Politics, the environment, technology, activism. And stuff.
Posted in General on Jun 2nd, 2008
Gavin Clabaugh’s got a fun (and wise) new riff on the larger forces shaping our world: I see this third force everywhere. I see it hiding inside the inaccurately named thing called “social networking. I see it embedded in “American Idol.” It follows me to the grocery store. It wakes me up at night. It’s busy […]
Posted in General on Feb 28th, 2008
Please go read this incredibly insightful reflection by Eugene Eric Kim. If you’re too lazy, I’ll clip the most important part for ya: The following day, I co-led a session on this topic with AngusParker. Two of the participants were dealing with the specific challenge of connecting members of a national network of leaders in […]
Posted in General on Feb 3rd, 2008
Superbowl time. I couldn’t care less about the football. But I’m reminded of my all-time favorite Superbowl ad, which speaks to me in that geeky nonprofit technology consultant way:
Posted in General on Jan 30th, 2008
… those of you reading in an aggregator will have to click on through to see a Sprout in all of its glory. Congrats to Carnet and the Sprout Builder team on an amazing launch, and thanks for sneaking me into the beta. I can’t wait to play around more and create more really cool widgets […]
Posted in General on Nov 21st, 2007
Next time one of your major outsourced communications services gets hacked, please don’t: Wait a month to notify your users Send out the notification email the day before a long holiday weekend I agree with Allan. That’s pretty weak.
Posted in General on Nov 15th, 2007
Right this very minute, ONE/Northwest is hosting a “brain trust” event where 60+ people are gathered to talk about online social networks and their potential for powering social change. Here’s a liveblog of my notes: Gideon Rosenblatt, ONE/Northwest (http://www.onenw.org) Executive Director We are a capacity builder that helps environmental groups engage people in environmental protection. Thanks to Aron Thompson, […]
Posted in General on Oct 12th, 2007
Tom Moroz, Open Society Instiute Intro by Alan Runyan: the future of open source software looks very much like the path that nonprofits and civil society organizations have blazed. Heard a lot about Seattle 2006 conference and the strong community. At first I wondered what the connection between open society and open source was, but the more I’ve […]
Posted in General on Oct 10th, 2007
Thanks to the heroic efforts of Vincenzo Barone, Christian Scholz and the team at City of Science, we have two channels of live video from Plone Conference streaming on the web and in Second Live. All the details for tuning in are at: http://ploneconf.comlounge.tv/
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 27th, 2007
Our database consulting practice here at ONE/Northwest is continuing to boom. We’re looking to add another database consultant to our team here in Seattle:http://www.onenw.org/about/jobs/CRM-ConsultantCome help us build next generation relationship management systems for kick-ass environmental groups!
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 20th, 2007
My colleagues and I at ONE/Northwest have been spending a lot of time engaging with an Open Source software development community (the folks who make Plone) over the past two years. It’s been an amazing learning experience. The following essay summarizes our experiences and attempts to tease out someulearnings both for nonprofits and for Open […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 5th, 2007
Alison Fine just wrote a report on the use of social media tools among Overbrook Foundation human rights grantees, for, um, the Overbrook Foundation. Her top-line finding: “a perpetual state of anxiety” among nonprofits about “Web 2.0″ tools: Overall, the grantees are firmly entrenched in the Web 1.0 world, meaning that grantees use the web largely as […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 2nd, 2007
Remember Chandler? Mitch Kapor’s open-source “Outlook killer” that was supposed to change how we manage information forever? Well, that was a few years back, and while they still haven’t gotten to a 1.0 release, they’ve finally put out an interesting “0.7 Preview” version. And along the way, they’ve really done some amazing thinking about how […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Aug 29th, 2007
Very interesting. Facebook has announced that it will no longer rank popular applications by raw number of users, instead choosing to measure “engagement” those users have with the apps they’ve installed. This is a great, smart shift, and I think it presages lots of changes to how online activism is measured. We define engagement as the […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jul 16th, 2007
Plone 3 Release Candidate 1 is out. This is a big milestone in the evolution of Plone, and a big leap forward for both developers and for everyday Plone users. The Plone 3 team is still putting the final polish on it, but Release Candidate 1 is more than ready for prodding, poking […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jul 13th, 2007
My colleague Andrew Burkhalter has posted the first part of an update on our work to integrate Plone with Salesforce.com. Big props to Jesse Synder of NPowerSeattle and Brian Gershon of the Web Collective for their work to drive this important integration work forward. Open-source collaboration is really beautiful to see.
Posted in Uncategorized on Jul 11th, 2007
Managing Proprietary and Shared Platforms: A Life-Cycle View by Thomas R. Eisenmann looks like a really interesting examination of the challenges of both shared and proprietary platforms as they grow and evolve. The research shows that challenges confronting platform managers vary systematically, depending on whether the platform is proprietary or shared and on the stage of […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jun 22nd, 2007
Shae Allen offers a sharp, funny riff on the thrill of difficult web design clients. Dear Mr. Architect: Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jun 20th, 2007
Jeff at Lullabot is dreaming big dreams about the potential for Drupal in the social change sector. A great mix of optimism and realism. Worth paying attention to, even if you are, say, a Plone developer.
Posted in Uncategorized on Jun 16th, 2007
CMS Watch’s Tony Byrne recently published his annual “kudos and shortcomings” report on 40 major web content management systems. It’s a summary of a much more in-depth pay-to-read report. Byrne evaluted CMS in 30 different categories — user-generated content, usability, overall value, etc. In each category, he identified one leader, several “honorable mentions” and several laggards. […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jun 3rd, 2007
So, three-quarters of a year into Netflix’s million-dollar movie-prediction challenge, it seems that the leading team is three-quarters of the way towards the goal of improving Netflix’s recommendation system by 10%. Which makes me think about the role of prizes in innovation. Clearly, they are starting to regain some currency amongst the technorati. The recent Netsquared […]
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