Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

So, this blog won’t be totally technology zen. Sometimes, I’ll talk about technologies I think are just cool, and useful, and, well geeky, ’cause I can’t help being a geek.

IPv6 is the next generation Internet Protocol. That is, basically, the addressing system computers and routers and such use to direct traffic around a local network, and the internet. IPv4, the last version, was thought up in the world that existed when PCs didn’t exist, really, and no one could even imagine that, well, you’d want to give your refrigerator an IP address. It allowed for 4,294,967,296 addresses. Which, on one hand, seems like a lot, but it’s not, when every cell phone, PC, router, cable set top box and toaster has one.

So in comes IPv6, a different kind of addressing protocol. It allows for 5×10²⁸
addresses, which, for those interested, is 50 octillion. It will likely even manage to make it into space, I think.

One of my favorite people who makes geeky stuff understandable is Carla Schroeder. She wrote a great series of articles for O’Reilly about IPv6. They are worth a read.

When I start out these series, I seem to have an idea in hand about how to organize them, which, invariably, gets rearranged in the course of writing. Such is life. I had originally planned to talk about RSS/XML after tagging, but I decided instead to hold off on that as a start on the posts about the inner guts of Web 2.0. So, here’s the post about Blogs, and their follow ons: podcasting and vlogging.

Blogging is old hat. I’ve been doing blogging for almost 4 years now. I wrote a blogging module into my web database project, Xina, more than 4 years ago. I have pretty much always understood the difference between blogs and websites - but I recently got a better feeling as I was redoing my own website. It’s not so much about depth and breadth, although that certainly can be a part of it. It’s more about the ephemeral versus the enduring. Blog posts get old, and out of date fast. That’s part of the point. Websites shouldn’t. Which, of course, is why many people and many organizations don’t need blogs. But that topic will wait for a few paragraphs - let me finish my descriptions first.

There has been a lot of talk about nonprofit blogging in the last while. Most recently, Michael Gilbert pointed me to a very good whitepaper by Nancy White about blogs and community. It’s worth a read. She has some interesting things to say about the emergent properties of blogging communities. At this point, many nonprofit technology providers have blogs, and use them to get their message out (and, I think, create an interesting community that is somewhat changed from the community I knew pre-seminary, which was primarily fueled by email discussions.) The originators of blogging probably thought of it mostly as a way for people to be able to easily update their websites quickly, and provide interesting content on a moving basis. I think the community aspects of blogging were somewhat unexpected.

Their natural follow-ons, podcasting and vlogging are not as ubiquitous, or as frequently used in the nonprofit technology space. Beth Kanter has been doing some great coverage of the emerging fields of blogging, podcasting and vlogging (she has a fabulous linkroll of blogging how-to’s on her blog.) Podcasts are simply audio blogs that were downloadable, and you could put on your favorite digital audio device (hence, "Pod"casting). Vlogging are video blogs - and they are as simple as a talking head in front of the camera, and as complex as including animation and other things.

It could be argued that iTunes made podcasting mainstream. But without a doubt, YouTube made vlogging, and mass video creation mainstream. And the major engine that makes these three types of ephemeral media really work, is RSS, which is the subject of the next post.

So, now the question - should a nonprofit organization have a blog? Should staff of a nonprofit blog? Would this help: 1) gain donors? 2) communicate the message? 3) keep stakeholders informed? 4) provide collaborative opportunities within, and between organizations?

All of these are good questions, and will be totally different for different organizations. I can think of two organizations that I’ve worked with, which are, in a sense, case studies for why to have a blog, or not to have a blog.

Organization 1 is a medium-sized mental health organization in a smallish city in the Northeast. It gets most of its clients by referral, and just about all of its funding by state or federal contract. It has really defined policies and procedures. It continues to grow, but is growing in well-defined ways, that mostly don’t require communication with many stakeholders.

So, should this ED start a blog, or should the organization have a blog? Unless the ED wants to provide some kind of leadership in the mental health or nonprofit space, this ED doesn’t need one, and neither does the organization. The time and effort it would take to maintain a blog isn’t going to result in any better accomplishment of mission. (Actually, they don’t even have a website. Which is just fine.)

Organization 2 is a small pro-choice membership organization that depends upon outside funding, has many stakeholders in many different communities, and provides advocacy and activism nationally. Should this ED, and/or this organization have a blog? Heck, yes (in fact, it was for this organization that I originally wrote the blogging module that I mentioned above.) The time and energy that it devotes to their blog(s) (yeah, they should probably have more than one) would likely pay off in the short, and long run.

