PICnet Blog

PICnet Volunteer Series: Pradeep is providing hope

Pradeep Suthram — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:00:44 +0000

This is the fifth post in our series about the PICnet Team’s volunteer efforts.

Who: Project Manager Pradeep Suthram
How he serves: Volunteer for Friends of Prajwala and the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area

Pradeep has been working for PICnet for several years as a project manager, but still finds lots of time for his community, including his church, and even supporting charities his friends work for as well. But his main project hits close to home: for the last couple of years he has been volunteering for Friends of Prajwala, an organization that works to help victims of sexual trafficking and prostitution in India. As a a native of Hyderabad, India, Pradeep has found a way to help the people from his home country, and has even gotten support from multiple friends and family members.

Through Friends of Prajwala, Pradeep has been leading a fundraising effort called The Rebuild Campaign to help build a new shelter near Hyderabad for 600 women and girls who are survivors of sexual assault and trafficking. Growing up, Pradeep witnessed a lot of poverty and wanted to do something about it – he says that trafficked women and girls are some of the most poor people in India, and therefore denied their rights. He has since built a website for The Rebuild Campaign, and helped to raise $16,000 so far through his friends and networks.

Pradeep also assists the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area (UNA-NCA) with website development (using Joomla! of course) and he has helped to organize an international development career fair and hosted seminars on microfinance and technology related to international development. “UNA NCA has helped me to connect with a lot of like-minded ‘do-gooders,’ and learn about some really interesting issues,” says Pradeep.

Where in the world is Ryan? … Brazil

Ryan Ozimek — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:30:20 +0000

Conference dates: September 12; 14
Where: Joomla!Day Brazil; DevinRio

In September, I had the great opportunity to attend two different conferences in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and once again, both were amazing experiences. First up, I went to Joomla!Day Brazil to meet up with Joomla! enthusiasts from a wide range of backgrounds, businesses, the government and nonprofits. I was especially excited to meet Paulino Michelazzo, the president of Fabrica Livre, an open source consulting firm in Sao Paulo.

Similar to what I said in my keynote speech for Joomla!Day South Africa, I gave an update to conference attendees on Joomla! leadership and the drive toward increased transparency in open source matters, and I shared lessons learned from outside the Brazilian community. And then I had the opportunity to learn from the experiences of NGOs in Brazil and how they use Joomla! It’s pretty cool to hear about all the various ways that this software is being utilized around the world.

A couple of days later, I attended DevinRio, a conference specifically for developers with a focus on open-source software. Among the people I had the chance to meet were Guilherme Chapiewski of Globo.com, a large media conglomerate; and my buddy Rodrigo Spillere, the young developer I met earlier this year at FISL 10. At this conference, I shared lessons learned from building an open-source community around an open-source project, while keeping in mind the user and community experience when writing code – because usability and constituent feedback are key to providing the best experience possible. In a nutshell, I was able to explain, as one attendee said, “the secret sauce of the Joomla! community success and show how open-source projects are improving the landscape of technology and helping to change the world.”

J!Salesforce available in Soapbox!

Ryan Ozimek — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:54:00 +0000

We’re excited to announce the availability of our J!Salesforce 1.0 release, connecting Joomla with Salesforce.com! Even better, for a limited-time, new Soapbox clients (non-profits and socially responsible businesses) can receive J!Salesforce for FREE!

With J!Salesforce, organizations and businesses using the powerful Salesforce.com CRM can now seamlessly share data with the Joomla CMS.

This has been a long and winding road, but we’re proud of the new suite of extensions, and look forward to delivering them to the world. This release of J!Salesforce 1.0 is currently available to new and current Non-Profit Soapbox organizations and businesses. Sign-up now!

Key Features

This new suite of tools includes our first step in strong integration of Joomla and Salesforce.com, including:

connectivity between Joomla and the Contacts object in Salesforce.com
Joomla user registration with additional custom fields that auto-populate a corresponding Salesforce.com new contact
profile updating syncing with Salesforce.com
search directory extension, providing a searchable interface of your Contacts object from Salesforce.com through your Joomla Web site (especially useful for membership directories)
a user-friendly, customizable and templateable search form, results page, and detailed view page for Salesforce.com Contact records in Joomla

This is just the beginning! Our vision for version 2.0 includes:

a multi-object form builder, allowing connectivity between Joomla and any object in Salesforce.com
ability to create and edit multiple forms
additional administrator management of Salesforce.com records

Limited-time offer

Until November 30, 2009, new Soapbox clients can request the J!Salesforce add-on for FREE! Interested in signing up for Soapbox with the powerful J!Salesforce connector? Fill-out our form and we’ll get you started right away.

