drank the Facebook coolaid - and although it took me a long time to get around to, I have now realized how many people in the nptech field have already been on facebook for a while. I decided to try out facebook when I kept hearing about the integration of other social networking sites into facebook.

A big player jumping into Linux

mpm — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 11:42:16 +0000

Intuit, the makers of Quickbooks, Quicken, and TurboTax, are jumping on the Linux bandwagon. Well, OK, they aren't really jumping, but putting their toe in the water in the Linux server realm.

They announced that their server product, Quickbooks Enterprise, will be released to work on Linux Servers.

Circuit Rider School

mpm — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 18:10:00 +0000

Way back when (last month - I've been busy) Deborah Finn blogged about the "New England School for Circuit Riders." That blog entry came about because she and I had a long conversation about what kinds of skills nonprofit technology providers needed, and what we felt was missing.

Varied and sundry

mpm — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 17:43:28 +0000

It's been a week of mostly not work, which is a nice rest. I finally finished the first edited version of the scifi novel I wrote last summer. That feels good. Next steps are get some feedback, and move forward with it, somehow. I had a brief conversation by email with Cory Doctorow, a science fiction author who is also a copyleft activist, who releases everything he writes with a CC license. He suggested, basically, find the publisher first, then talk about the license second.

Ubuntu Linux, Week 2

mpm — Tue, 22 May 2007 10:43:06 +0000

Welll, it's not really week 2. I got the laptop a few days ago - but it was last week. I figured this was a good time to post an update, and complai... explain where I've gotten to so far.

I'm using it full time now, as my basic desktop. I'm reading email, posting blog entries, searching the web, working on presentations, etc. I have definitely hit some points of pain in migration.

What's fine:

Linux, Ubuntu Feisty Fawn, and Me

mpm — Mon, 21 May 2007 07:01:54 +0000

I've been a part of the Nonprofit Open Source Initiative for a long time, and I've been advocating for the use of open source software in the nonprofit sector for years. More lately, I've been working to focusing my advising practice on helping people implement open source software (mostly server-side) in their organizations, providing advice and training. I've installed more versions of varied Linux flavors than I could even think about remembering (going all the way back to the first or second versions of Slackware in the mid-90s).

More FUD from Redmond

mpm — Fri, 18 May 2007 07:04:14 +0000

I hear, in my head, the famed quote from Rodney King: "why can't we all just get along?" Microsoft this week has started saber-rattling against Linux and other open source projects, by suggesting that they infringe on 235 patents that they hold. Of course, we all know that many of these patents were dubious to begin with - UI and business process patents that had no business being granted to anyone in the first place. It's "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt" all over again.

Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants: Better Late than Never

mpm — Tue, 15 May 2007 08:57:50 +0000

This carnival is a day late, unfortunately. Getting construction work done on your house will make life difficult sometimes. But, finally, here it is...

Hosting the Carnival next week!

mpm — Thu, 10 May 2007 07:40:57 +0000

I'm hosting the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants next week. It's an open call - so just send in your best posts for the week!
Send submissions to: npc.carnival@yahoo.com. I'll accept them until Sunday Midnight.
I look forward to seeing your posts!

Technorati Tags: npcarnival

What do you expect from a technology provider?

mpm — Thu, 10 May 2007 14:13:26 +0000

In talking with some organizations, I've come to realize that they don't have a handy list of things they should be asking of their network/desktop technology providers. (I think this might be applicable to all technology providers, but this is what is on the front of my brain at the moment.) Organizations without dedicated tech staff (and, I imagine, even some with) may feel at the mercy of providers, since they often don't have the technical know how to determine whether or not a suggestion, advice, or a fix that a provider might do would be helpful.

The problem with the word "free"

mpm — Sat, 05 May 2007 09:10:17 +0000

Every time I start using the phrase "free software" instead of "open source" software in the context of people who are not familiar with what either of those terms mean, I invariably get questions about free (as in beer) software. "Where can I get free software to do x-and-such - we don't have a technology budget." "How can I find free software to do y-and-z?"
Yes, it is up to me to make sure people understand what "free" means (like as in "kittens") - but it is these kinds of responses that send me back, invariably, to using the phrase "open source."

Too much "shiny"?

mpm — Tue, 01 May 2007 11:31:49 +0000

Jon Stahl quotes a comment by Ethan Zuckerman about "shiny" - the over attention to cool and groovy web 2.0 functionality. The punch line:
... there’s a good chance that underneath the shiny is something that isn’t very interesting. (Not always, but often.) And that some of what’s deeply, truly, long-term transformative isn’t shiny at all.
Yes!

Technology Support as Teaching

mpm — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 10:12:50 +0000

I've been thinking a lot about technology support lately. Really a lot. Part of it is being prompted by my own technology support experiences with my satellite "broadband" provider (which have been largely frustrating). A lot of it has been because I have lately been exposed to situations where I have felt organizations haven't gotten the support they need, which, in our world, I think is all too common.

