NP Technology News Feed

Here’s a broad ranging list of interesting tidbits I’ve found recently.

• Heard of RDFa? A List Apart has a great introduction to it.
• Have a Mac? Have an iPhone? Want to use it as a remote? Learn how.
• Interesting strategy for wireframes: add color shading for emphasis. Example 1. Example 2.
• Top 10 Firefox 3.5 features from Lifehacker. I’m loving 3.5 so far.
• 10 Disruptive Technologies to have on the radar.
• A thoughtful, interesting example of where Drupal can work better over Wordpress.

Any consulting shop that does significant amounts of implementation and development (as we do) needs a project management and ticketing tool. Basecamp seems to be a standard that many people have reached for. We were using Intervals for a while, which is really a fabulous tool if you do a lot of hourly consulting. We also have been using Google spreadsheets for some elements of project management.

All tools have their strengths and weaknesses. And, in addition, the best tool does nothing without good human project management skills using it. As a shop that practices Agile development (we use an adaptation of scrum methodology that seems to work for a shop that does multiple projects with small teams,) finding a good tool that facilitates instead of hobbles Agile was critical for us.

We found, and have chosen to use Redmine for our project management/ticketing system. You can think of it as a multi-project version of Trac, which is a fabulous ticketing/wiki system that we were initially going to go with. Redmine has the elements of Trac that we liked, with the added ability to track multiple projects. Like Basecamp, Redmine has document storage and messaging systems. It doesn’t have milestones per se, but it does allow you to see tasks in calendar and Gantt views, which is very helpful. Unlike Basecamp, you can add custom fields to tickets, users and other features. Having spent many hours in Basecamp, I actually like Redmine much better. It does even do time tracking, which we won’t use, but is nice to know is there. And the wiki is nice. Basecamp’s Writeboards seem so much more like an add on than integrated.

It’s a Ruby on Rails application, and that was actually kind of fun to finally get to install and play with RoR a tiny bit. And it’s great that it’s free and open source. Although that wasn’t an absolute requirement for us, it is most definitely a plus, given so much of our work is implementing open source web tools. And it’s nice to save a few bucks per month.

Being a member in futures trading floor for years, Pitguru knows what is important to traders, and so updated itself with the purpose of offering necessary news and tools for investors who concern information related to futures trading market. What we can find from the campaign?

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If you have ten minutes to spare, please take our Emergency Preparedness Survey for Nonprofits and Public Libraries . Even if you haven't been impacted by a disaster, your input is still important.

Millions of computers are discarded each year, but refurbishers have a chronic shortage of reusable equipment. Is it that hard to donate computers?

Online office software like Google and Zoho have matured into reliable tools to create, manage, and share your office documents — all on the Web. Traditional desktop software like Microsoft Office provide feature-rich, popular ways to support word processing and spreadsheets on your computer. Which type is right for you?

There are roughly 70 million Facebook users in the United States. And that number is growing at 11% per month, including a whole new group of users over the age of 55 answering the question, "What's on your mind?" and doling out the thumbs-up.

Any person, organization, or business can set up a profile or page, add contacts (friends) and join networks organized by city, workplace, school, or region to connect with other people.

Individual users and organizations can send messages, update and share their personal profile, and easily post links, videos, and information on everything from local causes to supporting a politician to a clip from their favorite television show.  And with a click of a button, friends can re-post the same link, ostensibly reaching millions of users with the same post.

There are many things to consider as you explore whether or not an investment in a Facebook presence makes sense for your organization. Likely the most important among the considerations is whether or not your existing or realistically targeted members and supporters are on Facebook themselves.

Reaching and Attracting
With the right audience, campaign and strategy, Facebook can help you reach new people. Yet keep in mind that Facebook is a social networking tool so simply putting a page up on Facebook will likely not result in any meaningful new connections being made. You must invest in online communications strategy that is consistent and sustainable and fits into your organization’s marketing plan.

Communicating and Informing
For those individuals who are in your Facebook community, Facebook can be a great medium to receive news, events announcements, and calls to action. It is an easy platform for the staff of an organization to publish written content, videos, and photos. Facebook makes it easy for members to also upload news from their own website and/or blog to their Facebook news stream. 

Listening and Learning
One of our favorite uses for Facebook is listening and learning what people are thinking and saying. Facebook gives us a window into what people are thinking about, what inspires them, what groups they are connected with and so on. 

