You don’t hear me talking much about social media. One of the reasons is that there are a number of really good bloggers out there who know the field far better than I’ll ever be able to. I would argue that Beth Kanter is the best social media blogger there is in the nonprofit space. Her careful writing about the strengths and weaknesses of social media, the in-depth knowledge of strategy and approach, her on-the-cutting-edge understanding of trends and issues and how they relate to the work that nonprofits are doing has been an incredibly important resource to the sector. If someone asks me about social media, I just say “ask Beth!”
And, it’s her birthday! A big bunch of us are blogging today to talk about what she’s contributed, and also to let people know about the charity she’s been working with for a while, now, the Sharing Foundation. She’d like folks to donate in honor of her birthday.
Beth, thanks for the expertise and intelligence you’ve lent to the nonprofit sector for quite some time now! And thanks in advance for all the great upcoming posts in 2010 and beyond that will help me sound intelligent when I talk about social media. :-)
I was only vaguely following the brou-ha-ha over Causes leaving Myspace. Only vaguely because I don’t really keep close track of the goings on in the Social Networking space: it’s not my passion. I use them a lot, both for work as well as for personal use. I know they are becoming an increasingly important tool for nonprofits in communicating with their constituents, and so I do keep them in my peripheral vision, for sure.
Anyway, in reading the varied reactions to this news, I had to just sigh, and then get annoyed. Sigh because of what feels to me to be the wasted energy that the nonprofit sector has spent over many years, using, hawking, and supporting proprietary tools and companies. Annoyed because it seems the nptech community hasn’t figured this out, even being hit over the head with this over, and over, and over again.
Make no mistake about it – Causes is a for profit company, and they are making what is, I’d bet, a decision based entirely on economics. If you’ve read any of the gloomy news from Silicon Valley, this is just the beginning. Social ventures will not be immune to the blowing winds of economic distress.
If we keep building our nonprofit toolsets on proprietary software and for-profit web services, even if they are free (for now) we are going to be bit by this over and over again. The only way we’re going to get out of this cycle is to channel this energy and resources into open software (including “open” source apps for proprietary web services), open standards, and open networks – things no one can take away.
I love to write blog entries about successful open source efforts – like CiviCRM, or the amazing stuff people are doing in the mobile space. Writing blog entries about for-profit web vendors that make economic decisions that hurt nonprofits because we depend on them too much is just not fun.
On the right is my blogroll, that needs updating, but I thought I’d do some shout outs to blogs I’ve lately been loving and really learning a lot from, who are probably not on that list (yet).
Wireframes Magazine – I’ve been doing Information Architecture for a very long time, now, but it’s great to learn new tricks and tools.
Flowing Data – OK, I’ll fess up, I’m a data geek. And I love data visualizations, and ways to make data easily accessible. I am so envious of people with graphics skills who can do that well. There are a whole lot of really cool things here.
RoughType by Nicholas Carr – really smart dude, really interesting stuff.
I love NTC (NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference). I would be dishonest if I said I didn’t have a sweet reminiscence for the Circiut Rider Roundups of old. But they are long gone. As fields often do, ours grew up and professionalized. And what has taken it’s place is valuable to a much wider audience (and a much larger one!) And, this year, for the very first time, I live in the same city in which NTC is taking place. Hurrah!
So, a few things to say about what I’m looking forward to from April 25th to April 30th:
April 25: Penguin Day SF! It’s happening the day before NTC this year, not the day after. Gather with folks and spend an exciting day peer-sharing about free and open source software in nonprofit organizations. Any level of background in the topic is welcome, and everyone learns.
April 26-28: NTC. Another jam packed year full of great panels and expertise sharing. I’ll be involved in two panels this year. (And lots of conversations on the side.)
April 29-30: Hopefully, there will be a CiviCRM developer camp. Yay! I’ve been using CiviCRM for a year or so, and have begun to get involved in implementation. Looking forward to digging deeper in.
And email me if you want to have coffee, or lunch, or a side conversation in the Science Fair.
Some stuff from my inbox. (A lot of these are 2008 news, therefore, kinda old. But still interesting to me.)
Appirio releases their top 10 predictions for cloud computing in 2009. One of the more interesting ones is that “a major SaaS 1.0 company will fail.” I kind of wonder about some of the early nonprofit-focused SaaS offerings, and how long they might have to live, given the strength of Salesforce.com
Third Sector New England, a Boston-based nonprofit capacity-building organization launched a series of “FAQ” videos for nonprofits. Useful stuff.
