Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

I had a great Day of Service with the Advocacy Project, which is a great organization that sends interns out into the field, to work with local partner organizations on issues such as human rights, women’s health, peace, and many other issues. We talked about appropriate use of Web 2.0 tools for their interns, for themselves - for advocacy, fundraising, and information dissemination.

It was fun and engaging. They are an interesting and eclectic group, and our conversation ranged all over the map. But it felt useful, and I learned a lot from them. It made me think about what is important to me about consulting - why I got into doing consulting in the first place. I like talking with people. I like learning from them, I like working to give them concrete information they can use, as well as thought-provoking questions for them to ponder as time goes on.

And it reminded me of what I had been missing for all of this time in working to implement technology. It was the human contact, the human touch, the connection about more than just “can you fix this bug?” or “can you build this?” That’s what I’ve been missing.

Technorati Tags: 07NTC, consulting, web2.0

I continue to be fascinated with Twitter, and one of the primary drivers of the phenomenon known as Web 2.0: social networking. There have been some rather searing commentaries on Twitter lately from Nicholas Carr, and Kathy Sierra, among others. I’m not going to rehash their interesting and cogent arguments, but I’m going to ask some more fundamental questions about all of this.

In general, I have to admit that I have found very little usefulness in Web 2.0 social networking tools. Yes, I have an account on del.icio.us, digg, ma.gnolia and LinkedIn. I even had an orkut account years ago. There have been some interesting useful tidbits (I talked with an Apple recruiter, helping her figure out the best way to find people likely to be a good Genius for the new Holyoke Apple store, I’ve found a few links now and again,) but for the most part, I have gotten back way, way less than I invested in signing up, linking, etc. I’m sure this experience is different for different people, but I wonder whether people really feel like they’ve gotten useful concrete benefit from the effort they’ve put in. I’ve gotten much more benefit from tools that are heavy on content, and light on networking (like H2Oplaylist, which actually isn’t a social networking tool, per se, although it has some interesting functionalities in that regard.)

In all of this, I’m reminded of Barbara Ehrenriech’s new book, which I’m going to read soon. It’s called Dancing in the Streets, a History of Collective Joy. Her premise, as I understand it, is that modern culture has slowly but surely decreased our collective activities that connect us, and allow us to express and share joy. I also can’t help but think about that oft criticized, but interesting book, “Bowling alone” about the reduction in social capital. It is pretty clear that we as a society we’ve become more and more compartmentalized - each of us in our own little world, with our own little TV and internet connection - and we feel the need to connect with other people.

Back to nonprofit technology - a colleague and I wondered aloud together about the sheer boredom that nonprofit technology can be sometimes - and do new things like Twitter, or Second Life, or what have you, relieve some of that boredom? The boredom of databases, and networks, and accounting and … But certainly, one could argue that connecting with other people around a particular social issue is useful for nonprofits. Finding ways to tap into, for instance, the vast network that is MySpace could be an avenue to find constituents, donors and volunteers. So I don’t want to write off social networking, but it’s also true that “old-fashioned” social networking via email lists is still going strong, and there seems to be no substitute for a real, live face-to-face gathering.

But also a push-back to nonprofit technology - if social networking tools like Twitter seem to be band-aids to help heal the wound of a disconnected society - what about the wound itself?

Technorati Tags: socialnetworking, twitter

Beth Kanter interviewed me for Blogher recently, and one of the questions included “… you work as an independent consultant …” Well, those days are numbered. I decided several weeks ago, for a variety of reasons, to retire my independent consultant hat. I’ve been doing this work for more than 10 years now, full time for about seven of those years. It’s been an important part of my life for all of this time. I had decided to leave it two years ago to go to seminary, then, when I left seminary, I picked it up again briefly. I have now realized I need to set it down for good.

I’m not leaving nonprofit technology, though, just this particular role - I expect to stay involved, keep connected, keep prodding and poking, and keep learning. I expect, in one way or the other, to be putting on a nonprofit hat. For right now, I’m the part-time coordinator of NOSI. Whatever emerges next, you’ll hear about it, for sure. (In other words, no I don’t exactly know what I am doing next, yet.)

Being an independent consultant was, for me, a way to feel like I was using my skills for the greater good. I got to be a geek, and feel like I was really making a difference in the workings of organizations, and, hopefully, in people’s lives. And, I think I did that. And I also spent lots of time wrestling with the demons of consultancy and for-profit-hood (or “for-little-profit-hood” as one consultant once put it.) If I had it to do over again, I would have started a nonprofit technology organization 10 years ago. Although it certainly could be argued that would have just involved different demons. Perhaps I’m now more ready to wrestle those.