Free as in "Free Kittens"

mpm — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 13:20:09 +0000

Deborah Finn pointed out this good post in a blog I have never read: ALA Tech Source.

Open Standards part 2: XDI and Data Integration

mpm — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 12:55:48 +0000

Back in December, I had planned to talk first about document format standards before I plunged into XDI. But, a couple of things intervened. First, I decided to write a full blown whitepaper on document standards. So it will be a bit before it comes out. I think people (especially in the nonprofit sector) take document formats far too much for granted, and I think they deserve more treatment than just a blog entry.

This guy is right on

mpm — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 07:12:00 +0000

A blog reader introduced me to a new blog by a guy named Phil Jones. Among other great things, he has this amazing post about Microsoft, and their future. Basically, he argues that in the era of Web 2.0, the only really compelling platform they have is Excel. Read this post, it's dead on.

Netsquared Innovation Fund

mpm — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:18:53 +0000

David says of the Netsquared Innovation Fund process:

Speaking too soon

mpm — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 16:08:22 +0000

I've been doing a lot of thinking since I wrote my post, a few weeks ago, saying I was done with technology consulting. In one sense, I spoke too soon, although in another, I was right on. And, to some extent, this post is a bit self-indulgent, so if you're looking for some concrete technology talk, you might want to wait for the next post on Joomla. :-)

The Wealth of Networks, Chapter 5

mpm — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 12:13:37 +0000

I'd taken a long break from Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks - I had a lot going on, and, well, it's a really, really meaty read. But I picked it up again, and was in the middle of it around the same time as the discussions around the Journal of Information Technology in Social Change happened. And as I finished reading the chapter, it came clear to me that the chapter might well be Yochai's two cents on our conversation (not that I've asked him, but some things seem kinda clear from this chapter.)

Drupal, Joomla and Plone! Oh my!

mpm — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 16:45:46 +0000

At NTC, there was a lot of talk about the "big three" open source CMS packages that most people these days in our sector are using: Drupal, Plone, and Joomla. I've had a fair bit of experience with Drupal - nosi.net is run on Drupal, and I'd done a Drupal install once, and helped with some now and again.

Open Source Feminism?

mpm — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 12:20:14 +0000

Beth Kanter, as always, has a great, informative summary of the Penguin Day activities last Saturday in DC. She's got some great video blogging, including a short one on "open source feminism." Although women were only 25% of the Penguin Day attendees, that's actually pretty darned good for open source related events.

What's coming up ...

mpm — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 20:24:28 +0000

I've been reviewing my blogging plans, and I have realized that I have been quite remiss in continuing the varied overlapping series that I started over the past few months. So, over the next couple of weeks, I'll be digging back into some interesting territory.

Dialogue about JITSC, part 2: Open content models

mpm — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 08:31:41 +0000

This conversation is very interesting, and very useful.

NTC Summary, and Nonprofit Technology Consulting 2.0

mpm — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 13:28:16 +0000

As I write this, I'm hurtling through small towns and big cities on the train home. We've passed through Baltimore - which reminds me of a project I did once, way back when, to work with a group of mostly small and medium-sized organizations on technology planning.

How do we do make change if we keep doing things the same way?

mpm — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 17:19:04 +0000

I had heard about this new journal a while ago, and it was sitting in some small corner of my brain, waiting for me to pay attention. I ran into an old colleague at NTC, and it came up, because he had been thinking of contributing to the journal, but decided that he probably won't, for reasons I will talk about.

NTC Links

mpm — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 11:45:37 +0000

There has been a little bit of blogging and the like at NTC - although it was certainly hindered yesterday, when the internet was down for most of the day. And I think most of the bloggers are too busy giving, or going to sessions to blog much. But there are a few tidbits that I've enjoyed:

Technology Consulting 2.0

mpm — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 12:07:36 +0000

I had a great Day of Service with the Advocacy Project, which is a great organization that sends interns out into the field, to work with local partner organizations on issues such as human rights, women's health, peace, and many other issues. We talked about appropriate use of Web 2.0 tools for their interns, for themselves - for advocacy, fundraising, and information dissemination.

Going to DC ...

mpm — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 18:18:47 +0000

Well, my bags are just about packed, I've prepared just about everything I can prepare. I'm involved in two sessions at NTC: the Linux Geekout on Thursday at 3:30, and the Case Studies in Open Source Software at 10:30 on Friday morning. I'm also facilitating two breakouts at Pengiun Day DC, one on Desktop Linux, and a second on starting open source projects.

