Someone mentioned to me that from what I write on my blog, she wouldn’t know what it is that I actually do in my consulting work. 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.) And, I guess truthfully, the blurb on my consulting site is kinda dry. Gotta work on that.
So, what do I do? I think of myself in these terms: I educate, facilitate, mediate, and problem-solve.
For one client, I am their technology go-to person, since they are really small, and have no tech staff. I don’t implement much for them (although in a pinch, I’ll set something up, or fix a specific problem.) But I help them plan their technology initiatives (a new database, a new website, etc.,) help them find the vendors that will do the work by helping them craft good RFPs. I answer all of their tech questions, and solve pretty much all of their tech problems (mostly by helping them figure out who they should call.) I’ll be the project manager on their big new client database project, and help them think about how far to dip their toes into Web 2.0.
For another client, I helped them vet vendors for their new website, taught them the difference between Joomla, Drupal and Plone, and I helped free them from a vendor who was particularly egregious in their hosting charges, among other things. ($1200/month for an old and therefore crappy custom CMS and not much support. I. Kid. You. Not. I myself wrote a custom CMS a long time ago that would be considered crap now, so I don’t blame them for that, but the charges???)
For a third client, I helped them translate their ideas about what they wanted their website to do, to things that could actually be implemented in a CMS. I helped them vet CMS vendors, make sure the CMS that was chosen could do the complex job they were asking it to do (some were not up to the task) and am the intermediary between the current web vendor and the client, lending my expertise as needed, and helping to move the project forward.
I think my clients benefit from one particular thing that I think is pretty unique. Although I am deeply experienced and knowledgeable in implementation of technology, from networks to web applications and databases (I really know how DNS works, can write a left outer join in SQL, and know the difference between REST and SOAP) since I don’t do implementation or coding anymore, I’m not wedded to one set of technologies. I can bridge the gap between technology vendors and clients in a way that is pretty unusual, and, honestly, that I’m proud of. I know when a vendor knows their technology, and when they are blowing sales language at me, and might not be up to the technical task. I can evaluate previous projects based on what I see is the underlying complexity, and figure out how much experience a vendor has had with a particular set of problems. I know when a technology is really appropriate, and when it’s not.
I have other kinds of projects as well – those that use my talents somewhat differently. I do a ton of technical writing, and I have become the “documentation facilitator” of the OpenMRS project – it is an open source medical records system, designed to serve clinics in low-resource areas (such as sub-sarahan Africa) that treat patients with HIV/AIDS. Since we’re starting with the developer documentation, one of the coolest things about this project is that it’s making me learn Java and Eclipse, plus get my hands dirty with Tomcat. Yum! I love learning new stuff.
I like the range of projects I do. I’d like to do more of all of it. I’d also love to consult with for-profit vendors who are thinking about dipping their toes into offering support for open source projects, or open sourcing their software.
OK, enough of that. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. :-)
Since I’ve been covering CRMs for the webinar today, I figured I’d switch categories on my free and open source software list. So for the next few tools, I’ll be describing CRMs (Constituent/Contact/Community/Customer Relationship Management). The first one is one that I’ve been using recently for my consulting business – SugarCRM.
Unlike CiviCRM, which is targeted to nonprofits, SugarCRM is a system targeted toward sales in for-profit companies. It has three versions: Enterprise, Professional, and Community Edition. That’s the one I’ve been using. They also have a newer on-demand version (that is, software as a service, like salesforce.)
I’ve been hearing good things about SugarCRM from organizations that use it. It also gets kudos from NTEN’s satisfaction survey (it came in third, after CiviCRM and Salesforce.)
Anyway, SugarCRM is basically “enterprise class” CRM, and is worth a look.
I’ll be doing a webinar on open source CRMs tomorrow. In the process of going deep into those CRMs, I’ve been thinking about how nonprofits might choose CRMs to begin with. Of course, all nonprofits already have a CRM (even if it is a spreadsheet) – the issue is, generally, migration to a new system, or integration with what they already have to add new features.
Idealware has a great article on CRMs, and how they are different, and how you can begin to figure out what might work best. I also wrote a software choice worksheet, that can help with the process of looking at a wide variety of tools.
