Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

I’m taking a brief 4 day weekend - not that it would be that noticeable on this blog, since I don’t always post consistently. That is actually one of the things I’m going to try and change - to set up to do a post every weekday. We’ll see how that goes.

Before I took off, I wanted to mention a few things that have been on my mind (and on my plate.) First, some of you might know that the new version of the NOSI primer has been in the works. It’s new and updated for the realities of the nonprofit technology and free and open source worlds of 2007. The primer, which will show up in just electronic form, also has a very cool implementation of a great open API that we’ll be crowing about soon (my lips are sealed right now.)

I keep discovering new and exciting free and open source web platforms. One of which is called Elgg. Elgg is a very cool community-building and e-learning tool - it’s got the social networking combined with features like forums, etc. And further, there is an amazing integration of Elgg with Mediawiki. I wish I had an excuse to install and test it - but it really requires a purpose for bringing community together. I could think of several interesting implementations in the nptech world that would be fun (like it would make a great e-learning platform for, say, circuit riders, or folks like that.)

Laura Quinn has a great blog entry about software “satisficing” - that is that sometimes we want to maximize the features that a particular software package has, instead of finding the one that works for us. It’s very zen, and a great read.

I’ve been doing a lot of technical writing - I just put the finishing touches on my third of three articles for LASA’s ICT Hub Knowledgebase, I’m writing an article on Open Office Base for the next issue of Linux Identity Magazine, and, of course, I’ve been busy writing the NOSI primer. I also have been doing some interesting client projects. So I’m very busy, and enjoying what I’m doing a whole lot!

Oh, and my consulting practice has a new logo, done by the fabulous ALR Design!

I have not at all been tempted by the 31 days to a better blog challenge. Not because I don’t want my blog to be better, it’s just that I don’t have the time right now. But, I have been following Michele Martin’s work on The Bamboo Project Blog with some interest. There are a few pieces to that challenge I might take up, on occasion. One of them, I’ll do now. A few days ago, Michele posted her blog’s mission statement. I figured it was a good time to think about and articulate mine.

The tag line for this blog is “Conscious,  mimalist, neo-luddite perspectives on nonprofit technology.” The mission of this blog is to help me, and those who read the blog, think more deeply about how we use technology. To get underneath the “conventional wisdom” of nonprofit technology, and keep asking “why”? It’s like that 3 year old, who just keeps asking why, after each explanation. I want to get to the core, to really make sure that our means and our ends are in sync. And, a secondary mission is to educate people about technology that I think is interesting and useful.

My blog and my advising practice don’t quite have the same mission. My advising practice is much more about educating and helping people with concrete technology tools, and concrete projects. I hope that in the process of doing projects for clients, I am able to ask those deep questions, and help them ask “why” much more often. But my role in that context is much more around helping to solve specific problems, or educate in specific ways about technology options.

One of the things I’ve noticed recently is that my blog is getting the attention of software vendors. I guess that’s a good thing. Maybe it means I have “arrived”. Probably it just means that when the “Social Media Director” or the “Goddess of Communication” arrived in their office in the morning, they ran their standard set of google blog and technorati searches, and voila, there I was.

It was, a while ago, part of my job to build technology solutions for people. It was also part of my job to give advice where it was appropriate, but I have come to realize, in my current position of being apart from building things, that I had a bit of myopia, as all builders and vendors do. We like what we build/sell (generally, I’m sure there are exceptions.) We think our particular products or service is the best around, or, at least, provides our clients with some unique value. I had good intentions, like virtually all software vendors do. Like many who work in this sector, I cared more about the missions of my clients than I did about my own income, although I also needed to put food on the table.

But, I was myopic anyway. It’s the standard “if I have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” I wanted to figure out how to make my product solve every problem that my clients had - or, if I couldn’t, I wanted to figure out how to build/install/integrate something that could.

Vendors, no matter what their intentions and points of view do have a particular way of speaking. “Elluminate is a leading provider of live Web conferencing and eLearning solutions for the real-time organization.” and “… hundreds of NonProfits have already found that ReadyTalk is a good fit for them both technologically AND financially.” and “We’ve designed Yugma to work seamlessly between Mac, Windows and Linux.” you the picture. In fact, if you are a nonprofit, you’ve spent time wading through that crap (and believe me, I’ve created my own healthy share of vendorspeak.)

A while ago, I blogged about the “scarcity mentality” - the idea that the pie is finite, and it has to be split up. So, of course, everybody is fighting tooth and nail, bit and byte, trackback and comment (and even dollar and cent), to get their piece. There are some trends that make it seem that some vendors are beginning to get the picture that we can all work together - open APIs seem to be on the rise. That makes me happy.

