From the monthly archives:

September 2008

NOSI and Aspiration join forces, yay!

by Pearlbear on September 26, 2008

I’ve been working with NOSI (the Nonprofit Open Source Initiative) for more than 5 years. In addition, I’ve worked with Aspiration a lot in the past few years as well. It is a great pleasure for me to announce that NOSI is becoming a project of Aspiration, and I am re-joining the board of Aspiration. I think the two organizations together will provide a really strong focus for advocacy and resources for open source development and use in the nonprofit sector.

See the press release for more detail.

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SaaS vs. Open Source

by Pearlbear on September 24, 2008

I just finished writing a post for the Idealware blog about choosing SaaS vs. Open source. I said in that post:

At one level, whether or not the software underneath the SaaS is open source is not relevant. You are not obtaining the software, and whether or not you can see the code, or modify it, is really not the key issue here.

And, at the level of most nonprofits choosing software, this is, in fact, correct. But the real story is much more complicated.

SaaS is not, by definition either proprietary or open source. There are a few examples of SaaS that are based on open source projects, although most SaaS are proprietary – the code is never meant to be released.

One of the most important things to understand is that SaaS is primarily built upon open source tools such as Apache, MySQL, and MySQL. It would not be as cost-effective (and thus, not produce as much profit) if these SaaS developers had to pay license fees for the software they use (besides the fact that these are the most stable and robust platforms to build upon.) So SaaS vendors are taking good advantage of open source software, and, in many situations, not giving a whole lot back. This is not uniformly true – some SaaS vendors give back in a variety of ways – contributing code back to those projects, having their own programs to give back in some way or another (like Google Open Source, or Salesforce.org)

Bur in any event, SaaS based on proprietary software violates the basic software freedoms – you can’t use it freely, you can’t see the code, you can’t modify it, and you can’t release the modifications to others. And, in some situations the existence of SaaS can inhibit open source development in the spaces in which it is popular, especially if the SaaS is cheap or free (how many good open source webmail clients are there, for instance?)

From my perspective, the key is openness. Some SaaS, like Salesforce.com, and increasingly the nonprofit CRM SaaS vendors, are open platforms. From my perspective, it’s all about balance, and having an active ecosystem, with healthy open source options present. The more SaaS vendors can contribute to and not detract from that ecosystem, the better.

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Welcome to the new theme!

by Pearlbear on September 22, 2008

I changed my Word Press theme, mostly because I was getting a bit tired of the old one, and wanted something really simple. Also, it coincides with a new installation of Drupal for my consulting website, using the same basic template (called “Blueprint“). I’d been working with Drupal for NOSI (we’ve had the site in Drupal for a while now,) but I’d never installed and configured and messed with Drupal from scratch, so I did that.

So far, it’s been largely painless. I’m quite excited about really getting my hands dirty working on some plug ins, or some such, really learning the ins and outs of Drupal. It will be interesting to learn the innards of a CMS. The last time I coded in a CMS was when I was working on the (now dead) perl CMS I wrote many moons ago. So I’m polishing off my PHP skills, and we’ll see where that leads.

Tidbits

by Pearlbear on September 19, 2008

Here are a few interesting tidbits that have come my way over the course of the last few days

  • There is a new online fundraising platform, founded by an ex-Convio person. It’s called Kimbia, and it’s got some interesting features, and seems to be focused mostly around creating campaigns. The interesting thing, too, is that their model is that they take a percentage of what you raise (5%.) No setup fees or anything else. That’s an interesting model, and, if the software is decent, sounds like it could be a good option for some organizations. But, of course, as with anything, look (a lot) before you leap.
  • There are some fabulous sessions proposed for the 2009 NTC, running the whole gamut of nonprofit technology, from planning to Web 2.0, open source, etc. Vote for them, especially the one I’m helping out with (David Geilhufe is the spearhead) on open source CRM.
  • I’m really psyched about the Nonprofit Development Summit, happening here, in my (current) fair city, Oakland (I love it that I don’t have to travel so much anymore.) Funny thing: it’s happening the same week as the Convio Summit, and the Blackbaud Conference. Go figure. Anyway, if you are involved in any way in developing software for nonprofits (and, I guess, you don’t code for Convio or Blackbaud, or, heck, even if you do) please make your way out to the left coast for Nov 17th.
  • Speaking of Convio, Salesforce’s M.Tucker McLean weighs in on Common Ground, Convio’s new (frackin’ brilliant) fundraising app written on top of Salesforce. I’m still watching the fallout on this one. It’s going to be interesting. Under my hat is a blog post about open source and SaaS. It might be interesting.

What are learning platforms?

by Pearlbear on September 19, 2008

Note: This blog entry was originally posted on Idealware’s new community blog. I’m honored and happy to be contributing blog posts there.