In any event, I have a lot of other skills and knowledge besides databases and coding: skills and knowledge in teaching, in writing, in working with organizations, in facilitation, in religion and spiritual practices, and in working with people, that I want to use now. I want to more directly work with people and organizations, primarily focused around faith and spirituality. I want to see people’s real faces, and hear their real voices. I want to smell the sweat of working for change in our society, from the inside out.

Kudos to Michele Martin who brings up a sticky issue: the scarcity mentality. Her perspective is that the scarcity mentality of nonprofits (the idea that there is only one pie, and we only get our small slice) helps keep nonprofits from taking full advantage of social media (i.e. Web 2.0). I’d argue that it also keeps nonprofits from collaborating together to produce amazingly good open source software projects (or, even closed-source, for that matter) that will help solve their issues and keep them from being captive to either predatory vendors, or vendors whose products, whether it be because of bad design, or not enough resources, promote data lock-in.

If ten similar nonprofit organizations came together to build a system that would work for them, they each would get 10 times the software that they could afford individually. But they are so busy living in that mentality of scarcity and competition, that they can’t do that kind of collaboration. So it doesn’t happen. Web 2.0, collaboratively developed software, and, really, collaborations of all sorts are limited by this mentality.

This reminds me of a true story. A long time ago (in web years) I was working with a certain CEO of a certain chapter of a certain very-big-nonprofit (whose role in life is to fund other nonprofits - this kinda gives it away, but it’s necessary for the story.) We were talking about whether or not this certain nonprofit, who had mondo resources, should help facilitate web development for their client organizations. They had realized that if they did that, the client organizations could begin to raise money themselves, instead of depending so heavily on this certain nonprofit. So, guess what? No web development help. I was, of course, surprised (that’s mild, I was frankly horrified - wasn’t it the mission of this certain nonprofit to help the client nonprofits raise money? Wouldn’t helping them raise money themselves fulfill their mission?) But that’s scarcity thinking for you. Even though this very-big-nonprofit was rolling in money, they thought the pie was finite, and that if the money didn’t go through them, they’d get less. So the scarcity mentality isn’t just for small, struggling nonprofits. It’s very widespread.

Technorati Tags: nptech, opensource, web2.0

I promised updates on Satellite internet, and here are my impressions so far. In general it works well. We’ve been getting download speeds from 1.5 Mbps (the advertised) to 300-400 Kbps during peak moments. The latency isn’t too much of an issue for email or the web. It makes shell sessions basically impossible for all but the simplest stuff. FTP seems to work fine, as do streaming video and audio. I haven’t bought anything from the ITunes store, yet, or tried skype for a voice call yet either.

The one caviat to all of this is what is called “FAP” or “Fair Access Policy.” In this regard, satellite broadband is fundamentally broken for any of the data heavy applications that many people want out of broadband. Basically, FAP is a threshold, and once you reach the threshold, your bandwidth is throttled down to what they say is dial-up speeds, but in fact, is much worse. If you recall my last post on this - what I had experienced was FAP. On my plan (the highest plan), if I try to download more than 400 MB of anything “at one stretch” (this is the term I was given by a tech support person) I’ll get throttled. On the “home” plans, the threshold is a measly 175 MB.

Here’s my (minorly edited) transcript of my chat with tech support:

Taylor(Mar 6 2007 4:13:34 PM): Michelle, I have been through your usage data.

Taylor(Mar 6 2007 4:14:38 PM): I have learnt that, you are subject to FAP, because you have downloaded 71MB,122MB and 211MB of data at a stretch.

Taylor(Mar 6 2007 4:15:30 PM): The sum results to 404MB, which is greater that 400MB.

Michelle(Mar 6 2007 4:15:56 PM): that’s over 3 hours …

Michelle(Mar 6 2007 4:16:35 PM): is there a way that you can exclude necessary software updates?

Michelle(Mar 6 2007 4:17:02 PM): I thought it was 400 over 1-2 hours

Taylor(Mar 6 2007 4:17:14 PM): I am sorry. There is no way that we have that option for excluding the software updates.

Taylor(Mar 6 2007 4:17:39 PM): I am sorry. You should be able to browse after 8-12 hours.

Michelle(Mar 6 2007 4:17:44 PM): So over how much time do I have to space the dowlnloads then?

Michelle(Mar 6 2007 4:18:07 PM): 404 over 3 hours is too much. What about 404 over 4 or 5 hours

Taylor(Mar 6 2007 4:18:20 PM): Your download should not exceed above 400MB at a stretch.