This week was a bad week for online blogging services. First the blogging service JournalSpace, with hundreds of users, just, well, died, because they didn’t have a proper backup. Today, the hacking of the blogging service SoapBlox, which was used by many progressive political bloggers, such as Pam’s House Blend, became known, and it is currently unclear how many sites have survived, and what will happen to them.
These are two fairly small, fairly low-profile services (although SoapBlox is considered an extremely important part of the progressive blogosphere.) They hosted a small percentage of the blogs out there (in comparison to, say, TypePad or Blogger.) However, this is, of course, devastating to those who had their blogs there.
Lessons to learn:
Always have your own backup of your data/content
Remember when setting up a website or blog that if you use a service, the data is not in your hands, but in someone elses
I was perusing the program for a local “green” event, when I noticed a full page advertisement for Firefox, saying that it’s software was “100% organic.” I kind of chuckled. I thought, what does that really mean?
For Firefox, it means, “open source, community-powered.” And I realized that they had an interesting point. In my mind, it harks back to the arguments that Yochai Benkler made in his book “The Wealth of Networks,” that a ecosystem full of open source, community-powered software was, in a sense, more sustainable, and promoted more, not less innovation than the proprietary software ecosystem.
So now I think I agree with the Mozilla Foundation that a good metaphor for open source as any is that it is to software what “organic” and probably “fair trade” is to food. Too bad the metaphor doesn’t go both ways, because then organic and fair trade food would be free, too.
And, like both of those labels are complex and not entirely easy to nail down with food, so it is with software. But I think it works.
I think that if I had to pick only one thing that would help people understand the character of Drupal, it would be the WYSIWYG editor that comes standard with an out-of-the-box Drupal installation. That would be NONE. There is no standard WYSIWYG editor that comes with Drupal. You have to figure out how to find one, and install and configure it yourself.
So if you want to start adding content to your new site, and you need a little formatting, or a picture, etc., well, unless you know a bit of HTML, you are S.O.L.
On the other hand, this is actually, from my perspective, a really good thing (can you tell I’m becoming a Drupalista?) There are several to choose from, and they differ both in difficulty to get installed and working, as well as features. Want something barebones? There’s one for you. Want something with all of the bells and whistles? There’s one for you, too.
I’ve been getting to know a few of them (and, yes, they can be a pain to install, and they depend, generally, on other libraries that you have to install as well.) I don’t have a favorite yet, but I’m thinking I don’t need to have one – just to know which ones are well-maintained, and what the differences are in feature set. Then I can choose the one that makes the most sense.
I keep being surprised by how frequently I hear clients tell me that a vendor has suggested they “build them a CMS,” or by proposals from vendors that include custom building a CMS. I hear people suggesting building their own social networking website. I even occasionally still hear tell of organizations who want custom CRMs.
The web software landscape has changed dramatically over the years. Five years ago, it was full of custom built systems of all sorts – and the “build vs. buy” decision was, I think, more difficult, because the available software to buy was fairly cruddy. (And, for the purposes of this post, I’m using “buy” exceedingly loosely – including purchasing proprietary software, installing open source, or using SaaS.)
But the landscape is different now, and I think that, in some senses, the “build vs. buy” decision is much more straightforward. First, the software available, whether it be open source, SaaS, or proprietary, is much better all round. There are new types of software being developed all the time (like, for instance, the new crop of “Social Network Management Systems” both open source and SaaS, like Ning.)
In addition, the increasing openness of software, whether it be open source, or open platforms like Salesforce.com, means that customizing software to your needs, or integrating different pieces is much more straightforward, meaning it’s a lot easier to create exactly what you need by integration or customization, rather than building from scratch.
This is not to say that there is no role for custom built applications. I’m in the process of working with two organizations to create just that. But they are both for quite highly specialized functions. And I’ve also been involved in projects to create interesting and somewhat customized web functionality – but those are being done with adding custom modules to an open source CMS.
From my perspective, exhaust all of the “buy” options: open source/proprietary/SaaS out-of-the-box, customized open source/SaaS, or integration of already existing components, or building modules on top of open source tools, before you take on building something new from the ground up. You’ll save money and time, as well as be able to take advantage of an upgrade path as web software changes and improves, meaning you won’t have to build whole systems again.
