Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

Monday (the day before the election) I’m hosting the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants. My focus: is the economy changing the way you work, or the way you think about your work? In what ways?

If you’d like to submit a post, do so by Saturday midnight. Go to BlogCarnival.com to submit your post using the form there or send an email to npc.carnival AT yahoo DOT com with your name, your blog’s name and the URL of the post (not your blog homepage).

I’m in love with Firefox. I’ve actually been in love with Firefox since 3.0, when it seems like a few of the things that plagued it finally got ironed out. More and more websites are designed not only with Firefox in mind, but sometimes even primarily with Firefox.

Here’s a short list of the Firefox Addons that I use all the time:

• Firebug - it’s a great tool for HTML/CSS/JS development
• Web Developer - a nice toolbar, also useful for development
• Google addons, including the toolbar, and Google notebook add on (although I’m beginning to use Evernote more, because I have a copy of notes both on my desktop and online.)
• Feedly - it’s a really nice tool for making your feeds more readable, and it syncs with google reader, so that when you read something using Feedly, it’s marked as read on Google Reader.
• Fire.fm - I’m in love with both Pandora and Last.fm. Fire.fm provides a nice toolbar - where you can play stations from, etc. It’s a nice integration.
• Delicious Bookmarks - this is the official plug in from Yahoo. It’s sweet - a button to easily tag the pages you are visiting, and a nice sidebar to see your bookmarks from.
• I also use varied greasemonkey scripts to make things more interesting.

There are a gazillion (well a lot) of add-ons for Firefox (and other Mozilla tools as well.) What do you use?

As many of you know, I have been using OpenOffice.org, the free and open source office suite since before it was OpenOffice.org. That would be when it was Star Office. That was a long time ago. So I’ve seen it develop and change (and helped a tiny, tiny little bit along the way by submitting bugs.)

The Apple OS has been the poor stepchild when it comes to OpenOffice.org for a long time. With Windows and Linux, there were native versions that were easy to install and use. With OS X, you had to either use the most recent version of OpenOffice.org with X Windows, which most Apple users don’t use, and didn’t have the nice Aqua window dressing, or you had to use NeoOffice, which was steps behind OOo, and had some serious memory leak problems (it got better over time, but it still was pretty unstable last time I used it.)

But, while I was busy doing other things like moving, OpenOffice.org released version 3.0, and with it, native Aqua versions for Intel and PowerPC Macs. Can you see me doing a happy dance?

OpenOffice.org has been a great alternative to Microsoft Office for Windows users (and really the only full-featured office suite for Linux users.) But now, Mac users don’t need to sacrafice to get the latest OOo goodies.

For a while, I’ve been watching MPower Open, the (not so) newly open sourced (but Windows-based) fundraising package. In general, I’ve been impressed by its feature set, and that they made the choice to go open source. MPower has traditionally been used primarily by faith-based organizations, (by the way, that’s not a small niche, even though it is one that is somewhat neglected by the nptech community,) and they have been quite committed to expanding from that niche.

One of my prime concerns once MPower went open source has always been “how are they going to build a community of users and developers?” They have a tough road ahead of them. First, it’s a hard road for company-based open source projects, but luckily, there are a few that have done some road-building ahead of them (see below). Second, Windows developers (and savvy users), for the most part, aren’t used to open source communities (DotNetNuke is one exception, and there are other projects with some Windows ports and components,) and open source developers and users are primarily used to working on Linux (and Mac) platforms, so building a critical mass of interested developers and users is going to take work (it takes work anyway, but it will take more.)

At present, on their Sourceforge page, there are a very, very few forum posts, no bugs reported, and many days with few if any downloads. This is not the sign of a healthy open source community.

But, perhaps, there is change on the horizon. MPower announced today that they  are hiring a new VP of community. His name is Matt McCabe, and he is very familiar with the nonprofit fundraising space, having spent time as a consultant at Convio. I had a great chat with him yesterday, and was impressed by his background, knowledge of the sector, and his committment to grow the community around the MPower Open product.

He has a lot less knowledge of open source communities, and how they work, so I have some homework for him:

• If you only read one blog, read Matt Asay’s The Open Road. Matt Asay is a key member of the company behind Alfresco, an open source Content/Document Management system.
• Have a chat with the people at SugarCRM - both the company, and developers/partners. They have built a fascinating ecosystem around what is basically a commercial product (with an open source version.)
• Have a sit down with some of your current partners, including the engineers behind the managers. Find out what they want and need.

Need more homework? I know a consultant you can hire ;-)

In any event, I’m quite pleased to hear that they have moved in this direction, and I am really looking forward to seeing what comes of this. If they can really move this forward, it would be fabulous to have feature rich open source CRM options with healthy and vibrant user and developer communities in both the web based, and client/server spaces.