Goodbye Microsoft...

mpm — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 20:29:03 +0000

Just today, I received in the mail some Sony Vaio Picturebook laptops, courtesy of Gavin's regular potlatch program. My goal was to bring them to the Linux geek out at NTC, and have people play with Linux installs on them. But, I realized that I had somewhat of a challenge on my hands.

Penguin Day, DC

mpm — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 20:36:41 +0000

I've been really happy to be involved with Aspiration and PICNet in organizing Penguin Day DC, right after NTC. Please do come - it will be great. There are some amazing breakout sessions planned, and there will be wonderful energy. Here's the official blurb:

Disconnected and bored, or is there something else, really to social networking?

mpm — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 10:53:44 +0000

I continue to be fascinated with Twitter, and one of the primary drivers of the phenomenon known as Web 2.0: social networking. There have been some rather searing commentaries on Twitter lately from Nicholas Carr, and Kathy Sierra, among others.

My life as an (almost) ex-Technology Consultant

mpm — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 16:00:24 +0000

Beth Kanter interviewed me for Blogher recently, and one of the questions included "... you work as an independent consultant ..." Well, those days are numbered. I decided several weeks ago, for a variety of reasons, to retire my independent consultant hat. I've been doing this work for more than 10 years now, full time for about seven of those years. It's been an important part of my life for all of this time.

Open Source vs.(?) open data

mpm — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 14:30:10 +0000

I know most of you aren't surprised, but I'm not the Richard Stallman of the nonprofit technology community. And it's not just because I'm female. I've never been dogmatic. I've always known that when it comes to implementing free and open source software in the sector, pragmatics are important. (And, no, don't even think about comparing me to Eric Raymond!)

The scarcity mentality

mpm — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 13:25:54 +0000

Kudos to Michele Martin who brings up a sticky issue: the scarcity mentality. Her perspective is that the scarcity mentality of nonprofits (the idea that there is only one pie, and we only get our small slice) helps keep nonprofits from taking full advantage of social media (i.e. Web 2.0).

Satellite Internet: Week 2

mpm — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:32:15 +0000

I promised updates on Satellite internet, and here are my impressions so far. In general it works well. We've been getting download speeds from 1.5 Mbps (the advertised) to 300-400 Kbps during peak moments. The latency isn't too much of an issue for email or the web. It makes shell sessions basically impossible for all but the simplest stuff. FTP seems to work fine, as do streaming video and audio. I haven't bought anything from the ITunes store, yet, or tried skype for a voice call yet either.

Back Channels, Workflow, Data, Twitter, and me

mpm — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 13:10:56 +0000

I read Beth's recent blog entry on Twitter, and of course, the neo-luddite in me said "waste of time!" But then I had to think about it. What is it about Twitter that seems so, well, besides the point? Why aren't I Twittering away, like so many of my nptech colleagues?

Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants: Nonprofit Data Management

mpm — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:22:25 +0000

As you know, nonprofit data management has been a really important issue for me for a long time. So I thought it would be a great subject for the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants hosted here today.
There are some great posts for today:

Carnival Hosting Again!

mpm — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 15:54:38 +0000

Next Monday, I'm hosting the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants. The topic is "Nonprofit Data Management: from slips of paper to CRM" As you all know, I've been thinking about data management issues for years, and it would be great for people to share their ideas and knowledge.
So, submit those posts by Sunday evening!

Satellite Broadband, Day 1

mpm — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 15:22:14 +0000

Dial up just wasn't going to cut it. As someone I talked with today said, "with dial up, the internet feels broken." Someone else said that it would be good for designers to be forced to live with dial up for a while.

March Blogtipping

mpm — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 14:21:46 +0000

I'm folllowing Kivi on the NPBlogtipping bandwagon. I think it's a great idea, although I'm one day late. I promise in April I'll be right on time (oooohh, that could be fun, April Blogtipping on April fools day ...) By the way, I think blogtipping is a great idea for our sector, and it's a great way for me to think more about all of the blogs that I read.

Computerless

mpm — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 11:59:55 +0000

My laptop is in the shop. I'll spare you the details. It's truly a practice in patience to live without a computer. Work doesn't get done. Blog entries don't get written. Emails don't get returned.

It's a lucky thing my partner has a laptop I can beg and borrow (stealing might cause issues.)

My practice in patience only goes so far. The Mac Mini I'd been planning to get for a while just got ordered, next day shipping. It might even arrive before the laptop gets out of the shop. But even if it doesn't, at least the next time a computer dies, I'll have a backup.

