Vermont Nonprofit CommunIT

Catchup...Dip Dip*

Before my re-entry back to work gets the best of me—after ten days of work related travel and a much needed mini-vacay—some bloginess catching up is due.

Blogs vs. Websites: A New Hope

My rant and our inter-blog debate on blogs vs. websites seem to have sparked a parallel debate on the Information Systems Forum listserv. Peter Campbell and Laura Quinn do a very nice (and diplomatic) job of parsing out the conversation between online communication strategies and content management and syndication technology. While the conversation seems to have gotten some cackles up (my own included), I’m heartened that the conversation is happening at all.

At this point, the only valuable contribution I can make to the conversation is to once again highlight the work that Nancy White and Lee Lefever are doing with the March of Dimes on ShareYourStory.org (which is at long last getting some buzz). ShareYourStory.org remains one of the best examples of nonprofits using blogs strategically to add value and substance to their web presence.  I’m looking forward to the next iteration of the site.
 

Don't tell me...Show me!

Being a button pusher, I'm both an admirer and adversary of other button pushers, especially when its my buttons that are being pushed. Michael Gilbert has taken me to task on my Toolbox list:

"Lists of software promote feature comparison conversations, but workflow diagrams promote systems thinking."

You know it...I know it...he's exactly right! But I love comparing tech toys damn it. While I think there is some value in seeing what other people are using to perform similar tasks, how those tools are being used, integrated and adapted for nonprofit processes is admittedly a far more productive conversation.  Sonny's application workflow diagrams coming soon to a blog near you.

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*I have to throw in the occasional Finn reference. He has recently discovered the pleasure of dipping food into...well most anything: Ketchup, Salsa, Salad Dressing, etc. The act of dipping is always accompanied by the exclamation: DIP DIP!

What's in your toolbox?

I was wondering the other day about what and how other people were using their desktop/web productivity and administration tools. Then this morning Michael Gilbert had a great post about how he and his staff use different tools to publish Nonprofit Online News. His workflow diagrams are great; giving me some impetus to map out my own workflow process and the tools I use.  For now here's a list of what's in my toolbox...I love to know what other people are using:

Database: Salesforce.com

Browser: Firefox

Email: Gmail

Calendar: Mozilla Calendar

Project: Basecamp

GTD: Backback

Weblog: Typepad

Weblog editor: ecto

News Reader: Newsgator

Bookmarks: Del.cio.us (use Firefox plugin)

Word Processing: MS Word

Spreadsheets: MS Excel

Virus Protection: Norton’s AV

Hard Drive Upkeep: CCleaner

Backup: Data Deposit Box

Preferred Search: Yahoo! Search

Other primary searches: Google, Wikipedia, Dictionary.com

PDF Converter: Primo PDF

Desktop Search: Copernic

Compression App: 7-zip

Website Content Management System (CMS): Drupal

FTP Client: FileZilla

Media Player: WinAmp

Instant Messaging Client: Trillian

Anti-Spyware: Spybot and Ad Aware

Blog v. Web: Revenge of the NPOs

This is great...thanks for starting the conversation Ed.

Here's the Blog v. Web play by play: (Reading this in an aggregator? You'll need to go to the blog for the Javascript to read)

Here's the RSS Feed:

http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/svc/ClippingsRSS.aspx?uid=37866&fid=43475

I've been trying to figure out a good use for Conversate, perhaps this is it.

Blogs killed the webby-stars

...or maybe The Blogsphere is Web 2.0...or The Web is so Old School. So many pithy subject lines...so little space.

So here's the conversation (admittedly...this conversation is very inside baseball):

Ed said: Can we all agree that the term "blog" is now meaningless and should be retired? We have a perfectly good word we can use in its place: website. Just what does "blog" signify anymore that's different from most well-managed websites? Frequently updated content? Nope. An easy-to-use content management system that allows non-techies to publish online? Nope. An authentic, individual voice? Perhaps--but that's changing too.

And followed up with: The significant common factor isn't the underlying blogging technology, but how you approach your online audience. Do you hand down stone tablets from the mountaintop?  Or do you speak in a genuine, human voice...and ask questions...and respond to questions asked of you?  If your answer is "Yes, all of the above" then you're engaged in an effective conversation with your online audience, and whether you're using a "blog" or not is irrelevant.  If your answer is "No," then you're irrelevant (or you soon will be) and a "blog" won't save you from the scrap heap.

Then, rightfully, a shit storm ensued (perhaps Ed's intention):

Marnie said: And I might be persuaded to agree with him about blogs the artifact. Not, however, about blogging the activity. Blogging, the activity, includes linking, frequent updates that center around short bits of text, permalinks to content to make it easy for other people to track. It is not just about the communication style. It is about the activities that make the communications style work.

Kurt Said: Namely, to be bloggish, your site must connect to the network of conversations and people that are also being bloggish in a formally recognized way. Technically it should happen via RSS, trackback, and blogrolling - but it's not the technology that is important. What's important is that there is an unwritten, but agreed upon, standard for discoverability.

