Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 22, 2010

Among the people I’m privileged to call a colleague here at Benetech is Viji Dilip, the International Program Coordinator for our Bookshare International service. I wanted to give back to society, to help people who didn’t have vision with their education so that they could become economically and socially independent."

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 17, 2008

I’m in a little bit different of a place this year, than last. I’m looking forward to it. I’m on the Evaluating Open Source panel, with Laura Quinn and Catherine Lane, which should be great. Lots of wonderful folks, should be great panels.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 25, 2017

Did you read books, take classes, or have a coach? The session kicked off with a Spectragram exercise involving the full group. I learned this technique from Alan Gunn from Aspiration over ten years ago at 2007 Penguin Day. As the facilitator, you have give clear instructions to people and keep time.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 26, 2007

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology Wiki Syntax madness November 26, 2007 As most people deeply imbedded in Web 2.0, And none of these have the same syntax – they are similar, but slightly different. I am an avid Wiki user.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

DECEMBER 17, 2007

Experiments, snafus and stumbles December 17, 2007 I seem to have lost my head. Turns out, unlike Facebook, or Myspace and such, the “Spock Bot&# makes pages for people without their knowing. So people who were in my gmail address book, and in Spock, got a request for trust from me, not knowing where it came from.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 27, 2008

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.) I have other kinds of projects as well – those that use my talents somewhat differently. And, I guess truthfully, the blurb on my consulting site is kinda dry.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MAY 15, 2007

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants: Better Late than Never May 15, 2007 This carnival is a day late, unfortunately. It makes sense that can make a difference in how people respond to appeals.

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Amy Sample Ward

JUNE 24, 2010

She’s a go-to resource for nonprofit marketing and her new book is called The Nonprofit Marketing Guide ( get your copy here ). This interview is part of her virtual book tour; check out the full calendar of events. What’s the difference between online and offline marketing – or is there one?

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JULY 10, 2008

My theory of practice is different than my consulting philosophy. Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology My Theory of Practice July 10, 2008 I finally had the reason to begin to more completely articulate my theory of practice.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JUNE 28, 2018

There are different ways to design a participatory workshop. The assessment helps nonprofits look at eight different areas: Technology, Content, Channels/Devices, Audiences, Analytics, User Experience, and Governance. It is also used in education, although it is called something different, “ The Human Continuum.”.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

OCTOBER 9, 2007

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology Getting Naked: Being human and transparent October 9, 2007 If you are new to this site, you might want to read more , and subscribe to my feed. Sorry it’s a day late.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JUNE 29, 2007

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology Gender, Race and Open Source June 29, 2007 My session on Free and Open Source software and the US Social Forum went great yesterday. And aren’t those different that the issues other groups of people face?

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 16, 2008

But this seems very low, considering that probably 5,000+ people saw the announcement (adding up the totals for the varied list subscriptions.) In the past, people cared much more about whether or not something was free (as in beer) or cheap, and whether or not it was open source wasn’t on the radar. 3 Beth Kanter 01.20.08

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 16, 2006

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! But peer production also scares people silly. 2 Michelle Murrain 11.16.06

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JULY 6, 2007

July 6, 2007 Deborah, is, as per usual, diplomatic in her discussion of the site " Sustainable Nonprofit ", which is a new(?) I think the time has come to think differently. I am still a novice in the world of nonprofits, but certainly not in helping people. Throw a website at it! at 11:51 am Sadly, you’re right.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

DECEMBER 2, 2008

In some ways, it is astonishing how many different donor management packages there are. So how did people like these? There is, of necessity, a lot of overlap betwen CRM systems and Donor Management Systems. Many of the CRMs also show up here, although there are quite a number of packages that did not show up in the earlier survey.

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Have Fun - Do Good

AUGUST 20, 2007

Do you have a book that you want to write that you think will make the world a better place, but you're not sure how to do it? Bill O'Hanlon is offering a few Have Fun * Do Good readers scholarship spaces in his upcoming How to Write a Book and Get Published seminar in Santa Fe, NM September 21-23, 2007. Guess what?

