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Job Opportunity: Salesforce CRM Application Support Specialist

Steve Backman — Sun, 06 May 2012 13:10:07 -0400

Are you a Salesforce whiz interested in expanding your skills, working with a wide range of nonprofit clients and collaborating with a great team of people in a small, independent consulting company? If so, Database Designs would like to speak with you.

This position combines a supporting role in planning, configuring and data migration for new account roll-outs, support and training for existing clients, and assistance in project management.

Essential Skills:

Database Designs at NTEN Conference, SF, April 3-5, 2012

Linda Roistacher — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 09:53:47 -0400

Database Designs' Steve Backman will be presenting a workshop at the NTEN Conference on "What's Right and What's Wrong with Nonprofit Data Today" from 10:30AM-12:00PM on Thursday, April 5, 2012 along with Debra Askanase of communityorganizer2.0.

Database Designs at Mass Nonprofit Network/Associated Grant Makers 2011 Conference

Steve Backman — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 11:50:27 -0400

Please join Steve Backman and the Database Designs team at the Mass Nonprofit Network/Associated Grant Makers 2011 Conference. The conference takes place this fall on October 20, 2011.

In keeping with this year's exciting theme, "Leading the Way," Steve will be co-presenting a workshop on "Data Driven Technology Leadership" with Debra Askanase and Marc Baizman. And look for the Database Designs booth at the conference.

We're Expanding! Database Designs is Looking to Hire a Salesforce CRM Consultant

Steve Backman — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 12:07:27 -0400

Are you a Salesforce whiz interested in expanding your skills, working with a wide range of nonprofit clients and collaborating with a great team of people in an independent consulting company? If so, Database Designs would like to speak with you.

Steve Backman at NTEN: Social Media and Contact Relationship Management — the New Mix

Steve Backman — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 13:32:16 -0400

Steve Backman, President of Database Designs, will be a presenter at the workshop Social Media and Contact Relationship Management — The New Mix at the 2011 NTEN Conference in Washington, DC, March 17-19, 2011.The workshop will be held on Firday, March 18 from 1:30-3:00PM.

Out From Under Too Much Data

Steve Backman — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 11:25:37 -0400

Shelley Podolny’s March 12 New York Times column, “The Digital Pileup,” started me thinking. “Because electronic information seems invisible, we underestimate the resources it takes to keep it all alive.” Podolny reports global data usage of 1.2 zettabytes (a lot of gigabytes). For the US alone, 3% of the national power supply supports “server farms,” the giant data centers with aisles and aisles of servers.

Cloud Security in the Era of WikiLeaks

Steve Backman — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 10:38:50 -0500

Salesforce helped pioneer the concept of putting confidential organizational data in a "public cloud" system. Other key vendors offering public cloud data services include Microsoft Azure and Amazon S3 services. "Cloud" has come to mean many things to many people as far as putting internal office functions up on the Internet. The word “public” is important to understand. This means that all data--every corporate and nonprofit user--sits in one enormous database. This is in fact a reassurance, not a drawback.

Nonprofit Contact Management with Salesforce Breakfast Briefing

Linda Roistacher — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 11:59:12 -0500

Database Designs is holding a breakfast briefing on Thursday, February 24 from 10am-12:30pm to share our perspectives on what’s new and emerging in Salesforce, when and how best to use new features, and how to improve your management of the transition to Salesforce.

Learn more. . .

A Fresh Look at Dragon Voice Recognition Software

Steve Backman — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 12:47:14 -0500

Something different about this blog entry then my usual ones is that I'm dictating it instead of typing it. Every so often my mouse hand and wrist bothers me for a week or two. The last time this happened, I decided to get a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking software and try it out. Coincidentally, a couple weeks ago, in the middle of all this miserable snow we’re having in the Northeast, a friend and colleague tore a tendon in in his elbow. I convinced him to try out the software. He needs to write all the time, and he has been using it almost exclusively and successfully.

Expanding Cloud Computing at Salesforce Dreamforce

Steve Backman — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 08:23:41 -0500

Jon Larosa and I are just back from Dreamforce, the big annual Salesforce conference, with 30,000 people mobbing the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Many were there for the first time, evaluating or just getting used to working with Salesforce and its cloud computing model.

Why We Are Microsoft Certified Partners

David Gabbe — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 17:32:17 -0400

One of Database Designs' strengths is that we support three development platforms: .Net, drupal and SalesForce. This means that we can bring our knowledge of all three environments to select the one that best meets our clients' needs. I am the head of our .Net practice and as such, I was given the job of shepherding Database Designs through the Microsoft Certified Partner process.