Help for the holiday giving season: Soapbox Launchpad

Ryan Ozimek — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:37:52 +0000

Are you looking for ways to increase your online fundraising effectiveness this holiday giving season? Are you trying to boost your socially responsible business’s online presence, too?

Well, we’re here to help you make that happen! For a limited time, PICnet is offering Soapbox Launchpad, a special $2,500 website package that will provide qualifying non-profits and socially responsible businesses with our Non-Profit Soapbox services at our most affordable pricing ever. Our Soapbox Launchpad is a terrific opportunity to get you up and running with an easy-to-manage and great looking website — quickly and affordably.

This special package will be available only until November 15, 2009, and limited to 100 qualifying organizations, so apply now!

What’s Included

Our special Soapbox Launchpad package includes the following:

A fully functional Non-Profit Soapbox website (powered by Joomla!)
Rapid launch timeline for the holiday season
Dozens of beautiful, professionally designed templates to choose from
Guidance on information architecture
Online credit card processing connection to applicable services
Hosting and support services

Apply Now!

By providing this package beyond our standard discounting schedule, we want organizations to gain even further savings. Help us understand how a new website can help you more effectively build a better world. Any organization or business can apply!

This year has been a tough one, and you deserve a break. Apply now for our Soapbox Launchpad package, and enjoy the power of Joomla! with strong support by your friends at PICnet.

Come to Dev Summit 09!

Ryan Ozimek — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:00:58 +0000

You read a lot of posts from me about the conferences I attend – and this time, I want to encourage you to attend one with me! Dev Summit 09 will be from November 18-20 in Oakland, California. I think it’s the 15th Aspiration run-event I’ve personally attended, and I keep attending them because of Allen Gunn, aka Gunner, is one of the best facilitators of all time. He and his team at Aspiration Tech are simply the best group of folks to run these technology events, and each one is both extremely enjoyable and engaging (less PowerPoints, more actual discussion).

Dev Summit will be terrific because it’s going to bring together software developers from the non-profit technology sector, specifically CMS, CRM, and other Web developers.

What’s really important is that this is one of the few times that people who are actually writing code for large projects that effect the non-profit community come together to share knowledge, build bridges, and support social change together. It’s really an amazing sight. I’m excited to see Michelle Murrain, Nate Aune, Ben Rigby, Courtney Miller, Jim Craner, and Ron Severdia, all of who will be leading sessions. I’ll also be sharing lessons learned on topics like leveraging the cloud, and talking about utilizing Joomla! for beginners and advanced users.

Here are the sessions I’m speaking at:

See a full listing of the sessions at Dev Summit 09 here. Hope to see you there! If you plan on going, give me a shout!

PICnet Volunteer Series: Julie is empowering young girls

jsauber — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:45:51 +0000

This is the third post in our series about the PICnet Team’s volunteer efforts.

Who: Office Manager Julie Dennis
How she serves: Volunteer for Community Bridges

Julie has only been working as a PICnetter for a few months now, but she has been volunteering since early this year to middle-school girls develop lifeskills through Maryland-based Community Bridges. She began helping the organization in January as a mentor for a Montgomery County Public School student, Allison. As Allison’s mentor for the spring semester, Julie met with the girl each week to have dinner, play games or just have “girl talk” about what was going on in her life.

How did Julie get involved with Community Bridges? She had been looking for an organization that empowers women and girls, and after attending a development conference in November of 2008, she approached the Executive Deputy Director about volunteer opportunities and was put to “work” in January 2009. Julie says,”I really like helping these young ladies figure out how to deal with the hardships that they might encounter in 8th grade and especially on through high school. It is great to have a support system of people who care for you, and I think that these mentees know that Community Bridges is there to do just that.”

One of Julie’s favorite projects through Community Bridges so far was a Saturday yoga session they held during a unit on positive body image. “It was really cool because we were taught something that we could do to help our bodies (and minds), and it was also a great bonding experience for the mentors and their mentees.”

Julie is a mentor once again this semester for a young girl, and she’s looking forward to the special events and activities and spending time with fellow mentors and their mentees.

Where in the world is Ryan? … South Africa

Ryan Ozimek — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:00:21 +0000

It’s about time that I gave another update on some of my travels to spread the word about PICnet, Joomla! and technology. Over the next few weeks you’ll see installments from my trips to South Africa, Brazil, Mongolia, New York, and more. The key theme? Engaging with Joomla! communities around the world to share our experiences, lessons learned and latest innovations and vision to create a better product for the user – that may be you!