One of the fascinating things to me is how quickly the CRM space is evolving. New open source players entering the market (more on them soon), high satisfaction for other open source tools, and SaaS vendors throwing the doors open so that nonprofits can integrate their systems well (I’m psyched to hear about all the new connectors, mashups and apps happening all the time.)
The lesson here, I think, is that CRM, even for large organizations, is changing rapidly, and the days are numbered where systems that are expensive, proprietary, and closed rule. I’m glad to see that. And I think that nonprofits should make sure when they choose to look at the wide range of options, some of which are very cost-effective, and open. And you don’t need to feel overwhelmed by vendor sales-talk – it’s possible to get things translated to language you understand.
After the webinar, I’ll be putting the slides up in varied places, and NTEN will have a recording of the webinar.
It was a great week. I got to see lots of people that I only see once a year (or even less often,) I got to meet a lot of new people, I had interesting and deep conversations, and I got to hear a lot about what people are thinking about the nonprofit technology field. I’ve got several posts on tap about specific aspects of the conference, or specific products and such that I’d come across during my time at NTC last week, so stick around.
I want to give huge props to Holly and all of the NTEN crew for putting on a fabulous conference. It was incredibly well organized and smooth running, the food and snacks were great, and the parties rocked. The conference was rich with great speakers and content, and it’s great to see how far things have come. And, as a member of the NTEN board, I’m really proud of what’s been accomplished.
There are, of course, some tweaks we can make to make sure that everyone really can gain value from NTC, and we can sustain the richness that it contains. And I’m already looking forward to NTC in San Francisco in 2009!
I’ve been having a great time here at NTC – running into lots of folks I’m happy to see again, and meet, learning about new things, being involved. I don’t have lots of leisure to go into detail about what’s happening here, but I thought I’d highlight a few things, and then when I get back home, and have time for it all to digest, I’ll write in much more detail.
I’m looking forward to having time to digest all that has happened here.
Tomorrow, I step off the plane in New Orleans, to go to the Nonprofit Technology Conference, and see folks I only get to see once a year, meet new people, chat and hang out with people I’ve been emailing/blog commenting/twittering, etc.
I’m looking forward to it. I’m on the Evaluating Open Source panel, with Laura Quinn and Catherine Lane, which should be great. I’m also holding the consultant spot on the panel “Changing your CEO from barrier to partner” with Marnie Webb, David Geilhufe, and Steve Heye. Lots of wonderful folks, should be great panels.
I’m in a little bit different of a place this year, than last. Last year I was just re-emerging from having taken a break to go to seminary, and not quite exactly sure what I was doing. This year, I’m much more clear about the directions my work is going in, and what I’m looking for at NTC.
And of course, there is Penguin Day!! I’m excited to be doing it again, in a new city, with some great partners, including Aspiration, of course, Joomla, PICnet, and the Chicago Technology Cooperative. I think it will be a great time. (And I hope to bring home a penguin!)
So, if you want to catch up with me, email, and I’ll send you my phone # so you can call or text me, or twitter me.
In a surprising move, the US Navy will stop buying proprietary hardware and software, and only buy open systems.
“The days of proprietary technology must come to an end,” he said. “We will no longer accept systems that couple hardware, software and data.”
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.
This could be a watershed moment. 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. It could happen here.
Michele Martin, one of my fave bloggers, has a great post today on Reflective Practice. 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.
In many ways, we are focused on solving technology problems, or completing projects. But I have really come to believe that the way that we work with people is as important as the “final” outcome. We might be able to build the most wizz-bang amazing website ever (in a technological sense) but if we haven’t really thought about how we moved through the project, never evaluated how the project really went, and didn’t learn from the process, in the end, the project wasn’t the success it seemed to be. In fact, it’s amazing how much we can learn from projects that might be considered failures by technological criteria.
In the last few months, I was involved in helping three organizations choose vendors for varied technology projects, and in the course of that time, I talked with almost a dozen technology vendors of one type or another. 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. That is something I would love to see change.