NTC on Passover and Good Friday

mpm — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 12:39:15 +0000

Relatively close on the heels of my post on Spirituality, I read a post on a blog I've never read before, A View From Home. She is surprised that NTC is happening over Passover and Good Friday (April 4-6), and is having to make a tough choice and not attend NTC this year. She says:

The Convio and Get Active Merger: Lessons for Open Source and Openness

mpm — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 12:12:18 +0000

I listened in on the conference call about the merger of Get Active and Convio, because I was curious, and I wanted to find out what the lessons are in terms of both open source options, as well as openness of data. I was pleasantly surprised about how much was talked about in both of these realms. If this had happened a couple of years ago, I doubt much would have been said.
On the call: Gene Austin: Convio, Sheeraz Haji: Get Active, Tom Crackeler: Get Active, Dave Crooke: Convio

Day of (Micro) Service

mpm — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 09:20:07 +0000

One of the things I've always enjoyed about NTC (the Circuit Rider Roundup as it was called before that) was the Day of Service. It was a great opportunity to work with organizations I wouldn't get to work with normally, and, sometimes, to stretch myself a bit. It's a chance also, for a local group of organizations to benefit from the influx of nonprofit technology types coming into their locale.

Flung back 10 years and hurting

mpm — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 19:30:33 +0000

I'm facing a reality that many people live with every day (like my parents.) And I thought I could live with it. I thought it would be fine. I thought ...
What is it? No broadband.

The Fundit

mpm — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 07:30:29 +0000

As part of the Nonprofit Blog Exchange event #5, I'm blogging about the blog called "the fundit" (I love that name,) which is a fundraising blog for Canadian nonprofits. Being a real fan of Canada, this is a great opportunity to learn more about the how that all works up north.

Integration Proclamation

mpm — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 06:39:57 +0000

I've been meaning to blog about this for a while, but have gotten sidetracked. A while ago, a group of folks got together to create the "Integration Proclamation." They say:

Spirituality and Technology

mpm — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 18:07:02 +0000

A number of people have written me, and said that they appreciate that there is a blog with a spiritual take on technology. I initially intended to do a lot more about that, but got kinda caught up in the geeky stuff. (I can't help it.) But I do want to spend more time thinking about this issue.

The Zen of Nonprofit CRM

mpm — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 17:45:56 +0000

I was reading about the GetActive/Convio merger, and I have some thoughts about it...

The Wealth of Networks Chapter 4

mpm — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 13:00:43 +0000

I know you've been waiting for this. Here is, finally, chapter 4. This book is really good, but it's also very slow going. It will take me a while to finish it, I think. I'm hoping to really read a lot of it in the next couple of weeks.

Tagging Discussion

mpm — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 13:21:49 +0000

Beth started a cross-blog discussion about tagging and folksonomies, and I thought I'd weigh in. Gavin started this all off by posting a good and interesting set of questions about the efficiency of folksonomies.

Open Source Database solutions part I

mpm — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 23:17:25 +0000

I'm throwing up my hands. Y'all will just have to live with overlapping series. I have too many ideas be sequential. I promise (!) more on Open Standards and Benkler (actually, Benkler is up next - I've got two chapters to review).
I've been using databases since I was a grad student in the 80s, and I've been designing and developing database-driven applications for the web since 1995. I've been using varied Unix-based databases since then (as well as others including Access and Filemaker Pro), and most have been open source.

I've been tagged

mpm — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 18:09:00 +0000

This will be my last post of the year - I'm off to do some writing in a totally different genre. I wish all happy holidays, and a happy new year. When I get back, I'll complete my series on the Wealth of Networks, continue the series on open standards, and probably start a series on specific open source tools that I use on a regular basis.

End of year links

mpm — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 22:34:01 +0000

Here are a few links to round out the year:

Competing for nonprofit dollars

mpm — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 19:21:38 +0000

<rant>
Many of you know that I have a real desire to ease nonprofit pain in two particular areas: vertical apps, and data integration. This simply comes from my years of working with nonprofits who are struggling with their data issues, and need good solutions to them.

Social Networking

mpm — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 11:15:10 +0000

This week, I think I learned something about the social networking aspects of Web 2.0. It came from two different sources - Ma.gnolia and Linked In. They both have very different purposes - I happen to use Ma.gnolia primarily to store my own bookmarks for easy access, and only secondarily do I use it to share them. Lately, I've made a couple of interesting connections with people because of my links.

What I'm up to

mpm — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:23:04 +0000

It's the end of the year, and it seems a good idea to post about what's on my agenda for the next year, and what kinds of things I'll be working on, thinking about, and writing about in 2007.

Web 2.0 is getting beat up a bit (rightly so...)

mpm — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 17:33:07 +0000

Allen, one of my favorite bloggers (who I only recently started to read, which is my loss), has a great curmudgeonly post on Web 2.0. (I consider Allen a fellow neo-luddite, whether or not he agrees with that characterization.) He then follows it up with a pointer to an interesting post on the power consumption of avatars for Second Life, which should absolutely give everyone pause.