My one request is that vendors who comment on this blog take a moment to step back a bit from their myopia, and look at the ways in which they can contribute to a vibrant, active ecology of choices, rather than fight for their own little piece of the pie.

I remember in the late 90s, in the heady days of getting organizations up to speed with technology, I would suggest to organizations that they add in their budget replacing 1/4 to 1/3 of their computers each year (instead of the much more common practice of replacing them all at once every 5 or 10 years when a grant happened.) This was for all the good reasons: computers are cheap, support is expensive, and it would cost more time and money to diagnose and fix a computer than replace it - so replacing computers on a regular schedule would actually decrease IT costs.

Well, all of that is true. But in this newer era, when we think that cost is more than just dollars, but we also have to think about the hidden cost of all of those toxic chemicals, fossil fuels, and water that goes into manufacturing computers, as well as the bulging landfills all over the country.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of free and open source software in environmentally sustainable computing. Some of the biggest reasons to replace computers is not as much the hardware failure issues, but software bloat and cruft, and planned obsolescence. You can’t run Microsoft’s Vista on a computer that is more than a year or so old. Computers that now run Windows 2000 (there are plenty of them in nonprofit offices, I’m sure) probably can’t even run XP, let alone Vista. But computers of that vintage can pretty happily run Ubuntu Feisty (the current Ubuntu version). And older computers running Linux make very handy single (or even multiple) purpose servers - file servers, backup servers, dhcp servers, routers and firewalls, print servers, etc.

The great thing is that converting to Linux won’t just help environmentally - Linux has lower IT costs - lower support costs, and no software acquisition costs. If an office converted from Windows to Linux, they could keep their hardware much longer (five years easily), and have much lower IT costs, thus, in the end, creating a more environmentally and economically sustainable office.

Of course, there are caviats. There are software options that don’t exist yet, there are hardware incompatibilities, but these decrease every year. Sometime in September, NOSI will be releasing the new version of the primer on open source software for nonprofits. I’ll be announcing it, for sure. There will be some much more detailed information that will help make it easier to figure out if it is right for you.

One of the great things about the nonprofit technology community is that the community, on the whole, has a great respect for women, in whatever roles we play - whether it be geeky not. The exceptions to this in my experience have been very, very few and far between.

However, take one little step outside of our warm and fuzzy community into the larger technology community, and things change. Unfortunately, the open source community seems to find ways to ridicule, degrade and and belittle women quite often.

Linux Journal ran the following advertisement by a company called “QSOL”:

And, it got 2100+ diggs, with the title “Best. Ad. Ever.” It ran in 2000, with a lot of uproar, and they promised never to run it again. Right.
In addition,  Linux Journal has a column, called “Tech Tips from Gnull and Voyd” with quotes like:

Howdy.  My husband is Chester Gnull and I’m Laverta Voyd, and I’m the lady to light a way for all you sweethearts out there who do fancy stuff with Linux.  Me and my husband’s gonna be bringing you tech tips just about every month now.  … I don’t know nothing about Linux.  Chester, he’s the smart one, but he’s not much of a talker.  That’s why I’m here.  …

One wonders how many bad stereotypes they can fit in one column?

Anyway, if you read Linux Journal, please tell them how you feel. I did.

I decided, perhaps rashly, that one way of exposing people to, and training people on, open source software, was by doing web conferencing. I thought it would be a good endeavor to start with. One that could include free webinars, as well as paid training. So, once I decided that, I realized I needed to find the right tools.

In my searches for tools that would allow me to start this endeavor, I had several things I wanted:

• Possibility of showing slides and sharing my Linux and Mac Desktop
• Audio conferencing (two way)
• Chat capabilities
• Clean, professional, bug-free interface
• Low (or no) infrastructure costs or setup
• Truly cross platform
• Inexpensive (but not necessarily free.)

I felt I needed all of these features to make this successful. However, I have realized that it is presently impossible have all of this in one package. I have evaluated a number of options, and every one of them comes up short in one way or another.