As some of you who follow me on Twitter know, I ran into frustrations a few days ago with WPA. In Kubuntu, the distribution of Ubuntu I had installed, the WPA-enabled Network Manager isn’t installed by default (or at least it seemed not to have been installed when I did it – could have been my fault.) I knew that I should do it at some point, but I hadn’t encountered a WPA network until last week, so I hadn’t bothered. Needless to say, I’m doing that right now.
But what I realized was that the whole WPA thing with my laptop added to the pile of “little problems I haven’t solved yet.” Now, of course, as a techie, and someone with a home network, and multiple computers, and varied projects, there is always a list like this. But I’ve come to realize that now that I use Linux as my primary desktop, this list has grown much, much larger than it ever has been.
- After spending close to five hours on the X windows/driver problem I vented about last week. I gave up. I attached the nice brand-spanking new monitor to my Mac Mini, and have been quite enjoying using it. Needless to say, I did absolutely nothing to get it to work. Plugged it in, and it just worked.
- It took me a couple of frustrating hours or so to configure samba (editing the samba.conf file and testing) so that I could share my home directory, with music and video, with my other computers, and share my printer. Of course with my mac, I opened up the system preferences, checked a button, and, voila! Directories were shared.
- I have outstanding issues or decisions to make with my kernel not seeing all the memory I’ve given it (therefore requiring a recompile, which I have been postponing for weeks) sound, a webcam, a scanner, and accounting software. And there were several problems I never solved – including syncing calendars and addressbooks, finding a good time tracker. The problems I “solved” by offloading the functions onto the web.
There are several issues here, of course. First, although I’ve used Linux on the server for so many years, so I’m used to getting things done via the command line, my primary desktop was a Mac for 20 years, so I am GUI spoiled. So desktop functions (as opposed to server functions) that some people probably find trivially easy to do with the command line, I’m looking for a good GUI. Also, having used a Mac for so long, I’m also “it just works” spoiled. In fact, what’s funny is that things that do in fact “just work” with Linux almost surprise me.
And, as Dustin pointed out in the comments to my venting post earlier, a lot of this is not the fault of open source desktop software developers. Hardware vendors don’t release drivers for Linux, or if they do, they remain proprietary. This does, for sure, hobble the usability of Linux on the desktop. Apple has the luxury of a hardware monopoly, so of course things are more likely to “just work.”
And, of course, there has been a lot of resources and money poured into server software for Linux, but not as much for tools for the desktop.
This is my dilemma. I am committed to the ethos of free software. And I’ve talked about how the means and the ends are the same – so it’s important to me to use open source tools. But I also have to get work done for my clients. And I have to eat, too. Adding extra hours to the week dealing with technology problems are hours I don’t spend working with clients. (I estimate that 2-3 additional hours/week are spent just because I use Linux on the desktop.) The WPA fiasco a few days ago fell exactly at the moment when some really important work needed to get done for a client – so it sometimes hampers my ability to get things done.
I do demand a lot of my system. I’ve got tons of peripherals, I’m constantly changing and modifying things – I’m a power user. If pretty much all I did was documents, email and the web, like many people, I wouldn’t be having these issues.
I guess I’m looking to find the right balance, being able to use Linux on the desktop, and actually not feel too bogged down in problems I need to solve. But I’m not there yet. Not only have I offloaded functions to the web, I’m beginning to offload some things to my Mac again (like scanning.) It’s easier for me to think about spending minutes rather than hours getting things to work.
I’m running behind, so I need to catch up in the next week or so. I’m still on internet clients, believe it or not, and still have some to go.
Today, I’m talking about Flock. Flock is the “social browser.” For bookmarking, it uses your del.icio.us account. It can bring in your photos (and the photos of your contacts) from flickr. It can keep track of your Twitter friends, etc. You can also use it as a blog editor, which I am going to start trying out.
It’s amazingly good. I’d tried it a couple of years ago, and it was buggy, crashed, and seemed like something that was a great idea, but not realized. Now, it’s realized. It’s really quite nice. It’s based on Mozilla Firefox, and apparently the developers of Flock contribute a fair bit back to the Firefox codebase.
Update: I’ve been using it now as my default browser for the last day or so, and it is really growing on me.
