Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

APRIL 14, 2008

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants April 14, 2008 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.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 20, 2007

How easily or quickly does it seem that questions get answered? 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? Look at the “download&# page (or “releases&# ). When was the last release?

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

DECEMBER 14, 2007

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology What was it, the question mark? The whole point of the post was to crow about how positive the open source results were. To my mind, it bodes well for the open source tools.

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Robert Weiner

JANUARY 27, 2012

Disclosures: I have clients that use both companies’ products, as well as products from their competitors, open source products, and homegrown solutions. Mostly I have lots of questions and concerns that the firms won’t be able to address until the merger is completed — if then. My main questions are about product strategies.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 19, 2007

I decided several weeks ago, for a variety of reasons, to retire my independent consultant hat. Being an independent consultant was, for me, a way to feel like I was using my skills for the greater good. I’ve been doing this work for more than 10 years now, full time for about seven of those years. And, I think I did that.

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Saleforce Nonprofit

OCTOBER 24, 2022

For example, our first Impact Lab cohort designed Service Match , an open-source app designed for case managers who connect people experiencing homelessness to vital human services. Principal Consultant, Heller Consulting. Jennifer has been working at Heller Consulting for eight years. “ Jennifer Thall.

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Hunger Impact Puerto Rico Arkansas 93

Amy Sample Ward

DECEMBER 9, 2010

We provide both a feature summary and detailed reviews, as well as a directory of consultants. This 82-page report answers these questions and many, many more! The report also includes our new directory of consultants and designers who help nonprofits implement these Content Management Systems." Which are easiest to use?

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Bloomerang

DECEMBER 19, 2023

Often, they had to pay a consultant to help them set up their database and teach them how to use it. Even with the consultant’s help, they had to endure a lengthy implementation period; it was months before the system was set up. Now let’s look at Excel , which a lot of nonprofits initially use to track their data.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 19, 2008

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. Be Helpful.

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Open Source RSS NTEN Knowledge Management 120

Tech Soup

MARCH 8, 2016

We're especially excited to talk about three great offerings: Consultant Connection. Three Affordable Solutions: Using Open Data and Open-Source Data Science to Reach Your Goals — Friday, March 25 — 10:30 a.m. TechSoup Boost. Our annual Storymakers digital storytelling challenge.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 8, 2008

Thanks to twitter (hat tip to marshallk ), I learned about today’s big news: Google, Plaxo and Facebook joined the Data Portability working group. I think that people are getting wary of social networks where they have no control over their own data. But the real question is: will this actually result in data portability? {

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JULY 15, 2007

They are going to release an open source version later this year, which is wonderful, but I also would have had to pony up another $149 for a year of a Pro account, and that seemed excessive, since I could just as easily set up a Wordpress blog on the host I’m already paying for. One such platform was Typepad. Now, there is.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MAY 19, 2008

To their credit Convio asks this question on their blog : “Should organizations like Convio, and Giving USA continue to offer these sorts of insights to the nonprofit community, or is this simply self-serving marketing fluff?&# Everyone (including them) gets better data. What do you think? Time will tell. { Time will tell. {

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JULY 25, 2008

It’s an interesting question, what Android might (or might not) turn out to be. There are some other interesting moves outlined in that great post by Marshall Kirpatrick, my currently favorite ReadWriteWeb blogger Android for the masses, iPhone for the rich? Read an interview of an Android developer. So far, it’s simply vaporware.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JUNE 19, 2008

I got a chance to test this out in a more orchestrated way (as opposed to the usual consultant/client interactions) when I facilitated/taught an OpenOffice.org “untraining&# earlier this month at Google HQ in NYC (some more details are on the Google Blog.) I learned a lot. Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 13, 2007

It’s an interesting time, and there is a good question – is this something nonprofits should jump on? Social Ads are sponsored advertisements that are linked to users profile data, social graph, and activities. Ads can be targeted by profile data. The first part of the package is Facebook Fan Pages. Be Helpful.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 25, 2014

Ari Sahagun , a consultant who works with social justice groups on network visualizations, called for a group to discuss Network Mapping and Visualization. As he notes, the analysis can be helpful to him as a journalist and content curator to identify potential sources online. Some questions to ask: What patterns do you see?

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JUNE 11, 2007

I think part of the answer has to be to provide the resources for people to become better providers – whether it be to help budding accidental techies get off the ground to become great IT staff or independent consultants, or helping individual and small consulting firms learn what makes really good nonprofit support. Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 1, 2007

OpenSocial is a set of APIs that handle three different kinds of user data: profiles, social graph (who your friends are) and activities (the stuff of the Facebook news feeds.) But the path to truly portable (with adequate privacy controls) profile, social graph and activity data is still not entirely clear. No question about that.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 10, 2008

One question I asked all of them was about whether they had a process of reflection and evaluation of their work, as it was going on, and when the project was coming to a close. Unfortunately, none of them had an answer to that question. at 2:30 pm What great questions to ask, Michelle! Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 16, 2007

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology Linux Desktop Migration November 16, 2007 Linux has proven itself as a server platform – no one really questions it. A large chunk (the majority?) Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 13, 2008

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. I’d love your thoughts on this – particularly looking at the questions that folks suggested [link] 2 admin 08.14.08

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 5, 2008

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. at 7:16 am The question of how bleeding edge we need to be intrigues me. at 9:36 pm Great question. How bleeding edge do we need to be? { Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 1, 2007

The Macintosh operating system has without question, the best, most intuitive user interface ever invented, built on top of the best OS invented, UNIX. 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. Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 6, 2007

Gavin started this all off by posting a good and interesting set of questions about the efficiency of folksonomies. I’ll agree with Gavin, that folksonomies sure are less efficient, and a lot more messy than taxonomies. But is efficiency the most important thing? Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

OCTOBER 24, 2007

at 9:00 pm Well, for one thing, I should have used mutually exclusive questions instead of checkboxes. [poll=2] { 1 trackback } Roundup for November 2007 « Nonprofit Blog Exchange 07.09.10 at 12:09 pm { 2 comments… read them below or add one } 1 Beth Kanter 11.10.07 at 7:21 pm What did you get out of this survey? 2 admin 11.10.07

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

OCTOBER 20, 2006

It would have been nice to have heard from a circuit-rider or "for-little-profit" integrator/consultant type person, and maybe another nonprofit type (a moderately tech savvy ED?) Also, basically, what made an API "open" was that it was free to use, and well documented. That’s good news.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 9, 2007

It was quite a shame to have to give that up , but it was either that, or make due with either not using a Palm, or modifying dramatically how I dealt with my PIM data. And, to answer the question posed above, the answer is, for me, obviously, a definite yes. I’m sure I’ll be upgrading. Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 30, 2007

I hope that in the process of doing projects for clients, I am able to ask those deep questions, and help them ask “why&# much more often. Lots of “whats&# and “hows,&# but not enough “why’s&# You were probably one of those “annoying&# little girls who asked a lot of questions, weren’t you?

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Forj

JUNE 7, 2021

In this guide, we’ll answer all of your learning experience platform questions and more, including: What is an LXP? The data from these systems is then used to inform the recommendations provided by the LXP. As your learning business grows and evolves, these changes are fueled by data. Let’s dive in.

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Platform Experiment eLearning Learning 36

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 19, 2007

But how to stop that kind of thinking on an organizational level is the question. If ten similar nonprofit organizations came together to build a system that would work for them, they each would get 10 times the software that they could afford individually. Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 15, 2006

I didn’t ask this question too often (it would just depress me.) But as I re-enter this field I love, I can’t help but think about this question again. As someone who was a real rarity in my early years (how many African American women neuroscientists have you heard of?) Be Helpful.

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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. I keep a little tech support blog on Mayfirst[0] and I’m always game to answer questions like. Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 19, 2007

Like getting underneath the surface issues of the recent CRM vendor mergers, or getting underneath issues relating to open source software. I don’t think I live up to that quite as well as I’d like, given my preference for open source solutions. at 6:50 pm Dear Michelle: Thanks for raising these questions.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

OCTOBER 10, 2006

When I came back, I was surprised to see how many consultants and technology providers have jumped on the Salesforce bandwagon. But my question is more than just exigency. It’s asking the questions of what happens when nonprofits incorporate what might be considered the wrong metaphors? And precisely (!)

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

OCTOBER 1, 2007

There is no question that the social networking space is evolving. That’s because a lot of the social networking sites allow you to find other people on their site by giving them your gmail username and password, or your email contact list. When all of those happen, I’ll be the first to sign up. { at 9:46 am Web 2.0 Be Helpful.

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NTEN

MARCH 2, 2011

Peter Campbell, IT Director, Earthjustice As an IT Director, co-workers, peers, and consultants frequently ask me, "Do you use Microsoft Project ?" The answer to that question is a resounding denial. GanttProject is an open source, cross-platform project management tool. Think of it as MS Project lite.

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