Things that make me feel better

mpm — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 18:08:35 +0000

As someone who has developed web database applications for clients, I always hate when they get errors. Things like this make me feel so much better. Even the big guys, with big budgets, mess up sometimes... It also means at least these guys are running windows.

OSS User communities

mpm — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 18:02:39 +0000

One of the things that can make (or break) an open source tool is the community around it. Just like evaluating a company that releases as specific application that you are interested in, understanding and evaluating the community around an open source project can be quite important.
Seth Gottlieb (a fellow Western Mass person) has a great post on his blog about how to go about looking at the communities around open source projects. It's definitely worth a read.

Open Standards Part 1: Introduction

mpm — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 11:47:08 +0000

So first a note. I'm again doing this horrible practice of overlapping series. I know that I haven't finished my series on the Wealth of Networks - but I hit a snag in reading: my last papers to write for seminary, and transitions. So, once the papers are done, and things settle back down, I'll plunge back into Benkler, and keep going.

Wiki here, wiki there, wiki everywhere

mpm — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 10:21:52 +0000

I've become somewhat of a Wiki fanatic. Well, maybe not that far - but I love Wikis. I know I complained about the lack of Web 2.0 (including wikis) interoperability lately.

Eating my words

mpm — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 11:49:08 +0000

I don't really think of myself as a pundit, probably because I am very willing to admit that I am sometimes wrong. Sometimes I don't have enough information and come to somewhat erroneous conclusions because of it. So, in that spirit, I'm eating a bit of, as Katrin called it, humble pie.

My wish for Web 2.5

mpm — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 11:59:50 +0000

Well, both in the process of learning about all of the very cool web 2.0 apps out there, and beginning to try and use them to create content and organize my life, I have come to the following conclusion: the apps are great, but integration still sucks.

Eben Moglen on Software

mpm — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 18:27:04 +0000

Watch this video. It's interesting, and should make us think a lot about why to use open source software.
Thanks to Jon Stahl for the heads up.

Ubuntu open week

mpm — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 11:02:55 +0000

Next week is Ubuntu Open Week, a series of events and classes about Ubuntu Linux, and for people interested in getting involved in Ubuntu. The events are all on IRC (Freenode). I'll be sitting in on a few, I'm sure, mostly for curiosities sake. Ubuntu seems to be becoming the linux distro of choice for a lot of people, and so far, it's my favorite. Using Red Hat, as I often do sometimes, feels like doing battle in comparison.

Preferred nptech instant messaging protocol?

mpm — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 12:23:13 +0000

I have, for a while, maintained accounts on just about all of the IM protocols out there (AIM, ICQ, Jabber/GTalk, MSN, Yahoo) mostly because there are some people that I know who are on one of the less used ones (like Yahoo or MSN). And most of my work colleagues use AIM or ICQ, if they are on IM. Lately, however, I've been noticing that a lot of nptech folks use skype possibly exclusively. I like Skype, and certainly the ability to actually talk with people is really useful (I have both SkypeOut and SkypeIn as well.)

Open Source News

mpm — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 20:50:01 +0000

Here are some tidbits from the open source world that might be of interest...

The Wealth of Networks, Chapter 3

mpm — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 13:19:59 +0000

I bet you thought I'd stopped reading? Or given up? Nah. It gets chewy, for sure, but it feels like every chew is worth it. I'm reading this book at the same time as I've been working on the Nonprofit Open Source Initiative. I'm realizing that all of the justifications for why I am so into open source and free software is right here in this book! So here's the summary for Chapter 3.

Women and Technology

mpm — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 19:06:13 +0000

One of the things I really like about the nonprofit technology community is that there are so many women involved. There are lots of women on the varied lists I read, there are nonprofit technology organizations that have lots of women leaders, and all of that is great. But then, there is the little secret (well, it's not so secret). When you look at systems administrators, or coders, or net-heads ... the women kinda vanish.

APIs - what, how, whither, and writing

mpm — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 14:00:29 +0000

I've been asked by NTEN to write a whitepaper on APIs, following their Open API debate. I've been learning about some interesting examples of the use of APIs in nonprofit organizations, as well as learning what vendors (both proprietary and open source) are thinking about the issue. I'm looking forward to getting into the meat of the writing. It's funny, I write a lot here on my blog, and I forget how much I enjoy technical writing (or semi-technical, in this case.)

This is brilliant

mpm — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 14:46:25 +0000

This is great. It's the announcement for NTEN's video/mashup contest. You gotta watch the video!

Technorati Tags: nptech, nten, 07NTC

My Gmail experiment is over

mpm — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 12:19:39 +0000

I like Gmail, like a lot of people. I decided to give Gmail a whole month of my total attention. I forwarded all of my mail to Gmail, and used only Gmail for about a month. I dug all of that AJAX goodiness. And now, I'm going back to the Mac OS X Mail.app.

Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants

mpm — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 12:43:29 +0000

This Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants has given me a chance to read some blogs I don't usually get to read, since I'm so often focused in the tech field. All of these articles were interesting and thoughtful. It's really nice to learn more about what people are talking about.

The Wealth of Networks, Part II

mpm — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 14:01:42 +0000

Chapter 2: Some Basic Economics of Information Production and Innovation

Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants coming here!

mpm — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 18:26:52 +0000

Next week, the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants is hosted here! I'm behind - I was supposed to tell you about this a few days ago! (I have a sort of good excuse.)

I don't have a theme - please send me your best stuff! You can email them to me. Because I'm delayed, you have through Sunday evening. I'll be posting the Carnival on Monday afternoon.

Web 2.0 Part Vb:APIs

mpm — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 21:35:19 +0000

This morning, I sat in on the "Great Open API Debate" hosted by NTEN. First off, a tip o' the hat to NTEN for organizing this, the participants of the panel for an interesting conversation, and Mark Bolgiano from the Council on Foundations for awesome moderation.

There were four perspectives:

New to You Laptops: the series

mpm — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 22:27:59 +0000

On my regular blog, for reasons that are mostly historical, there is tag-team blogging going on between me and a fellow religious blogger by the name of Scott Wells. The issue is - using used laptops with Linux (specifically Ubuntu) for cash-strapped churches or nonprofits. I realized that the series would be of interest here. So:

Varied Technology Links (only a little zen)

mpm — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 15:07:30 +0000

For you Windows types, IE 7 is out, and they found a vulerability 24 hours after release.

Also, for you Windows types, here is a plain english interpretation of the Windows Vista EULA (End Us

Web 2.0 Part Va:APIs

mpm — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 22:52:47 +0000

One of the best parts of Web 2.0 for geeks is APIs. These are Application Programming Interfaces, and they are a relatively new part of the way that Web 2.0 works. Like the freedom that RSS gives to end users in terms of getting the data that you want in your hands, to read when and how you want it, APIs give programmers (and, at times, end users) the freedom to get data from Web 2.0 services, like del.icio.us, google, flickr, and many, many others, and use and manipulate this data to their own ends.

The Wealth of Networks, Part I

mpm — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 19:33:06 +0000

I kept hearing about this book. My friend Katrin over at NTEN told me about it first, then it kept popping up all over. The book is "The Wealth of Networks", by Yochai Benkler, who is a professor at Yale Law School. It's available at that link in a multitude of forms. I have it in nice, wonderful book form. I like portable that way.

Metaphors

mpm — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 12:13:05 +0000

I'm a fan of metaphors. Human beings use metaphors all the time to understand the world, and to frame it. Metaphors are powerful in terms of the way we think about things. Think about how powerful the use of the metaphors around the "war on terror" are, and how differently we'd think about our world and our life if the prevailing metaphor were one of "catching criminals who use terrorist tactics."

Web 2.0 Part IV: RSS

mpm — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 22:19:13 +0000

RSS, is, in my humble opinion, a core component of the grease that makes Web 2.0 move. Open APIs are the second core component, and that's next up in part V (I think, unless something else comes up.) What is RSS? It stands for Real Simple Syndication (or, Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary depending on ones point of view.)

Catching up part II

mpm — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 13:14:12 +0000

Catching up with the nptech field over the past few weeks has been a lot of fun. I've even been mentioned in a few places (including Beth's blog, and the blog I will describe a bit below), which feels good. I'm glad people are liking what I'm saying.

IPv6

mpm — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 10:42:15 +0000

So, this blog won't be totally technology zen. Sometimes, I'll talk about technologies I think are just cool, and useful, and, well geeky, 'cause I can't help being a geek.

Web 2.0 Part III: Blogs, Podcasting and Vlogs

mpm — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 18:08:07 +0000

When I start out these series, I seem to have an idea in hand about how to organize them, which, invariably, gets rearranged in the course of writing. Such is life. I had originally planned to talk about RSS/XML after tagging, but I decided instead to hold off on that as a start on the posts about the inner guts of Web 2.0. So, here's the post about Blogs, and their follow ons: podcasting and vlogging.

Web 2.0 and database technology

mpm — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 16:42:42 +0000

I've been beginning to think a lot about databases, and where they are going. I've been using databases now since grad school, and relational databases for the past 10 years or so. There have been two specific advances in Web 2.0 that might, in the end, change how we think about databases.

Web 2.0 Part IIa: Social Bookmarking

mpm — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 15:58:04 +0000

After writing my post on tagging, I got sidetracked by Marnie Webb's mention of ma.gnolia, and then went off to investigate, then decided to write about social bookmarking tools. Ma.gnolia is a new(ish) social bookmarking tool.