• ReadyTalk - this had been the tool I thought I’d use. It is totally cross-platform, includes audioconferencing, has chat, etc. Its only drawback is that it’s not inexpensive. It’s $.24 per person/minute for web conferencing, plus $.15 per person/minute for audio is very tough to swallow. Even the unlimited plans (which start at $50/month, or possibly discounted) have pricing for audio, which I hadn’ t realized. It was this audio pricing that drove a stake in the heart of my ReadyTalk plan. Note: These rates are not for nonprofit organizations - they are the standard rates. Nonprofits are charged much lower rates (see comment below.) Unfortunately, I don’t qualify for those rates.
• Web Huddle - The only other one I can find that at this time offers the possibility of sharing a Linux desktop. It does, apparently, do audio via VOIP. In my tests it was buggy (some parts of it just didn’t work), and the interface was still a bit crude. It is a free service right now, which is good, and the software behind it is open source, which is even better.
• The others I assessed include DimDim, Yugma, and Adobe Connect. They all are certainly interesting, and DimDim and Yugma are free. (I love that DimDim is using Joomla as their site CMS). They are all cross-platform for participants, but none of these can show Linux desktops, and some (like Adobe in particular) can’t even run the presenter software on Linux.
• I also looked at a system that The Gilbert Center has been using. It’s quite interesting, and it deals with the audio over phone issue (which is a major snag) by dispensing with two-way audio entirely, and just using one-way audio. In looking more deeply at it, however, I’d have to do some major technology infrastructure implementation to get it going, which I’m not ready for.

So what’s the answer? I don’t know. Technologically, ReadyTalk is, well, ready. My wallet, however, is not ready (even if discounted). WebHuddle is not technologically ready, but it may (or may not) end up being what I use for free webinars (either alone, or in combination with freeconference.com.) It is the only one of these options that is both free as in beer, and free as in libre, which is important to me. But it’s buggy, and it feels like exposing people who aren’t already totally sold on open source to open source using a project that’s not ready for primetime is, well, one step forward and two steps back? (And, boy did I just fail the Richard Stallman test!) Perhaps not, I’m not clear. I might try using Yugma on my Mac desktop (I actually haven’t tried that yet - I don’t know whether it’s supported,) because the interface on Yugma is clean and nice, and it seems bug free.

But this has also made me re-assess this whole endeavor. Is this what I really want to do? Is there an audience out there? I’m stepping back and thinking a bit more about this.

Nicholas Carr, who writes the blog Rough Type, is a smart dude. Although he writes about the technology field as a whole, and seems very tapped into the for-profit world, he has lots of words of wisdom I think we can learn from. He has a recent article in “Director Magazine” which is a UK-based business magazine (no, I don’t read it, I just got the link from his blog,) entitled 10 tips for reducing burgeoning IT costs. Most of the 10 are applicable to nonprofit organizations (I’d skip the “Offshore work” tip.) The one I love the best: Procrastinate. We all don’t need to be on the bleeding edge to get stuff done.

I listened in on the call with Kintera folks about their new platform, called Connect. I was mostly curious about how open this platform will be, and what the future holds for them. I have become fascinated by the ways the CRM/Fundraising space is changing so rapidly.

Basically, Kintera is taking directly from Salesforce’s playbook. There are two initiatives that they have that I’ll talk most about, their “Connect” initiative, and their data warehousing initiative. These are, for pretty obvious reasons, the most interesting to me personally. They will also be doing some serious UI overhauls, and upgrading their CMS. They also are opening a new data center, as well as bringing Akamai technology into the mix.

The Connect platform is a set of APIs, starting with the contact and payment sets of entities, that will allow access (via SOAP 1.1) to the data in the Kintera platform. Basically, third parties will be able to build applications which will allow two-way communication into the platform. The APIs will be without cost.

The data warehouse initiative is to allow their customers access to large amounts of data for reporting and data mining. It seems like it will start out with a local query system, then will be opened up to allow third party development of data analysis tools. That part looks very interesting.

A couple of annoyances: the documentation for the APIs aren’t up yet, and the sample code they are going to publish is in C# and Java!  Now I’m sure that there are a lot of large Kintera customers that might be implementing other applications that will be written in C# and Java, but it seems to me that this is, in fact a pretty big red flag that they really don’t have a feeling for the technology that the sector is using. Code published in PHP and Python would probably get a lot more people up to speed and interested in building stuff that will integrate with the things that a lot of nonprofits really use. I mean really, how many nonprofits have stuff written in Java? Small minority, I’d bet. (I guess the C# would be useful for the Windows crowd.)

On the whole, though, I applaud them for seeing the light, and opening up their platform. It will be interesting to see where this leads them.

In the course of working with some clients, I have been in the process of trying to find technology providers, specifically, server, desktop and network support organizations, that support Linux. Several years ago, they were very few and very far between - mostly individuals who focused solely on Linux. Now, there are many more, and traditional Windows shops are beginning to either add staff who know Linux, or learn it themselves. But there still isn’t a lot out there.