Remembering and Growing
Facebook offers some unique possibilities for organizations to remember and grow their relationships. We are only now beginning to understand some of the ways that Facebook connected with a CRM Database could serve an organization and its members.

•    Facebook account
•    Clear understanding of the metrics you'll use to assess the return on your effort
•    Staff resources and time
•    Organizational social media guidelines
•    Able to and willing to let conversation happen

Any organization can set up a Facebook page for free. The real cost of Facebook is the time it takes to build and sustain your network.

Through its application interface Facebook allows for the custom development of an application that a user can install and then use to invite others to participate with in some way. Development of an application is intensive and runs in the 10-100k range.

Website: Facebook connects to an organization’s existing website, blog, and other online mediums in a number of ways.  Website content and content shared via mass email can be configured so visitors can easily share the content to their Facebook network with a single mouse click.

•    To Nonprofits Seeking Cash, Facebook App Isn’t So Green, The Washington Post 
•    An Introduction to Facebook Activism
•    Innovative Giving: The Nature Conservancy and (Lil) Green Patch, Fast Company
•    Faith in Facebook: A Success Story
•    How Marketers Tap Facebook and Twitter, Apps and Widgets, Advertising Age

Practically speaking, blogs are a place where organizations can communicate with participants in a style that is highly personalized and a bit less formal than what visitors would expect to see on an organizational website.  

Technically, blogs are a type of website software that allow anyone to easily publish and syndicate written text, photos, or video. The most popular consumer options on the market are Typepad, Blogger, WordPress, LiveJournal, and Movable Type, however, common content management systems (like Plone) offer easy to implement blogging functionality either as standard features (out-of-the-box) or as add-on products.

There are a few components to a blog post: the body content, a headline, tags (metadata to describe what the post is about), and reader comments.

As you set out to plan and focus your blogging efforts, it is critical to understand the audience you are planning to serve and engage via your blog.  

Not everyone in your online audience is the same. Jakob Nielsen calls this "participation inequality," describing online audiences as communities where 90% of the users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of the users contribute a little, and 1% of the users account for almost all the action. Check out Groundswell's Social Technographic Ladder for ideas on how your target audience might be interested in participating in your social web initiatives.

Depending on an organization's target audience and objectives, blogs can serve many different roles. Most effective bloggers view their blogs as one node in the "blogosphere," and split their blogging time between posting to their blogs and participating as active members of other blogs with logical connection to the topics, authors, or audiences.  

Reaching and Attracting
Blogs can serve a number of roles in supporting your efforts to reach and attract visitors to your website and new members to an organization or campaign. This includes search engine optimization and receiving traffic from other complimentary blogs on the web.  

Communicating and Informing
Blogs provide a platform for an organization to publish written content, photos, and video that might be less formal than that which they would put into a program or resources section of their website. Depending on the target audience, blogs can offer a different kind of connection between individuals because they are generally less formal and allow participation from the community through comments. An organization might want to use a blog to publicize an event, do regular link round-ups on a specific issue or topic, or publish editorials on current events.

The higher level value that blogs offer organizations is the ability to direct and facilitate conversation about their specific area of interest. If the quality of the content is good enough, it will begin to attract a readership, both passive and active.  

Listening and Learning
One of our favorite uses for blogs is for listening and learning. Posting a blog entry and engaging your supporters in conversation is a great way to directly hear from your constituents.

Remembering and Growing
Blogs can certainly play an important role in providing meaningful ways for members to participate and be heard by each other and your staff. In this way, they can play an important role in helping you grow your relationships with individuals.  

•  Appropriate blogging tool
•  Clear understanding of the metrics you'll use to assess the return on you effort
•  Appropriate staff resources and time
•  Organizational blogging guidelines
•  Appropriate audience
•  Able to and willing to let conversation happen

Good, well-trafficked blogs have frequent, engaging, and insightful content. The quality of a blog is very much a function of the time and effort an organization puts into it. Organizations interested in creating a valuable blog should spend at least 4 hours/week to produce one to two blog posts. 

Websites: Blogs can be set up directly within an organization's existing content management system driven website.

Other social web properties: Information can be easily share to and from most blogs and the most common social web properties including Facebook, Twitter, Del.icio.us, Myspace, Flickr, and YouTube.

Other people's website and blogs: Blogs typically offer easy ways for the content to be syndicated and shared across the internet.

Database: Blogs that are built within an existing CMS website can be set up to share login information and other important user data with an organization's website.