But there are many, many organizations in the middle of these extreme examples. Blogging takes time, focus, and energy from someone or someones. And it only makes sense if the connections that can be made, the communication channels opened, the voice heard is worth that investment.

As for podcasting and vlogging. I’m much, much more bearish on those technologies (oooh, something I can be bearish about. <wink>) First off, both of these (particularly vlogging) take an order of magnitute more time and energy to produce than a blog. And they likely have an order of magnatude less audience. I’d argue that it’s likely that only organizations who’s major focus is technology or media, or who are large enough, and have enough audience (like an Oxfam, or a Greenpeace) should tip toe into this territory.

And, I’d argue, the stakes are higher for an organization than an individual that starts a blog, or podcast, or vlog, and then decides later to stop. I think it might be better not to start at all. But it does require a lot of thought. Look at what organizations like yours are doing. Look at what kinds of things you can do to your website, for instance, to create RSS feeds for new content, instead of thinking of starting a blog.

It is my not so humble opinion that, like many technologies, simply the presence of them provides pressure for some to adopt them. I’m an early adopter, I know - it’s easy to feel like everyone’s doing it, and maybe I should look into it. Or whatever. But like any technology decision, it requires thought about how useful that technology will be, and whether, and how, it will serve your mission.

I’ve been beginning to think a lot about databases, and where they are going. I’ve been using databases now since grad school, and relational databases for the past 10 years or so. There have been two specific advances in Web 2.0 that might, in the end, change how we think about databases.

This is described well in a post on O’Reilly Radar, which describes what Google did when it was creating a new bug tracking system. They, of course, have the worlds most kick-ass full-text searching system (I’m not sure whether that’s Web 1.5 or 2.0.) So they combined that system, with specific kinds of tagging and metadata, to decrease the structure of the database of the bug tracking system - they were encouraging people to just put in lots of text in a free-form field.

It made me think - how many kinds of databases that we create and use could be simplified by adding tagging, and really good full-text searching? I already can imagine something like an event management system, or some kinds of content-rich applications that depended upon highly structured relational schema, that could use this kind of new idea. Come up with one good full-text and metadata search functionality (or use someone else’s) and trim down the time and energy both creating the schema, and entering in the data, at the same time as you enrich the content.

I kinda like it.

After writing my post on tagging, I got sidetracked by Marnie Webb’s mention of ma.gnolia, and then went off to investigate, then decided to write about social bookmarking tools. Ma.gnolia is a new(ish) social bookmarking tool. There are some interesting comparison’s out there - see Notmyself, Phil Crissman, and Jeff Croft for a good review of Ma.gnolia’s open API.

First, I’ll do a quickie review of the social bookmarking phenomena and why I’ve been using del.icio.us, and why I’m switching to Ma.gnolia. And then, I’ll ask myself some questions about it.

So, all browsers keep bookmarks - it helps one easily go back to and find sites that you go to regularly. These days, most browsers have a nice bookmark bar - that really helps organize sites you visit regularly. But what about sites people who do the same kinds of work that you do, or like the same kinds of things that you do? You could google for them, but wouldn’t it be great to see other people’s links - things they found organically? Also, wouldn’t it be great if no matter where you were, you could get to your bookmarks?

So those are the reasons I use a social bookmarking tool, like del.icio.us. (Here’s a pretty complete list of tools from listible, another kind of social bookmarking tool.) I have to admit that my reasons have more to do with the latter (getting at my bookmarks in an organized fashion (i.e. tagged) from anywhere,) but I do like, on occasion, to find people who are kinda like me, and find out what their bookmarks are - and I like contributing my bookmarks. Which, in the end, is why I’m choosing to switch from del.icio.us to Ma.gnolia. I like the interface better, and the social part of the bookmarking is actually a lot better done (they have groups, as well as contacts.)

But some comments on the whole phenomenon. First, the major problem is that there are, at this point, so many of them, and although many (most?) of them have open APIs (that is, they allow other software to interact with them, and grab data, or add data,) they aren’t really interoperable (see Marshall Kirkpatricks excellent post on issues regarding Yahoo and del.icio.us and other of it’s acquisitions - adding another good reason to switch away from del.icio.us.) In the sense that there isn’t a way to, for instance, add the same bookmark to several social bookmarking sites at once (there is, however, a cool greasemonkey script that allows you to copy del.icio.us bookmarks to ma.gnolia.) You basically have to either decide which site has your loyalty, and then stay with that one (or spend a lot of time importing and exporting and double/treble/quadruple bookmarking. It should be interesting to see how this plays out. del.icio.us clearly has had the lion’s share of attention for a while, but who knows how long this will remain.