I think that if I had to pick only one thing that would help people understand the character of Drupal, it would be the WYSIWYG editor that comes standard with an out-of-the-box Drupal installation. That would be NONE. There is no standard WYSIWYG editor that comes with Drupal. You have to figure out how to find one, and install and configure it yourself.

So if you want to start adding content to your new site, and you need a little formatting, or a picture, etc., well, unless you know a bit of HTML, you are S.O.L.

On the other hand, this is actually, from my perspective, a really good thing (can you tell I’m becoming a Drupalista?) There are several to choose from, and they differ both in difficulty to get installed and working, as well as features. Want something barebones? There’s one for you. Want something with all of the bells and whistles? There’s one for you, too.

There is a great review of five of the major ones.

I’ve been getting to know a few of them (and, yes, they can be a pain to install, and they depend, generally, on other libraries that you have to install as well.) I don’t have a favorite yet, but I’m thinking I don’t need to have one - just to know which ones are well-maintained, and what the differences are in feature set. Then I can choose the one that makes the most sense.

• This is old-ish news, but the acquisition of companies behind open source software by big behemoths continues with the acquisition of Jabber by Cisco.
• Matt Asay makes some interesting points about the fact that proprietary vendors spend time and effort protecting their investments in their proprietary tools, rather than focusing effort on looking toward the future. He says: “Red Hat and other open-source companies, in other words, are focused on the future, because that’s what their model requires in order to earn renewals from customers. The proprietary model is more about “build once, charge everywhere…and as long as you can.” It’s a great model for the vendor, when it works, but it encourages stasis in markets and silly lawsuits designed to horde, not grow customer value.” At this point, proprietary vendors in our nonprofit neck of the woods aren’t spending time litigating (thankfully) but I’d argue that for a while, at least, stasis in markets was most definitely encouraged. Things might be shifting, though, due to both open source and SaaS as catalysts for change.
• Some folks think that the more users an open source project has, the better, and the healthier the ecosystem. I agree, and I think that bodes well for us as more and more open source software is adopted in the sector (like CiviCRM, for example.)
• It doesn’t have to be SaaS vs. Open Source, it can be SaaS and Open Source. SugarCRM is moving forward in that direction, which is cool. Too bad CivicSpace OnDemand is dead - could have been an an avenue for CiviCRM.

I’ve been working with Drupal a fair bit over the last few weeks, with the ultimate goal to basically be able to really work with it to create sites. I converted my (very simple) consulting site to Drupal, without any bells and whistles. I’m working now on a site that needs some bells and whistles, like translated pages and a WYSIWYG editor (ah, the WYSIWYG editor thing in Drupal is going to get its own blog entry, I’m sure).

My next step is to try and create a simple theme (so I understand how theming works,) and write a module (so I understand how modules work.) There are still lots of things that are mysteries to me, but perhaps I’ll learn more at Bay Area Drupal camp this weekend.

I’ve also been digging a lot into the new(ish) social network software Elgg, and beginning to develop a members-only site with it for a client. In my estimation, it’s amazingly promising, as a platform for interesting private sites. And, since it has OpenID (which seems to have bugs, though), OpenDD, and OpenSocial, it’s not such a bad idea for public sites either (although I’d still not suggest that nonprofits spend the time to do this.) Maybe someone will use it to create the Facebook killer (I kind of doubt it, but I can hope, can’t I?)

As well, I’m still honing my WordPress skills, mostly in the realm of dealing with themes and moving the darn things around and upgrading from ancient versions. I’ve done some theme hacking, but haven’t yet written a plugin (I can’t think of one to write that hasn’t been written yet.)

And, on top of all of that, I’m re-writing in PHP some core functions of a web-database/CMS framework I wrote in Perl a gazillion years ago (and still is in use for an application called EASE.) That’s been fun. What’s also fun in retrospect is that the framework (the erstwhile Xina) was written basically using the MVC architectural pattern before I knew it existed!

It feels like I’m beginning to focus on a core set of tools and technologies (PHP, Drupal, WP, Elgg,) and that in a few months, I’ll be up to speaking PHP fluently, like I spoke Perl a while back. And I’m looking forward to getting to work on the kinds of projects that I’ve been watching as a spectator in the last year.

I keep being surprised by how frequently I hear clients tell me that a vendor has suggested they “build them a CMS,” or by proposals from vendors that include custom building a CMS. I hear people suggesting building their own social networking website. I even occasionally still hear tell of organizations who want custom CRMs.

The web software landscape has changed dramatically over the years. Five years ago, it was full of custom built systems of all sorts - and the “build vs. buy” decision was, I think, more difficult, because the available software to buy was fairly cruddy. (And, for the purposes of this post, I’m using “buy” exceedingly loosely - including purchasing proprietary software, installing open source, or using SaaS.)

But the landscape is different now, and I think that, in some senses, the “build vs. buy” decision is much more straightforward. First, the software available, whether it be open source, SaaS, or proprietary, is much better all round. There are new types of software being developed all the time (like, for instance, the new crop of “Social Network Management Systems” both open source and SaaS, like Ning.)

In addition, the increasing openness of software, whether it be open source, or open platforms like Salesforce.com, means that customizing software to your needs, or integrating different pieces is much more straightforward, meaning it’s a lot easier to create exactly what you need by integration or customization, rather than building from scratch.

This is not to say that there is no role for custom built applications. I’m in the process of working with two organizations to create just that. But they are both for quite highly specialized functions. And I’ve also been involved in projects to create interesting and somewhat customized web functionality - but those are being done with adding custom modules to an open source CMS.

From my perspective, exhaust all of the “buy” options: open source/proprietary/SaaS out-of-the-box, customized open source/SaaS, or integration of already existing components, or building modules on top of open source tools, before you take on building something new from the ground up. You’ll save money and time, as well as be able to take advantage of an upgrade path as web software changes and improves, meaning you won’t have to build whole systems again.

I used to spend most of most days hacking (mostly Perl) code. It had its ups and downs, although in retrospect, the downs weren’t really about coding. I haven’t done daily coding now for about 3 years, and I’m missing it, terribly. So … I’m going back to it, slowly but surely.

I also have to admit that my gut tells me that in the coming economic landscape, going back to using my coding skills will likely increase my chance of keeping myself in iPhones, BeagleBoards, and microbrews, as well as the more necessary, but boring things like keeping a roof over my head. Strategic planning is already something that’s somewhat of a hard sell for organizations. Methinks its only going to get harder as grants and donations start to dry up.

In my last post, I was talking about platform choice, and although to some extent, I can appreciate the argument that Python is a better language than PHP (just like in 1999, Perl was a better language than PHP was at the time.) However, PHP is the basis for Drupal, which is inarguably the most popular open source CMS system, and WordPress, inarguably the most popular Blogging platform. It’s also the basis for Joomla, a CMS I appreciate. There are also some very cool PHP development frameworks, like Cake and Symfony, that I’m excited to explore. It’s also the basis for CiviCRM, a project I’d love to be able to contribute code to. I’m psyched to learn jQuery (OK, that’s not PHP, but I figured I’d stick it in there.) And I don’t have to learn a new language (I’ve done a fair bit of PHP some time ago, and it’s not so unlike Perl.) So PHP it is, starting with Drupal.

So my first steps are to find some projects to help out with, volunteer for, etc. and take it from there. Maybe start doing some work with CiviCRM. It’s such a different landscape than it was even 3 years ago. But it’s a landscape that presents itself with all kinds of amazing possibilities for creating totally amazing applications that we couldn’t even dream about a few years ago.

Over the past year and a half, I’ve been fulfilling a definitely different role with nonprofit organizations than most times in the past. I’ve been an intermediary, rather than an implementor. In this role, it has been my task to provide advice for organizations around technology choice and vendor selection.

Many times, I narrow down the technology options as a part of the RFP process. I do this based on my knowledge of the options out there, my own opinions about them, and, most importantly, the feature match. For many projects, a wide range of options are possible, and in talking with vendors who specialize in one toolset or another, I’ve been intrigued by the ways in which vendors talk about their chosen tools. For some projects, there is no question that one tool may be better than another. But for a lot of projects, what’s way more important than the tool is the approach of the vendor/developer, and the quality of the work they produce.

And some things surprise me. I am actually still surprised at how many small vendors are still selling their custom CMS. Having written and maintained my own for a few years, I know that the investment is hard to let go of. But in terms of long term sustainability, from my perspective, picking one of the well developed open source CMSs and running with it, can’t be beat. There will be an initial investment of time, but the time savings later, and the added opportunities will almost inevitably outweigh the cost of maintaining and improving (as web technology gets more sophisticated, clients expect more from their websites) your own.

And I guess what’s less surprising is that people are pretty wedded to their toolset, and ready with long lists of arguments as to why theirs is better. I’m sure that when I was doing implementation, I focused some energy on “why my tools are better” (and, actually, I was right and wrong at the time. For instance, I chose perl over php and postgresql over mysql in 1999.) I know that’s just part of the package of being an implementor. Some arguments I can certainly appreciate better than others (the Python vs PHP ones are fun.) But I’m sorry, I’m not going to be convinced that ColdFusion is a platform I should choose. I mean, it doesn’t even have objects! (That’s actually not the most important reason, but the fact that a web development platform that has been around for 13 years still doesn’t have objects is telling.)

And as I think about going back to doing implementation, platform choice is certainly something to ponder. (More on those thoughts in a forthcoming post.)