Extreme Job Makeover - NPO Style

Its been very quiet around this blog as of late. Not necessarily reflective of a quiet offline life (since all my work is entirely online, off-blog would be more appropriate). Despite my inconsistent blogging habits - and the advice of experts opinions - this has been a particularly dry blogging spell. 

So what's been going on? A few highlights:

• Katrina/'05 Hurricane Response at CERF (and new homepage look and feel)
• Presented at the Salesforce.com Dreamforce Conference
• New program development at CERF: Exchange Marketplace (beta)
• Board Meeting and Fundraisers at SOFA Chicago
• Vacation
• And oh yeah...and I'm consulting again: I'm working with a team of consultants through Swift River Consulting to develop and implement Salesforce.com solutions for nonprofits (new website forthcoming).

The going-ons of the last three months have overshadowed the fact that I am well into my second year at CERF. The last year has been incredibly full of benchmark successes: Establishing a stable and secure ICT infrastructure; Implementing Salesforce.com as the organization data management solution; Launching a new website; Responding to the needs of hurricane affected artists with the Katrina Message Boards; Launching the Exchange Marketplace; Using new website and database to shore up e-communication processes. Phew...

I now find myself trying to figure out how to transition my job from ICT and desktop support to program management and strategic partnership development.  Honestly, the process has been incredibly difficult for me thus far. Its one thing to hand over your "babies" to someone else to administer and maintain, but its an entirely different to keep your hands in it as the strategist and let someone else be responsible for the nuts and bolts.  Perhaps I'm a control freak or maybe I'm comfortable with my autodidact/hands-on processes that are primarily emergent. Regardless, I know the extreme job makeover is necessary on both a professional as well as programmatic level; how to seamlessly and gracefully go about it is still a bit of a mystery to me.

In the spirit of all the changes going on both at CERF and with my independent gigs, it seemed high time to do a blog design makeover as well. It's more simple, cleaner and going back to basics...in part by getting rid of the sidebar lists that no one ever uses because most people read this blog in their RSS Reader/Aggregator. Additionally,  I'm using Performancing as a blog editor now (love it!) and because of it,  I'm using Technorati tags at long last (and got rid of Typepad categories).

 

Technorati Tags: cerf, nptech, net2, salesforce.com, consulting, nonprofit