August 13-19, 2009 – Cape Town, South Africa

I’ll begin with my trip to Cape Town, South Africa for their Joomla!Day in August. Among the audience at this conference were Joomla! users and people interested in using it, NGOs, local universities and small businesses. The day before the event there was a training day where I had the opportunity to work with 20 individuals from the community (ex. Food Bank of South Africa) to give them hands on instructions and lessons about using Joomla!.

I was honored with giving the keynote address for the event, and some of the “key” things I addressed was information about the upcoming 1.6 version of Joomla!, and the importance of the project in Africa, especially to disenfranchised communities. This was an important moment- it was the first time that someone from the Joomla! leadership team had ever been to an African Joomla! event, so I was very proud and honored to be there representing the project.

There was a great presence by the organizers of the event: namely Sean Grant, Matthew Philogene and Brendon Hatcher. It was great to meet key leadership from the area and really come together with the people you read about and talk to through email or by phone.

Matt and Brandon give me a sweeping view tour around Table Mountain.

A passionate closing talk by Phehello brought everyone back to a call to action: Joomla! should be utilized to help enable communities across the continent to more effectively share their stories with the world. It truly can be a tool to help organizations within Africa to better engage with their communities, and promote their causes.

It was amazing that these people knew so much and were so pasisonate about Joomla! considering they have bandwidth, pricing, and activity restrictions that make it difficult to fully engage in an online community. It was really great to see them overcome those challenges, given there are only two fiberoptic lines going into the country.

Overall, the event was a great success – check out more here.

CEO Women, a Non-Profit Soapbox Client, Uses New Media to Educate Female Immigrant Entrepreneurs

Pradeep Suthram — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:47:41 +0000

One of our Non-Profit Soapbox clients, Creating Economic Opportunities for Women (C.E.O. Women), was featured on Huffingtonpost.com this week for their innovative approach towards using new media to educate women entrepreneurs. The organization’s mission is to train and assist immigrant and refugee women to become successful entrepreneurs and small business owners.

C.E.O. Women launched “Grand Cafe,” an educational video series in a Latin Telenovela format, that features immigrant women helping each other to establish their businesses. Characters range from a Haitian jewelry maker to a Chinese accountant, each learning how to integrate entrepreneurship into their lives. C.E.O. Women is using “Grand Cafe” to reach out to more than 170,000 women in the San Francisco Bay Area who could benefit from their services, and we’re pleased to see them getting recognized for this.

With the help of our information architect, project manager, and in-house designer, we developed the organization’s website in mid-2008 on our Non-Profit Soapbox 1.0 System. As C.E.O. Women continues to work diligently to serve a wider clientele, our team at PICnet is constantly improving our technology and services that match their scale of work.

Check out the trailer below:

Your Cause. Your Website: Holiday fundraising with YouTube

Tim Forbes — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:00:14 +0000

The holidays are fast approaching. In fact, they are close enough that you might just be peering at this post through a ring of yellow stickies on your monitor with notes like “Draft holiday fundraising appeal” and “Update mailing list for big $$$ push” alongside “Figure out what the heck to get mom this year.”

Before the holiday stickies completely obscure your monitor, we wanted to toss out an idea for you to consider. How about adding a video appeal to that big $$$ push to set your organization apart from the crowd?

You can. It’s free and easy and allows you to leverage the tools the good folks at YouTube provide beyond just embedding videos into your site.

Take a moment to learn about YouTube’s Nonprofit Program to see how you can turn video views into donation dollars. Interested in some inspiration? Jump straight to their Video Campaign Tip Sheet for some examples that just might cause some early holiday cheer.

Check out our Help Desk for more posts like this.

40 sites team up to fight cancer

Tim Forbes — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:49:49 +0000

American Cancer Society of California does great work on one of the most vital issues of our day. To fund this critical effort, they run a network of 40 Discovery Shops that help support the fight against cancer through the sale of high quality, gently used, donated merchandise for men, women and children.

When they came to us asking if we could help create an individual home on the internet for each and every one of these Discovery Shops, we had just one question:

When do we start?

By leveraging the power of Non-Profit Soapbox and crafting a common template for consistent branding across the network, we built 40 sites to promote each individual shop – all efficiently and easily for not much more than the cost of a single site.

No fuss. No muss. Just a high quality network of easy to manage sites to further an important mission. But don’t take our word for it. Hear it straight from Steven Wirt, Director of Online and Internal Communications for the American Cancer Society of California:

“I’ve been very impressed and pleased with Non-Profit Soapbox. Wrangling 40 web sites has been a seamless, pain-free experience.”

And now for a little spin around the beautiful state of California and American Cancer Society’s Discovery Shops: