Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 26, 2008

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology How to choose a CRM March 26, 2008 I’ll be doing a webinar on open source CRMs tomorrow. One of the fascinating things to me is how quickly the CRM space is evolving.

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Tech Soup

NOVEMBER 14, 2013

As we hurtle toward the end of 2013, it’s time for an update of nonprofit technology trends and news! If you’re a nonprofit news junkie, have a look at all our Nonprofit Technology News pieces from this past year. Back in my May Nonprofit Technology News edition, I covered the emerging field of digital wallets.

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Amy Sample Ward

JANUARY 20, 2011

There’s a lot happening with Social Actions right now but one bit of news is really exciting, and needs to be highlighted: some incredibly important technical enhancements have recently been made to the Social Actions API. I wrote a blog post called, Mashups, Open APIs, and the Future of Collaboration in the Nonprofit Tech Sector.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JULY 19, 2007

First is the wholesale movement toward the three major open source CMS platforms/frameworks, Drupal , Joomla and Plone. There will be detailed case studies in the new primer, but what’s been striking to me is how many examples of this there are out there. And so the feedback cycle keeps going.

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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

MARCH 13, 2008

Basically, it seems the motivation is that open systems allow them to upgrade their capabilities rapidly, and they need to be able to share data freely. The process of governments in Europe starting to shift to open source software, and software that used open standards, rapidly increased the use of FOSS in Europe.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 19, 2008

An LMS, or learning platform, is a system that is designed to facilitate some sort of learning process over the web. There are both proprietary and open source LMS. There are open source LMS, some of which are quite well developed, and some also geared toward (or developed by) colleges and universities.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 10, 2008

Both reflective practice – that is the process of reflecting on what you do, and how you do it, as well as conscious, deliberate evaluation of projects, are things that are not very common in our field, nor things that are valued or encouraged. Unfortunately, none of them had an answer to that question.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 30, 2007

It’s also really interesting to see how free and open source fits into all of this. My role has been to gather up the use cases (specific examples of translation processes). What are the tools like? How do we replace proprietary tools? How does this all get paid for? Check out the wiki.

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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. Even if I just skim most things, it keeps me abreast of what’s big and new and important. In some ways, I have been blessed with the gift of osmosis.

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Byte Technology

JUNE 2, 2016

Is the checkout process one that visitors will trust? When it comes to options that can really help you sell on your site, WordPress—as open source software—puts lots of additions at your fingerprints from third party developers. Is it aesthetically pleasing to the point of encouraging sales as well as repeat visits?

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MAY 18, 2007

Microsoft this week has started saber-rattling against Linux and other open source projects, by suggesting that they infringe on 235 patents that they hold. Just threatening to sue, threatening to get license fees (which, for some open source projects would be a major problem) is enough to make people doubt the future of open source.

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Tech Soup

DECEMBER 16, 2015

In this edition of nonprofit tech news, TechSoup shows new ways your nonprofit could harness mobile and killer apps in 2016! Here are a few new things we could be doing with our phones and tablets in 2016. To attract good applicants, nonprofits may well need to go mobile with their job application process.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JULY 15, 2007

I’ve been rather impressed by how easy Wordpress was to set up and use, and how easy the migration process was. July 15, 2007 As you will have undoubtedly figured out – this blog moved! I’ve moved it off of Typepad, and onto Wordpress. I’d recommend it to anyone.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 13, 2007

Actually, even if they have, for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations, it’s really great. It’s stable, feature rich, uses open standards, reads and writes MS files, and, did I mention it’s free? Outside of the US, OpenOffice.org adoption is growing fast. I imagine that will begin to happen here as well.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 9, 2006

I’ve been learning about some interesting examples of the use of APIs in nonprofit organizations, as well as learning what vendors (both proprietary and open source) are thinking about the issue. I’m looking forward to getting into the meat of the writing. That’s a good thing.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JULY 10, 2008

This is also an ongoing process. Reading, research, collaborating with others, getting my hands dirty with servers and code, playing with new applications and new APIs – all of those things keep my technology expertise fresh. Intermediation. 2 comments… read them below or add one } 1 Michele Martin 07.11.08

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 3, 2011

This year, for the first time, IDPD is commemorated with supporting sub-themes (see the full list here ), to draw attention to key issues that come into play in the intersection of disability and development processes. This innovative approach is now opening up completely new horizons. In the U.S.,

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 8, 2007

But it’s only been in the last few years that mega storage, and mega processing power were available to organizations to power big web applications and the like. And now, there is E2 – Elastic Compute Cloud – use only the storage, processing power and bandwidth you use.