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

APRIL 3, 2009

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. You might think that comparing four different open source packages that, in essence, do pretty the same thing (in a broad sense) would be a cakc walk.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 19, 2007

I got to be a geek, and feel like I was really making a difference in the workings of organizations, and, hopefully, in people’s lives. Although it certainly could be argued that would have just involved different demons. I want to see people’s real faces, and hear their real voices. And, I think I did that.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JULY 15, 2007

July 15, 2007 As you will have undoubtedly figured out – this blog moved! To recap, I took the following steps: Set up my blog on a different domain (in this case, it was zenofnptech.com.) Letting people know Changing the DNS of the old site (and changing the site on wordpress.) I’d recommend it to anyone.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

APRIL 10, 2008

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). It is made up of people who are techically-oriented, largely affluent, and largely spend inordinate amounts of time in contact with electronic devices.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 7, 2007

August 7, 2007 I’ve been experimenting with the non-content centered social networking sites LinkedIn and Facebook for a while now. and our own Social Source Commons , are a different animal.) Facebook (and LinkedIn) are what people are calling “walled gardens&#. The content centered ones, like flickr, del.icio.us

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 6, 2007

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology Tagging Discussion January 6, 2007 Beth started a cross-blog discussion about tagging and folksonomies, and I thought I’d weigh in. But is efficiency the most important thing?

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 1, 2007

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology What OpenSocial Means November 1, 2007 The buzz of the blogosphere is the announcement of Google’s OpenSocial. Friendster, Orkut, Hi5 and LinkedIn have very different demographic and geographic reaches.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 19, 2007

Consolidation among vendors means that some customers will be dealing with different (and larger, potentially less friendly) entities. But a few more people will have a lot more money in their bank accounts. It also means fewer options. And this, I think, is one really important thing to think hard about.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 19, 2007

Consolidation among vendors means that some customers will be dealing with different (and larger, potentially less friendly) entities. But a few more people will have a lot more money in their bank accounts. It also means fewer options. And this, I think, is one really important thing to think hard about.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JULY 6, 2008

It’s going to take some real elbow grease of reaching out to people who might begin to form the kernel of a development community to get that going. At the same time, it really doesn’t make a lot of difference to the customer that was going to hire Mpower anyway. So my hope is that they really begin to use the platform.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 19, 2007

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology Spirituality and Technology January 19, 2007 A number of people have written me, and said that they appreciate that there is a blog with a spiritual take on technology. Spirituality is in creation.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

APRIL 15, 2007

April 15, 2007 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. It’s the same, really, with Drupal, only different. I guess that’s where it gets interesting when you work with a CMS, right?

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Have Fun - Do Good

NOVEMBER 7, 2007

My senior year of college I knew that I wanted to do work that made a difference, but I didn't know what kind of work that would be. If you are a college student, or someone in career transition, who wants to find work that fulfills your big vision for a better world, I have a few words of advice, and some books to recommend.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

OCTOBER 1, 2007

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology Social Networks and Digital Sharecropping October 1, 2007 I was reading Deborah Finn’s curmugeonly post about Facebook. I have been having curmudgeonly thoughts about social networks in general.

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Have Fun - Do Good

DECEMBER 14, 2006

If there's a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. Toni Morrison Here's my list of Favorite Books of 2006, in the order I read them. Both books are crazily well-written. You can check out my 2005 list here. A Beginner's Guide to Changing the World by Isabel Losada.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 29, 2006

So in comes IPv6, a different kind of addressing protocol. One of my favorite people who makes geeky stuff understandable is Carla Schroeder. Which, on one hand, seems like a lot, but it’s not, when every cell phone, PC, router, cable set top box and toaster has one. It will likely even manage to make it into space, I think.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

APRIL 15, 2007

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology Speaking too soon April 15, 2007 I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since I wrote my post, a few weeks ago , saying I was done with technology consulting. It just wasn’t happening very well.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

OCTOBER 10, 2006

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." Human beings use metaphors all the time to understand the world, and to frame it.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 14, 2009

All of these strategies take time and resources, but of different kinds. The challenge is to design a template that travels well and can be easily and consistently updated (when our organization moved, I had 5 different footers to update). Some take internal staff resources (especially the Manual strategy.) 13 Eoin 06.25.09

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 6, 2006

Dipendra has been a subscriber to Bookshare.org for our O'Reilly technical titles, but we're trying to move beyond these into serving a full range of books with publisher and author permissions. I was able to tour the facilities, which included at least three digital recording studios using the DAISY software for human narrated books.

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