At least in Massachusetts, the majority of nonprofits work with network support people who don’t focus totally on nonprofit organizations (there are some wonderful exceptions, however, of companies that focus on the sector.) The good thing is that since the business world seems to be moving ahead much more quickly on Linux and FOSS adoption, companies that work in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors are gaining Linux expertise - expertise that nonprofit organizations can benefit from. But I think more is needed.

One of the interesting dynamics of any technology provider of any stripe is the way they choose the technology they will focus on and support. I think this is something that many nonprofits, especially those without in-house technology expertise aren’t that aware of. No technology vendor, even the largest ones, can support everything. Most support only a subset (sometimes a very small subset) of the available options. This is because all providers start out with some personal experiences or biases, and most are too busy taking care of clients to spend lots and lots of time gaining new expertise in a broad range of topics - they need to focus. And even if they hire expertise, there has to be enough overlap for synergy to happen. Most of the time, for clients, this doesn’t matter. Sometimes it does matter, both to an organization that might use that vendor, and to the vendor themselves in terms of viability of their business model.

I came across this discussion of Linux distributions and their strengths and weaknesses in terms of vendors who might resell Linux. It was interesting not as much for its focus on the presence or absence of “channel programs” but for the way it characterized the qualities of the different distributions in terms of the business model of reselling Linux. In a sense, of course, if you are a technology provider and you install Linux on some servers or desktops in an organization, you are “reselling” Linux. But since most Linux distributions are free (as in beer), that’s not really quite the way to look at it.

So I thought I would take from their model, and instead, talk about distributions from the perspective of the needs of a small to medium-sized technology support organization (for profit or nonprofit) that serve nonprofits. I’m really interested in helping technology providers get up to speed, so that the amount of support available for nonprofits using Linux (and open source in general) increases. If you are a provider, please feel free to email me if you want more info or help and support in moving forward.

Ubuntu

As this article states, Ubuntu is a very popular distribution right now, and Canonical is working hard to get Ubuntu in as wide a range of hands as possible. The basic philosophy of Ubuntu “Linux for human beings” is certainly one that makes sense for a lot of nonprofits, and it also has made Ubuntu the easiest distribution to set up and use, especially on the desktop.

Ubuntu also has also focused a lot of effort on building community, and has, hands down, the most vibrant, helpful and deep community of any Linux distribution. They have mentorship programs, they are building regional networks, they have almost unparalleled bulletin board, email and IRC community support. This community is one of Ubuntu’s great strengths, in terms of the ability to find helpful and sometimes instant support (via an incredibly active set of IRC channels.) And, Canonical also provides professional support. Canonical has a lot of connections in the nonprofit sector.

In my opinion, it’s a good distribution to start with if you are just beginning to learn Linux, and thinking about adding it to your business because of the vibrant and deep community that is there to provide support. But, as the article linked above says, they don’t have an official affiliate program, so it will take some shoe leather on your part to build the business aspects.

Red Hat

Red Hat is the old standby, and is in the server rooms of many nonprofits all over the country. The old adage “no one ever got fired for buying IBM” which, of course morphed into “no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft” in the Linux world might be “no one ever got fired for implementing Red Hat.”

Red Hat has a well-built business of providing enterprise level support for its distribution. It was the first Linux distribution to make it big in the business world. Its focus is on servers, and Fedora, it’s “community version” does certainly benefit from Red Hat’s development expertise and resources, but it doesn’t have as vibrant a community as Ubuntu, for instance.

However, because it is so common, and there is reasonable community support, and because of the strength of Red Hat, it might be a good choice, especially if a technology support organization works with larger organizations.

Debian

I’m a real fan of Debian, and have been using it on the server-side for a very long time. It is a rock-solid distribution with what is arguably the best package management system. (Ubuntu is based on Debian). It has a vibrant user community. Debian is the favorite of most serious Linux geeks. The Debian community is dogmatic in their approach to licensing - nothing in Debian depends on software that is not truly free (as in ‘libre’.)

Debian used to be one of the most difficult distributions to install, but that is no longer the case, so it is definitely a distribution that you could try as a Linux beginner (although beware that the community isn’t going to be as friendly to newcomers as the Ubuntu community.)

I think it’s certainly a possible choice, especially if you’ve got a philosophical approach that’s resonant with Debian (a lot of activist technology organizations use Debian) and have (or can find) the expertise needed. But it is a bit less known and popular, especially with the presence of Ubuntu, which has most of the strengths (in a technical sense,) and none of the weaknesses (in a business sense) of Debian.

CentOS

I’m only including this in my review because I have come across a surprising number of technology providers that have chosen to focus on CentOS. I had not heard of it until then. CentOS is a bit of an odd beast. It is Red Hat, with branding removed. In their words: “CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendors redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible.”