Web 2.0 Part II: Tagging

mpm — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 10:28:33 +0000

The first set of new technologies that I'll talk about that are part of Web 2.0 is something called "tagging." Tagging isn't really a technology at all. It's really a new method of keeping track of metadata. It is a key part of all of the best Web 2.0 tools out there which are about collaborative content creation, like del.icio.us, flickr, listible, and others.

Google Analytics vs Site Meter

mpm — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 20:01:18 +0000

Yes, I promise, the post on tagging and folksonomies is coming. But first, a great example of Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0 - I wanted to talk about Google Analytics. I found this by way of one of my favorite new blogs, Lifehacker. Lifehacker is great, and shares some of my ethos about technology. They had a link today to a great page: how to dissuade yourself from becoming a blogger. It's funny, and appropriate.

Web 2.0 Part I

mpm — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 16:01:49 +0000

I liked doing the Intellectual Property series in the earlier incarnation of this blog. Writing a series I think gives me the space and time to think about particular technology issues in way more detail than I can in one post, and Web 2.0 is a big enough topic that it really lends itself to a series. So this is the beginning of a series of posts on Web 2.0.

The language we use

mpm — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 19:44:01 +0000

I came across, in my catching up period, an article titled "Ten ways to change the world with Web 2.0" It's actually a great article, by Marnie Webb of Compumentor, who I think thinks cool thoughts, and does cool things.

Other neo-luddites and interruptive technologies

mpm — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 15:40:25 +0000

One of the nice things about catching up with the field is that you get to aquaint yourself with people who you've just heard of, but never met. This includes the "East Coast" Michael Stein. (I have worked a little with the "West Coast" Michael Stein.)

He has a great post about interruptive technologies, like phones, text messaging on phones, and IM. He says:

The Blackboard patent

mpm — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 17:18:46 +0000

For some of you, this is old news, but in the process of catching up, this came to my attention. Last year, several of my classes in seminary used Blackboard, which is the major player in the e-learning space.

Catching up

mpm — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 11:32:17 +0000

It's not until I've spent a little time reading a wider array of nptech blogs that I have realized how much has changed in the last year or so, since I was last really imbedded in the field. I'm hoping that will provide some very interesting things to blog about over then next few weeks, as I regain my footing.

Laptops in schools

mpm — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 14:51:12 +0000

Slashdot, in it's standard inimical way, poopoos parents who opposed giving students laptops.

Schools giving away laptops are hardly new. It has been considered a good idea to give students laptops, to give them access to the wealth of resources available, learn about technology, learn to make ... powerpoint presentations ...

The Resurrection of a Blog

mpm — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 12:07:41 +0000

Blogs die, blogs come back, new, different, and informed by experience. I've lived a year without doing much technology work or being involved or engaged in the nonprofit technology field. I've lived a year thinking about spirituality and religion, reading sacred texts, and living and talking with people whose lives are centered around the divine, and the heart. I've lived a year knowing that the most important thing in my life is my connection to the divine/ultimate reality/my highest self.

Google Talk is Jabber!!

mpm — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 09:09:55 +0000

I heard the announcement about Google's Talk, and I did a quick perusal of the website, and saw that they were only going to release a Windows client, and I decided not to bother with it. First, I was annoyed, as usual, with Windows only clients. And then, based on what I'd read in the mainstream press (I actually only read one article in the LA times last weekend,) I figured that this was going to be too little, too late, even for Google.

IP Tidbits

mpm — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 11:54:14 +0000

Here are a few tidbits I've come across in the Intellectual Property arena in the past few days.

Ubuntu

mpm — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 22:40:00 +0000

I'm trying Ubuntu Linux on an old compaq laptop I have (and brought with me to California.) It's an old Compaq Armada (m300) that I bought used last year, and weighs about 2 pounds without the accessory bay. It was pretty cheap when I bought it, but it must have cost a fortune when it was new. I've installed regular Debian on it, plus a couple of versions of Fedora.

More patent office silliness

mpm — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 10:58:52 +0000

OK, this is great. At the same time as the patent office is granting business method patents that everyone knows have tons of prior art, they are busy rejecting trademarks, based on who knows what, exactly. Case in point: the organization "Dykes on Bikes" was denied a trademark of their name because the word "dyke" was vulgar.

Small Notes

mpm — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 11:27:16 +0000

Since I'm travelling, I haven't had much time to think in depth about much of anything. However, in my snippets of time reading my blogroll, there are a few technology snippets that I've come across that are interesting.

No, really? A wifi hotspot on a bus??

mpm — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 08:38:28 +0000

I just found this very cool tool, called MacStumbler. It's a wifi network sniffer. It will tell you what networks are around, and whether they are open or not, and what's their strength. It's useful to troubleshoot home hotspots, and find ones out in the world.

