About this blog

In the realm of things in my life that this blog is meant to cover, I have two basic passions: open source software/open content and data. Of course, I talk about both of these things in the context both of nonprofit technology and the sector in general, as well as in my role in the sector as a provider of ways and strategies to use the former to handle the latter. I also want to dive more deeply into meaning - that is, why we do what we do in this field called nonprofit technology, and what we could be doing better.

I’ll always be talking about CMS and CRM, and the integration between them. I’ll always be talking about open source software, particularly as it relates to web applications, but more generally as well. I’ll probably be talking a lot about Drupal, WordPress, and occasionally Salesforce and other CRM systems. I’ll always talk about what it’s like to do the work that I do, and talk more about how I do it. You’ll always get a bit of shiny from me.

This is not, and will never be, a fundraising, communications or marketing blog, except to provide snarky comments on those things. I won’t blog about fundraising or communications strategies, or campaigns, or skittles. I won’t talk about communications, except as it relates to data/content, or open source. I won’t explain how or why to use twitter or facebook, unless you are trying to put a twitter stream into a Drupal page (moving data, open source.) Although I will talk about what kind of data you should keep and move, and why. I won’t post information about what nonprofits have adopted what new software product. I will not, under any circumstance, hawk your wares – I often provide objective reviews and analysis of software and services. Don’t get me wrong, I use and like a lot of software, and talk about that here, sometimes in glowing terms, but there is never a guarantee that I’ll like what you have to offer. I will also generally not blog about contests, grants, or crowd-sourced things, but I will make exceptions in some circumstances, especially if those things have to do with increasing participation of women and people of color (and organizations who serve them) in technology, or nonprofits (or nonprofit technology) or things that particularly inspire me.

Be warned: If I don’t know you, and you send me an email or a press release about your wonderful new product or service or social media super duper widget and the forty-five high-profile non-profits who have adopted it, ninety-five times out of a hundred, I’ll delete the email. Four times out of a hundred, I’ll post snarky comments about it you probably don’t want people to read, because something (like cost, or lousy feature set) particularly annoyed me. Once, I might actually check it out and provide an objective review, which may, or may not, be pretty. And, if you subscribe me to your marketing list, you are much more likely to end up in the category of things I’ll write snarky comments about. Those aren’t great odds, if you ask me. Best bet, get to know me (twitter is a great way to do that), and who I am, and what I care about, and send me something relevant, and I’m much more likely to check it out and write (or tweet) about it.