So they take RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and repackage it. So it has everything RHEL has except … Red Hat support. Which, of course, is why most people buy Red Hat, instead of installing Fedora or Debian, etc. I’m not sure what I think of this. I guess it makes sense at one level - here is a way for a vendor to provide basically Red Hat without having to either provide a markup in reselling it, or charge a nonprofit for it.

What makes RHEL “Enterprise” is basically the support. That’s about it. Debian or Ubuntu are just as “Enterprise-class” as RHEL without Red Hat behind it. So CentOS really isn’t any different a choice - unless as an organization you are very familiar with Red Hat, and want to stick with it, but don’t want to pay (or have organizations pay) for it. If you are new to the Linux biz, there isn’t any reason I could see to adopt CentOS.

Novell

I think the article says pretty much everything that needs to be said about Novell, and SUSE Linux. They take directly from the Red Hat playbook, and have a community version called openSUSE. It’s certainly a good option, although in the US, SUSE isn’t very common.

Other Distros

There are, of course five bajillion Linux distributions of varied popularities. Any of which could make a reasonable choice for you as a technology provider (There is a good review in Distrowatch of the top ten distributions.) Only you really know what makes the most sense, given what you want to do with Linux, and what expertise you have on hand. And, luckily, once you’ve learned some Linux, supporting other distributions isn’t such a big deal.

It’s been 7 weeks of using Ubuntu 7.04 (better known as Feisty Fawn) as my primary desktop. I figured it was time to give my final assessment. Well, it’s not final, but I’ve come to what I imagine will be a steady state for a while. I’m relatively happy, and, surprisingly enough, I don’t miss using the mac everyday.

Here are the good things:

• Even macs get weird sometimes, especially if they’ve been on for a long time. The only time I shut down this laptop is when I’m taking it somewhere, which is relatively rarely. So I regularly have it on for many days at a time, with no noticeable degradation in performance.
• I love apt-get/aptitude. 90% of the software I want to install I just install by saying “apt-get install name_of_package”. Anything that is a requirement gets installed along with it. It’s so incredibly easy. In general, installation and configuration of software has become much easier.
• Open Office works better on Linux than on the mac, as does thunderbird and firefox
• For a few things (mostly system/network tools) there are some incredibly awesome options, amazingly good for free (as in beer) software, and better than software you’d pay for. For some things, there are lots of relatively decent choices.
• I have no problem getting just about all of my work done using Ubuntu.
• My printer setup (Brother laser printer) was easier on Linux than on the mac

Here are the bad things:

• The games available on Linux leave much to be desired
• Getting proprietary codecs to play (MP3, WMA, etc.) can be a pain
• XWindows (x.org) can be annoying to configure if you go beyond the most simple
• KDE is a memory hog (I switched to xfce, and am thinking about other light window managers)
• There are some serious holes in available software
• Some things take a while to get set up - longer than on a mac.
• Getting some hardware configured can be painful.

Now the ugly:

• If you are used to integration between your email, calendar and addressbook, there is only one option (Novell Evolution) and it is not very good.
• If that integration, with the added integration of a PDA is very important to you, don’t even bother trying Linux on the desktop.
• Regressions are on the rise (regressions are things that used to work, but break in new versions.)

So, overall, I like it, and I’m sticking with it, with the exception of my addressbook and calendar. It was quite a shame to have to give that up, but it was either that, or make due with either not using a Palm, or modifying dramatically how I dealt with my PIM data. So I’m stuck where I don’t want to be (where lots of nonprofits are) with a data integration problem that I can’t solve right now, and likely won’t get solved for years. Evolution, apparently, is not under active development because Novell is focusing on Groupwise. The Mozilla Foundation supposedly has been working on an integrated email/calendar/contacts system, but they are spinning off Thunderbird, and Sunbird (the calendaring app) is coming along slowly. So an integrated app from Mozilla is years away, if it will happen at all (nevermind the palm part.)

I’m looking forward to Gutsy Gibbon, Ubuntu 7.10 coming out in October. I’m sure I’ll be upgrading.

And, to answer the question posed above, the answer is, for me, obviously, a definite yes. But it appears, from my experience and others, that question actually has to be framed not as “Is Linux ready for the desktop?”, but “Is Linux ready for your desktop?” And the answer to that question depends upon the unique combination of the type of work, your software and hardware needs, and your willingness to put up with certain things. (Although, one needs to be willing to put up with some things no matter what OS one picks - it just depends on what you want to put up with.)