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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! It gets chewy, for sure, but it feels like every chew is worth it.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

OCTOBER 9, 2007

Michael Stein talks about three different kinds of mistakes that one can make in technology consulting, including some errors of process, and the “Hot Dog&# syndrome. A great read for anyone who does development for clients. I’ve made most of the mistakes outlined in all three of these brave blog postings.

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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. My blog and my advising practice don’t quite have the same mission. My advising practice is much more about educating and helping people with concrete technology tools, and concrete projects.

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Byte Technology

SEPTEMBER 13, 2016

Tech professionals and Internet security specialists call out four main reasons why keeping WordPress updated at all times is important: security, performance, bug fixes and compatibility. For anyone who sees updating their WordPress sites and accompanying plugins as a hassle, it’s important to know that the process is relatively painless.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

FEBRUARY 8, 2008

They describe a process where 99% of the people involved get close to nothing for their efforts, the authors gives away right and the publishers just get to sit on their pot’ogold of academic knowlege and get student to pay inflated prices to use these works in school.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JULY 27, 2007

I’ve been re-reading a book that I read early in the decision-making process about becoming a consultant way back in 1996. There is a new updated version of the book. This will be my last tech blog entry until at least August 6th. I’m taking time off to work on science fiction writing! {

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 6, 2007

But I think the larger question about folksonomies is important: is efficiency all there is, and in what ways are folksonomies a way for the “folks&# (rather than “experts&# ) to have access to the process of categorizing their own content, and content they care about? What do those guidelines look like?

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 28, 2006

November 28, 2006 Well, both in the process of learning about all of the very cool web 2.0 Unfortunately, the nptech world hasn’t yet caught on to the “Planet&# phenomenon of the open source world (see Planet Ubuntu Women.) It’s a great idea, I think.

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Tech Soup

MAY 16, 2014

He is the founder of Txtocracy.com , an open-source project that aims to increase voter turnout via text messages. One thing I can say is that Canada is a smaller nonprofit market and because so many charitable processes and administrative things are geared to American 501(c)3s, it is sometimes more difficult for us.”

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

DECEMBER 17, 2007

Now, I admit there are cases where people may have been confused about the process and accidently invited other people. If you felt that the process was confusing and sent invites when you did not plan to, I am sorry. If you felt that the process was confusing and sent invites when you did not plan to, I am sorry.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

OCTOBER 10, 2006

I know it was sort of in process when I was fading out, but I wasn’t much aware of it. I also tend to think that while the paradigms differ, a donor, a member, a constituent in the end is not that different in terms of business processes from a client or customer. And why do we think about business processes?

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

OCTOBER 21, 2007

I picked it up by happenstance, I think because I had NOSI on my mind, and I was thinking about how to talk to people about open source and nonprofits. His examples are things like saving millions by reducing employee turnover, increasing profits by streamlining processes, etc. I’ll have to look for it.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

APRIL 3, 2009

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. First, a simple metric relating to security reports, and second, what processes are in place in the communities to deal with security. More on that in a bit.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 17, 2007

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology The search for good web conferencing August 17, 2007 I decided, perhaps rashly, that one way of exposing people to, and training people on, open source software, was by doing web conferencing.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JUNE 24, 2008

On the Windows side the hardware manufacturers make proprietary drivers for Windows, and very few make drivers for Linux, or open source their drivers so that Linux developers can use them. And, of course, designers need software that just don’t have high enough quality open source alternatives yet. 8 Pete 06.25.08

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Non Profit Quarterly

AUGUST 25, 2022

Tech nonprofit” is an emerging term that refers to a tech startup that is building software or web applications using a nonprofit model for social impact. Fast Forward, a tech nonprofit accelerator, highlighted a few such organizations during their Demo Day 2022 event. Using Tech to Reduce Barriers to Education.

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Tech Soup

AUGUST 7, 2013

Data Digest is a weekly round-up of the latest news on data-related projects in the nonprofit sector, compiled and authored by Keisha Taylor of GuideStar International and TechSoup Global. Open Source data big data crowdsourcing' (Please visit the site to view this video). It was originally published on NetSquared.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 14, 2009

If you are in the process of reassessing your CRM or CMS or both, now is a very good time to think hard about how you want these two to talk with each other. I’ll have follow up posts on specific examples of this integration using open source tools (on one end or the other, or both.) at 8:53 pm Loraine Lawson 02.16.09

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