Steve Jobs got it right when he banned Flash from Apple's mobile platform

David Gabbe — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:05:35 -0400

I love Apple products, but I don't like the policies behind the App Store or iTunes. That said, Steve Jobs got it right when he banned Adobe's Flash from Apple's mobile platform.

Flash is the technology for peristing information about you and your surfing habits outside of your browser. In other words it a perfect end run around privacy settings. It didn't start out that way on purpose either.

Database Designs at NTEN 2010

Linda Roistacher — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:03:45 -0400

On Friday, April 10th, Database Designs' Steven Backman and Mimi Kantor were part of a panel leading the workshop "Making it Real: Getting Project Management Right for Content Management Web Projects." This workshop explored how to adapt project management practices to content management-based web site projects.

Browser Security and Choices

Steve Backman — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:10:40 -0400

Browsers have been in the news again lately.

The open conflict between China and Google has brought front page/national news attention to Internet privacy and censorship lately. Google announced that Chinese cyber spies had hacked into Gmail accounts in order to identify human rights activists in China. It turns out that it was not just Google.

The Persistence of Email

Steve Backman — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:29:06 -0400

Email is in the news these days, at least here in Boston and Massachusetts. Twitter, Facebook, and political blogs have elbowed their way in as organizing tools, yet incidents in the lowly world of email have had a huge public impact.

If you don’t live in Massachusetts, our local politics may not interest you and who can blame you. Bear with me a minute.

How long do email posts persist?

Manage Projects With Open Atrium for Drupal

Steve Backman — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 09:50:38 -0400

I’m trying out Open Atrium. http://openatrium.com/ Now in first beta, Open Atrium from Development Seed consolidates powerful project management features to Drupal in a modern, polished format.

When we first started bearing down on Drupal two years ago, about the first thing we wanted to do manage independent projects on our own www.dbdes.com site. We got reasonably far, with the ability to define clients, projects, tasks and organize blog-like discussion and documents for each.

Internet Privacy, Social Networking and "Digital Natives"

Steve Backman — Sun, 10 May 2009 08:30:41 -0400

John Palfrey would probably call himself a “digital settler,” someone comfortable enough with technology to help open up the new realms of pervasive digital media and online social networking. I just heard him speak about the emerging population of “digital natives,” those among the 1 to 3 Billion people born after 1980 with access to the new web and/or mobile technology and who have been exposed to the ways and means of its merger with daily life. ("Digital immigrants" make up Palfrey's third and largest clump of the human population--those of us slowly struggling to make their way in the post-email new world.)

For anyone working with youth in schools or youth-serving community organizations, Palfrey’s Born Digital, Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives, is essential reading. Since reading it last winter, I have found myself referring to it repeatedly in planning meetings about on-line privacy and security on our sites, the constructions of line identities, how advocacy and services can mesh with everyday social networking as experienced by young people today.

To see what it’s all about, before mentioning any websites, I’ll start by just passing on this youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79IYZVYIVLA&feature=related.

Synchronizing home and office computers

Steve Backman — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 15:58:02 -0400

I’m back to using two computers regularly. My trusty laptop now frequently just sits on my desk. While traveling around, my shiny new, lightweight Ubuntu netbook (a Dell mini 12) connects to the Internet, has Open Office, Remote Desktop, and enough other stuff that I am fine. I’m not here to sing the virtues of Ubuntu; I want to talk about the challenges of having data on more than one computer.

New from Idealware.org: Comparing Open Source Content Management Systems

Steve Backman — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 15:39:35 -0400

On March 31, Idealware.org released its long-awaited in-depth comparison of Open Source content management systems. Database Designs’ Steve Backman contributed to the evaluation of Drupal and reviewed the overall report and we helped sponsor its publication.

Download it free from idealware: http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/03/new-report-comparing-wordpress-joo...

Lively "Be the Media" conference in Boston

Steve Backman — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 06:50:21 -0500

This year's "Be The Media" mini-conference gathered both experienced social networking activists and those just getting started with the new media. Sponsored by Project Think Different, Boston Women's Fund, Resist, Press Pass TV and Third Sector New England, this day long conference targeted communications staff and organizers from smaller, under-resourced organizations.A series of lively workshops explored "Challenges and Opportunities in the Age of New Meda for Grassroots Organizations."