Ruby Said: I define blogs as having the following characteristics:
1. first-person voice -> authenticity
2. dialog (either between blogs and/or in the comments)
3. database back-end (enabling archives and syndication)
4. (or 3.5) permanently available archives

Ed has rebuttaled...unrelenting: I think the continuing use of the word "blog" is actually a barrier to the extension of these qualities across the web (although the spread of blogs themselves is obviously a big help.)  The more we talk about "blogs" and the "blogosphere," the easier it is for people to think we're referring to something other than websites on the web.  Kill your blog--save the web.

I got to say, I'm on the opposite of that fence. To me the web denotes a static, siloed, irrelevant world (wide web) of the 1990's.  The adoption of blogs (thus syndication, thus content aggregation, thus democratization of information, thus social and knowledge interconnectedness) is going to kill that barren wasteland once and for all. 

I'm not sure what will bridge this schism--which I believe to be one part generational and one part privilege--perhaps just time and some good ol' fashiong spin-doctoring. All I know is that I have been thoroughly enjoying this conversation and look forward to the next round.  Ding-Ding!

Job Classifieds Voyeur

When at CyberSkills, I used to scour the help wanted classifieds of Vermont's weekly Seven Days. No I wasn't looking for another job; it was a great way to keep abreast of the changes going on in the local nonprofit sector.  Often times if communication all of a sudden dropped off from a client, I would soon see a job announcement.  I quickly learned organizational change is not conducive to strategic technology planning.

I'm still in the habit of looking at the job classifieds. Call me nosy...call me a voyeur, I still love coming across job lists like: Ben & Jerry's Assistant to the Founders. Now how cool would that be?

However, 7 Days has some competition nowadays with a Burlington Craigslist and the recently beta launched simplyhired.org.

The Vermont Blog Scene

Since most readers of this little grad school project turned obsession are not "of" Vermont (note: not my original intention), I need to occasionally pay homage to our progressive--if not remote--outpost up here in the northeast.   

Vermont freelancer Cathy Resmer's 802 Online is not only a great blog, but she has the most comprehensive list of Vermont bloggers I've seen.  Some good stuff here-I'm contemplating creating a Feedpaper so I can roll all the subscriptions into one feed.

At Play in the Fields of...Salesforce?

Paul Hagen at Exponent Partners has written a great "case to be made" piece on using  Salesforce.com as a nonprofit CRM.  Salesforce's Nonprofit Play (PDF) very clearly lays out the emerging potential and promise Salesforce provides to nonprofit. It takes it a step further to also layout guidelines and a road map to how best to support the successful adoption and use of Salesforce in the nonprofit sector: Creating what Rem Hoffmann (the other Exponent Partner) calls an "Ecosystem of Services" that support nonprofits use of the application. In short, they suggest:

-Creating a npo specific developers community around Salesforce
-Third party training and support providers
-Marketing through partner organizations
-Create a nonprofit appropriate name (in my office, this is a big one).
-Provide an alternative to the open source purity dogma (hmmmm...see my both/and rant here).

A conversation to rethink conferences

Perhaps inspired by Katrin and Gunner's great facilitation (I presume from past accounts of other PDs) of this past weekend's Penguin Day in NYC , Gregory Heller has begun the much needed conversation of finding A new Paradigm for the tech conference. I believe this conversation is needed far beyond  tech conferences, and extends to conferences in general and nonprofit conferences in particular (See recent rant here).

What Gregory is describing sounds a lot like open space meetings to me, which have some great outcomes with the help of highly skilled facilitators.  I would like to see, in addition to more dialog rich conference sessions, are strategies and opportunities for follow up that continue the conversation beyond the two day blip of a conference.  While most of this is grassroots work (i.e. bloggers),  conference organizers need to educate, promote and engage with bloggers to help leverage the experience, education and take aways of all conference goers.  2 cents  ~S

 

Rude awakening: Gmail Lockdown

(UPDATE: Whining karma has proven fruitful...2 hours later, Gmail is back up. 2 cents: If they are going to do this, they need to provide an automated email forward option in their settings).
How much does this suck. I came into work this morning and as usual went right to my email to start planning my day. I am using exclusively Gmail  these days (forwarding email from my other three accounts), so to be hit with a screen informing me that my Gmail account is in lock down for the next 24 hours for some undisclosed reason is beyond suckiness. It looks as though I'm not the only one that has been hit by this in the last couple weeks: See here and here. There's a lot of speculation about what's tipping their alert systems, but there's no official explanations from Google that I could find. Arghhhhhh!!!  This is putting a damper on my new found love for web apps.

Going back to the dark side

When I originally discovered the blogsphere, I bought the Outlook plugin Newsgator to aggregate my news/blog feeds (see here).  Over a six month period, PC performance and overwhelming Outlook's PST file became an issue--I made the switch to Bloglines.

There are many things I like about Bloglines, particularly the informal social networking ability to view other people's blogrolls and subscriptions. However the user interface, saved postings function and web app sluggishness have always been a thorn in my side.  So now that Newsgator has a free web version, I'm going to experiment with it for awhile.  Already I see it has some interface advantages (AJAX?) and I'm using a few of its slick tools.  One of which is a new section on the left nav bar of this blog called "Read List," which are the articles I've clipped in Newsgator. Newsgator creates an RSS feed for clipped postings and I'm using RSS Digest to stream it on this site.

FYI: The inspiration for this posting's subject line comes from Grocery Store Wars...its pretty brilliant.