Social Source, Open Source, Socialism

mpm — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 06:49:41 +0000

David Geilhufe has a new post on his blog, entitled "Social Source Socialist?" It raises an important issue, and I've been wanting to talk a bit about the ways in which open source software in the nonprofit space is related to our economic system. This is pretty airy-fairy pie-in-the-sky stuff, but why have a blog if I can't do that?

Intellectual Property, Part III

mpm — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 10:00:00 +0000

First off, this post is in honor of the EFF Blogathon. Read all about it. I'm hoping that by writing this series, people who haven't been aware of these issues become more aware, and understand the stakes involved.

The Problem that Won't Go Away

mpm — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 08:50:37 +0000

I hate spam. I always have. But lately, I don't have to deal with much, which is true for most people. Between server-side bayesian filtering, and client-side filtering, only two or three spam messages gets into my actual inbox everyday. Very nice.

But now, it appears that spam is making it's horrible way to the web. The first I heard of this was the blogs (on blogger, mostly) designed only to be created to manipulate search engines.

What is the bleeding edge doing?

mpm — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 11:08:01 +0000

As I've stepped out of the direct role of being a nonprofit technology consultant, I've realized that it is giving me a chance to see things from a bit of a different perspective. I've been faithfully following a number of recent discussions on nonprofit blogging, social bookmarking, new and exciting tools, and the like.

On that Mac/Windows subject...

mpm — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 08:01:47 +0000

This is incredibly cool. I don't know if it's true, but I like it. A lot. If true: get an intel Mac, run Mac software, Windows software and UNIX software (via X windows) too. Wowie Zowie! Not only a geeks dream, but a very nice solution to all sorts of problems.

Via digg.

A "rational response"?

mpm — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 10:35:25 +0000

Today, in the New York Times, there is an article (reg. required), that talks about how people are throwing away their old PCs, in an effort to rid themselves of spyware, viruses and the like. "throwing out a computer 'is a rational response,'said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project..."

H2O Playlist

mpm — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 06:38:02 +0000

This is a very cool tool, discovered via my buddy Deborah Finn.

Another reason to hate Microsoft

mpm — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 05:51:56 +0000

Why on earth did they pick the most obnoxious, polluting, gas guzzling, view obstructing vehicle possible to promote their new version of Windows Automotive? I guess it's in character.

Grokster

mpm — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 11:03:05 +0000

The supreme court handed down a unanimous ruling in Grokster v. MGM. I'll be talking more about it later, once I read and digest everything (I'll make it part of the IP Part III post I've been promising.) But beforehand, here's BoingBoing's post on varied coverage.

Social Source Software

mpm — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 06:49:23 +0000

My colleague David Geilhufe, with whom I've spent many an hour discussing open source software issues, just posted on his blog, Social Source Software a post where he begins to lay out his vision for the open source ecosystem in the nonprofit sector.

I especially like the different perspectives on effective and affordable software from the closed-source vendor vs. open-source vendor perspective, and I look forward to hearing more.

del.icio.us direc.tor

mpm — Sat, 25 Jun 2005 09:14:21 +0000

I came across an amazing tool connected to the social bookmarking tool del.icio.us. It's called del.icio.us direc.tor. It is rather amazing. Here's a screenshot of what it looks like for me:

Intellectual Propery Issues Part I

mpm — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 17:59:18 +0000

One thing I haven't yet written much about in my blog is intellectual property issues. I do, in fact care deeply, and think frequently about them.

Intellectual Property Issues, Part II

mpm — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 21:10:00 +0000

OK, first, I lied. I'm going to talk about patents before I talk about copyright and copyleft of creative content.

Remember when 1 MB was a lot?

mpm — Thu, 23 Jun 2005 11:48:52 +0000

OK, so I'm feeling old today. I just came across a post on slashdot, talking about a 1.5 petabyte system. A petabyte is 1,000 terabytes. What's a terabyte, you ask? That is 1,000 Gigabytes. I have about .5 Terabytes worth of storage attached to my computer (500 Gigabytes), and that's a lot. Most people are happy with 40 Gigabyte hard drives.

Interesting Weird Technology Blog

mpm — Thu, 23 Jun 2005 11:27:22 +0000

I came across this site called we-make-money-not-art today, thanks to BoingBoing (as usual, the some of the most interesting technology stuff gets posted there first). It's chock-full of interesting tidbits (like the prayer rug that gets lighter the better it's pointed toward mecca.)

Welcome to my technology desk

mpm — Thu, 23 Jun 2005 10:53:17 +0000

I decided it made a lot of sense to divide my blog space, and create a brand-new technology blog. I'll focus on nonprofit technology issues, open source software, gadgets, useful online tools, and the like.

I imagine my posts both here and on my main blog will be a little less frequent, since I'm splitting my time. But it seemed to make the most sense. So if you are interested in my view/approach/ideas about technology, this is where to look.