The next question is, well, how useful is this anyway? In some ways, I use social bookmarking tools like listible as a more directed google (I’ve yet to create any lists). I use furl to keep pages that have content that I absolutely want to keep, in case the site goes away (furl could go away, of course, so maybe I should save that stuff to my hard drive - they have a cool export feature.) Bookmarking saves me time, for sure. But it’s also true that a lot of the "social" in social bookmarking has been more of a time suck than a time saver.

But, as I’ve said, it’s not all about efficiency. Does it really connect me to people? Sometimes, but not generally. In general, at least del.icio.us’ focuses more on the metadata aspects of the social part of social bookmarking (centered around tags). Ma.gnolia seems better. We’ll see. But in the meantime, social bookmarking tools are I think a useful part of Web 2.0.

The first set of new technologies that I’ll talk about that are part of Web 2.0 is something called "tagging." Tagging isn’t really a technology at all. It’s really a new method of keeping track of metadata. It is a key part of all of the best Web 2.0 tools out there which are about collaborative content creation, like del.icio.us, flickr, listible, and others.

What makes tagging special, I think, is that the tags chosen are totally up to the user. And that helps to create what are called "folksonomies" - collaboratively created categorizations of information. This is in contrast to most previous techniques of categorizing data - some individual or organization came up with a way to categorize things, and individuals had to conform to those categorizations. Folksonomies are the result of many individuals choosing, with or without influence, tags to use.

Many nptech (the favored tag for the Nonprofit technology community) folks have talked about tagging and folksonomies, and there are some interesting projects afoot (keep track of the netsquared project - it’s all about Web 2.0). I think the activity around tagging has mostly settled down - tagging has become mainstream, and part of everyday tech life.

From my perspective, tagging is one of the most important new features of Web 2.0. It promotes democratic, collaborative content generation, and makes it easier to find information that you want or need, based on the way that you look at things, not based on someone else’s way of categorizing information you need to learn. It connects people. I love following other people who use some of the stranger tags that I’ve come up with - it turns out that a lot of their bookmarks are useful to me.

I do think that like all technology - tagging has it’s limitations. It’s not going to change the world. Tagging is, in the end, about bringing people together, and empowering people to be creative. The results of that creativity might be, well, not what you’d hope. But it is one of the things that has made Web 2.0 head and shoulders better than Web 1.0.

Yes, I promise, the post on tagging and folksonomies is coming. But first, a great example of Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0 - I wanted to talk about Google Analytics. I found this by way of one of my favorite new blogs, Lifehacker. Lifehacker is great, and shares some of my ethos about technology. They had a link today to a great page: how to dissuade yourself from becoming a blogger. It’s funny, and appropriate. I think some nonprofits should read it.

Anyway, being a poor student, and having a few extremely low-traffic sites, I figured I’d stick with Site Meter, which seems to be the best of the free site analysis tools. It gives you all of the necessary stats: page hits, visits, referrers, some nice geographical info, etc.

Google Analytics is also free. You can follow 10 sites instead of one. And it does all of the same stuff, except better. And you don’t have to have that silly cube graphic in some far corner of your site. (Some of what Analytics does I don’t even understand yet.) And in terms of interface, it blows Sitemeter out of the water.

I liked doing the Intellectual Property series in the earlier incarnation of this blog. Writing a series I think gives me the space and time to think about particular technology issues in way more detail than I can in one post, and Web 2.0 is a big enough topic that it really lends itself to a series. So this is the beginning of a series of posts on Web 2.0. What I’ll do in these posts is first explain a bit about one particular aspect of Web 2.0, and then talk a little bit about it’s implications in the nptech field, and then my own view of it from the neo-luddite perspective.

Before I plunge in to talk about the individual parts of Web 2.0 that I will highlight, I’ll give you a short definition of what Web 2.0 is. The Wikipedia entry on Web 2.0 is quite good, so if you want more detail, certainly go there. But I’ll give you my quick definition:

Web 2.0 is a series of innovations in web technology that have come together in unexpected ways, to change the experiences that people have in using the internet, and has made it much more deeply a many-to-many experience, rather than the more one-to-many experience it had been before. The technologies generally connected to Web 2.0 include, depending on one’s definitions, many new kinds of communities such as MySpace and Flickr, blogging, podcasting and vlogging, tagging and folksonomies, RSS feeds, content rich web applications using technologies like Flash and Java, open standards and APIs that allow seamless connections between different web applications, new kinds of user interfaces using AJAX, and different design aesthetics. Hallmarks of Web 2.0 sites include a democratic approach to content, organization by tagging, and new, much more flexible and intuitive interfaces.