• Blogging Best Practices - Three key points: engage with other blogs and your readers, keep the material fresh and exciting, and give people a reason to return, Echoditto 
  
• Top 10 Tools to Get Blogging Done, Lifehacker
• Help for Beginning and Experienced Bloggers, Lorelle on WordPress
• Open Source Blogging Tools

• The Skywriter, 1 Sky's Blog 
• Green Room: The Blog of The Environmental Defense Action Community
• Web Strategy
  
• chadzilla
• Donorpowerblog

At this afternoon's 2 o'clock breakout session at the Personal Democracy Forum (I'm sorry, I can't help but find that title oxymoronic), catch Wired for Change's Jim Walsh, the brains behind DLCCWeb. He'll be joined by the likes of Colin Delany of epolitics.com and Clay Haynes of Catalist (the voter file that plugs into Salsa).

Here's what they're talking about:

The annual Tagline Awards are back from Nancy Schwartz and the Getting Attention blog.  Your nonprofit or foundation could be one of this year’s Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Award winners!  Enter today.

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This month's Net2 Think Tank question asked:  How do real-world (offline) events fit into social media conversations and campaigns? 

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Meet Khrys Vaughan, also known as Khrys Kanto, and see how she's helping women in the virtual and real worlds.

Cast your vote and help TechSoup win a social media makeover!

When ONE/Northwest chose Salesforce as the platform to launch our Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) program four years ago, we did so for three important reasons: 1) the total cost of ownership for our groups was low, 2) the platform would allow us to innovate with each project we delivered, and 3) the platform was powerful and always improving so our groups could grow with it. Whether your organization is just getting started or you’re ready to launch a new, major campaign, the Salesforce and ONE/Northwest CRM program delivers technology with a lot of room for growth.

Getting started with a Salesforce database can be a bit like becoming a new parent. You’re thrilled to be expanding your organization, have a lot of questions you want answered, and most likely are feeling a bit overwhelmed. As you sit down with your long list of requirements, it’s important to have a calm, trusted voice in the room, helping you breathe through the process and customizations you are about to encounter.  (That would be us in this analogy, just in case we lost ya back there with the baby thing.)

Through staff interviews conducted by our Salesforce consultants, you and your staff decide on organizational processes and best practices. You begin to learn the ins and out of your new database as the DNA of your organization is infused into your system. Your staff wants the majority of your best information in one place, so you focus in and agree to work together. Your single days of keeping your contacts anywhere you like are over, and compromise is becoming your new favorite word.  The good news? The payoff is amazing. The first time you gaze upon a contact record that shows your donor, volunteer, and event history, you might even tear up a little bit.  It’s okay, we won’t tell.

You've only just begun. You are a growing and evolving organization and your CRM is growing alongside you. In fact, with Salesforce you can run real time reports of how your organization is using your CRM with a lot of helpful information about other places you can explore.

As you begin to nurture your data, you will have a ton of questions.  Should I add an email message record to a Contact, Giving Opportunity, or both?  When should I use an email template or just write a new email? You have a lot of growing to do, and you can’t be expected to remember everything from your initial Salesforce training. Review the usage reports you receive from Salesforce and think about how your staff is using the database and where you could save some time. Read your documentation (one thing Salesforce has over a kid—a user’s guide!), learn from your peers who are using Salesforce, and stay in touch with your consultant who can recommend new solutions and products. 

The great thing about Salesforce is it can grow with you. When you are ready to enter a whole new phase of development, like launching a new, major campaign, service area, or partnership, it’s helpful to involve a professional to align your CRM and your technology services overall to support your new work. This is helpful because when you are exploring new programs and campaigns, a consultant can find technology solutions or strategies that allow your members to do the work for you, with little or no staff intervention. 

Static websites, static databases and static organizations do not require lots of budgeting.  If you are an organization that delivers that exact same program every year to the same people with the same curriculum, and have funding for the next ten years—then we suggest you not budget much money for ongoing work. 

But groups who are innovating on program, engaging their constituents in new ways, and growing your CRM and overall technology, budget should follow that trend.  Under-budgeting for this work makes it extremely difficult for your organization to push your program innovation much beyond your front door.

Want more?  Contact David Averill, Director of Consulting Services: davida at onenw.org, 206.286.1235 x18

Hello all - Alex Steed here.

I'll be covering the Personal Democracy Forum, which is occurring on Monday and Tuesday, in New York (at Jazz at Lincoln Center!) for the next two days. From the conference website:

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