Nonprofits have become intimately familiar with Content Management Systems (CMS). Some, especially those that are very content/document heavy, have become familiar with Document Management Systems (DMS). What they might not be so familiar with are Learning Management Systems (LMS). An LMS, or learning platform, is a system that is designed to facilitate some sort of learning process over the web.

What can an organization use a LMS for? Well, that depends of course, on the organization. Many organizations provide trainings, courses, and varied sorts of learning activities to their constituents. If your organization does this at all, and you are interested in investigating how to enhance or deliver those learning activities through the web, an LMS is for you.

Learning platforms, of course, are varied. They can be very complex course management systems which are designed to do things like quizzes and grading (as well as discussions and have places to store course materials.) Some have fewer features, but all have some basic qualities:

  • Ability to handle multiple courses (or activities) and enroll individual students
  • Courses can be done either with specific deadlines, or at any pace
  • Course calendars
  • Messaging (between teacher and students and between students)
  • Group discussions
  • Document repositories
  • Assignments and grading

Most post-secondary institutions are using LMS for management of both regular and distance learning courses. Increasingly, a wide variety of training opportunities are being delivered via LMS.

So what LMS should you look at? There are both proprietary and open source LMS. Most proprietary LMS are geared specifically toward the college/university or corporate training markets, and are thus quite expensive. These include Blackboard, ANGEL, and WebCT (now owned by Blackboard), among others. There are open source LMS, some of which are quite well developed, and some also geared toward (or developed by) colleges and universities.

  • Moodle – probably the best known open source LMS. It is very easy to install, and there are an increasing number of consultants and companies offering support for Moodle.
  • LAMS – not as much an LMS as a curriculum development tool. Can be powerful if integrated with Moodle
  • ILIAS – developed by the University of Cologne, is another open source LMS

Find me in my “office”

by Pearlbear on September 19, 2008

NTEN has a great program, called “Office Hours“, where folks can talk to people and get their burning questions asked about everything nonprofit technology. 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. Fridays, 10:00am PT/1:00pm ET

Social Network Management Systems?

by Pearlbear on September 11, 2008

I have been thinking about the software tools we call “Management Systems” – like Content Management Systems, Document Management Systems, Learning Management Systems… I’ve also been playing a lot with an open source tool called Elgg, and have also played, in the past, with Crabgrass, another open source … “SNMS”?

What do these tools allow you to do? They allow you to create stand-alone social networks. Think a whitebox version of Ning, or Facebook. Elgg, a LAMP(hp) project, started it’s life as a learning platform with social network features, but has transmorgrified into a social network platform with learning features. It’s definitely a new project, and a very new community (with some huge warts) but it is promising for organizations that want to create private (or public, perhaps) social networks that include groups, discussions, document sharing, bookmarking, blogs and other things.

Crabgrass is written in Ruby on Rails, and has groups, messaging and wikis, among other features. It’s a particularly interesting project, because it has a definite political purpose:

Designed for social movements working for social justice, Crabgrass will consist of tools which allow people to connect, collaborate, and organize in new ways and with increased efficiency. In particular, we aim to help groups to communicate securely, network with other groups, and make decisions in a way that is easy to understand, transparent, and directly democratic. Where traditional social networking is about connecting individuals, Crabgrass is social networking to facilitate network organizing.

In the end, I don’t advocate that organizations build new public social networks in the vast majority of situations – I think they should find the people where they already are. But private social networks have their place, and can provide a compellingly interesting platform for our nonprofit standard “members only” websites. People are getting more and more used to social networks as the vehicle for connecting to others, and this is one way to provide this in a private setting.

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Google Chrome

by Pearlbear on September 4, 2008

The hiatus is over with a short entry about Google Chrome, the new browser from Google that I learned about on the twitterverse while I was stopped at one rest stop or another.

I can’t test it, because my Mac that has a Windows virtual machine is packed. But I will say this: that doesn’t matter. I won’t be downloading it, or trying it, even when they release Mac or Linux versions.

Why so curmudgeonly you ask? It is open source, after all. And it has some cool features.

Yes, it is open source, and I applaud Google for releasing open source software. However, there was an initial brou-haha about the EULA, which initially suggested that everything you type into the browser belongs to Google (talk about All Your Base Belong to Us!) Yes, they changed it, but it made me realize that it is a Bad Idea to put all of my eggs in one basket. Google already knows enough about me (it reads my mail, my feeds, my search history, and a few shared documents, to boot,) I’m certainly not going to add virtually everything else I do (the percent of things I do using a protocol other than http(s) is dwindling by the second.)

If someone releases a “Chrome minus Google” – that is, a version of Chrome with all of the “phone home” code completely eliminated, then I’ll think about using that version, just to see what it’s like. Otherwise, fuggetaboutit.

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