At this point, I use Web 2.0 applications every day. I blog, I use Flickr, I search blogs using Technorati, I use del.icio.us and tag my links, I contribute content to a number of sites, including H20 Playlist. I think Web 2.0, like it’s version number suggests, is a much richer, more rewarding experience than Web 1.0 was.

And, I think that there is a lot that the nptech field can get from using Web 2.0 tools - since in many ways, the most important aspects of Web 2.0 are about empowerment of individuals, and connecting people to each other by the content that they create, or are interested in. But there is a lot of hype regarding Web 2.0, and I want to talk about that hype, and talk about the possible pitfalls of jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon. Jumping on any technology bandwagon has its pitfalls, and this one is no different.

So, what’s on tap?

First up, after this post, will be an investigation tagging and folksonomies. Then, I’ll talk about RSS and XML. These are, I think, the two most important aspects of Web 2.0 in terms of their positive impact. I’ll then talk about blogging, podcasting and vlogging, which I think are probably the most hyped, and potentially least useful for nonprofits to jump into without a lot of thought. After that, I’ll go under the hood, and talk about things like open APIs and AJAX.

I came across, in my catching up period, an article titled "Ten ways to change the world with Web 2.0" It’s actually a great article, by Marnie Webb of Compumentor, who I think thinks cool thoughts, and does cool things.

I got on Beth Kanter’s case a while back, when she was posting about  "Tagging for social change."

One of the things I said to Beth was:

I have to admit to some hesitance even thinking about a phrase
like "Tagging to make social change." There is no question that
technology in general has created sea changes in the ways in which
organizations get and use information, reach donors and constituents,
create campaigns, etc. But I think the jury is still out, at least from
my perspective, on whether or not this sea change in communication has
actually resulted in very much on-the-ground social change. Are there
actually really any fewer homeless people? Did MoveOn actually manage
to help elect someone more progressive? Is the environment any cleaner?

I do think the jury is still out, and I think that using language which raises expectations about any one single new technology (like Web 2.0) is not a good idea. Yes, let’s talk about how Web 2.0 is doing a great job at bringing people together in ways that are new for this newish media called the internet. But lets not fool ourselves into thinking, without proper evidence, that this is going to be any more effective than lots of old technologies non-profits have been using for years.

One of the nice things about catching up with the field is that you get to aquaint yourself with people who you’ve just heard of, but never met. This includes the "East Coast" Michael Stein. (I have worked a little with the "West Coast" Michael Stein.)

He has a great post about interruptive technologies, like phones, text messaging on phones, and IM. He says:

Observing my response to these two items helped me understand the Amish
response to the ubiquitous telephone. I’m never without my Treo
Smartphone. But I wouldn’t dream
of answering it during dinner, and I often let it go to voice mail
during the day. As my coworker Krista says - "the phone ringing is an
invitation, not a command. " People talk about "disruptive" innovations
- seems to me the mobile phone as a highly "interruptive" technology
that needs to be controlled. Unlike email, for example, that you can
check when you are ready to.

It is a set of interesting questions. I am much better at not answering my cell phone when I don’t want to, than I am at keeping my IM off when I want to concentrate. But I like that idea. To some extent, it is true that interruptive technologies like IM and cell phones do increase my tendency toward multitasking in a way that probably leads to less awareness, not more.

Michael Stien might not like being called a "neo-luddite", but my definition is anyone who asks questions that potentially makes us think about our assumptions about technology, and it’s present course.

For some of you, this is old news, but in the process of catching up, this came to my attention. Last year, several of my classes in seminary used Blackboard, which is the major player in the e-learning space.

In the patent office’s completely non-infinite wisdom, they granted an extremely broad patent to Blackboard for e-learning. This means that it’s competitors, which include both commercial as well as open source software, are theoretically in violation of those patents. And they are beginning to sue.

There is a really good review, with lots of great links, on O’Reilly radar.

So what’s the problem from my perspective? I’ve talked about patents before in this blog (in it’s previous incarnation). My perspectives haven’t changed much. Education is not a luxury, to my mind. I’m not especially a fan of Blackboard, but what’s true is that it was helpful for the courses I was involved in. And, further, for distance learning, it’s essential. The patent office giving Blackboard what amounts to a monopoly position in the e-learning space is bad enough. Blackboard choosing to enforce that monopoly simply stinks.

Join the boycott.