Michelle(Mar 6 2007 4:18:42 PM): at any one stretch? How long is a stretch?

Taylor(Mar 6 2007 4:19:22 PM): If you try to download any data which is above 400MB at one go, you will be subject to FAP.

Michelle(Mar 6 2007 4:19:55 PM): so if I wait, say, 20 minutes between downloads I should be fine?

Michelle(Mar 6 2007 4:20:07 PM): but then doesn’t regular web browsing add into that?

Michelle(Mar 6 2007 4:20:50 PM): like if I download a 50 M file, then browse, then another 50 M file, an hour later, I might still be in trouble?

Taylor(Mar 6 2007 4:20:49 PM): I am sorry. If you try to download any data which is above 400MB at one go, you will be subject to FAP.

Taylor(Mar 6 2007 4:21:35 PM): If you stop downloading data before it hits the Download Threshold, you will not be subject to FAP, irrespective of the time taken to download.

Michelle(Mar 6 2007 4:21:46 PM): but if I am using the net constantly, that’s one go, isn’t it?

Michelle(Mar 6 2007 4:22:22 PM): no matter whether I’m downloading files or doing email or browsing the web?

Taylor(Mar 6 2007 4:23:28 PM): After your account has been restricted by FAP, you need to wait 8-12 hours for the FAP to be lifted.

Taylor(Mar 6 2007 4:23:43 PM): Logging off of the HughesNet satellite network does not remove the FAP from your account, it should cause it to be lifted sooner.

Michelle(Mar 6 2007 4:23:49 PM): I do totally understand why this policy exists, but the truth is, there has to be some way to distinguish between people who are downloading music and games and such, and people who are downloading necessary software updatees, which, unfortunatley, get bgger and bigger every year.

Taylor(Mar 6 2007 4:24:57 PM): I understand your concern over this issue. I will try my best to forward this concern to the concerned.

Taylor(Mar 6 2007 4:25:30 PM): You should be able to download the 211MB update once you have been uplifted from FAP.

Michelle(Mar 6 2007 4:26:22 PM): yeah, but then once I download the update, I have to pretty much stop everything for a while. Sigh. OK, thank you very much for your time.

Notice, 400 MB is smaller than a Linux ISO. It’s smaller than any movie, and is about as big as one TV show video at decent resolution. It’s smaller than the sum of the Apple software updates I had to do. I have to plan my downloads carefully, and downloading an ISO requires a download manager I can pause and resume.

Am I happier with satellite? Sure. Because nobody these days designs websites for dial-up. 20% of websites didn’t load at all. Another 40% were so slow I could go make tea and come back. It just wasn’t going to be viable in the long term. Someone who also lives out here said that with dial-up, the internet feels broken. That’s certainly true. But, satellite isn’t really broadband. I hear it’s improving, but it will never really be the broadband everyone else has.

Technorati Tags: broadband, hughesnet, satellite

My laptop is in the shop. I’ll spare you the details. It’s truly a practice in patience to live without a computer. Work doesn’t get done. Blog entries don’t get written. Emails don’t get returned.

It’s a lucky thing my partner has a laptop I can beg and borrow (stealing might cause issues.)

My practice in patience only goes so far. The Mac Mini I’d been planning to get for a while just got ordered, next day shipping. It might even arrive before the laptop gets out of the shop. But even if it doesn’t, at least the next time a computer dies, I’ll have a backup.

Relatively close on the heels of my post on Spirituality, I read a post on a blog I’ve never read before, A View From Home. She is surprised that NTC is happening over Passover and Good Friday (April 4-6), and is having to make a tough choice and not attend NTC this year. She says:

What’s done is done. Like I said, I love NTEN and I know that if they could turn back time and make a different decision they probably would. I’ll have to catch the next east coast conference and hope that it’s at a better time. But I can’t help but wonder how the faith-based organizations that are NTEN members feel about this? Are all the vendors who come from the west coast who happen to be Jewish skipping their seders to travel?

She is surprised that no one else has talked about this time conflict before. Well, I was going to, but she beat me to it.

I’m going to NTC this year. I’m not celebrating Good Friday, etc. in any real observable way. It is too bad that I’ll likely miss my chance to go to a seder, which I would have liked to do. But I’m not really blogging about this for personal reasons. What I find most interesting is that when a survey was done of people who would go to NTC, many more people wanted cheaper hotel rates rather than to not conflict with holidays. I do know that in general, faith-based organizations are not well represented in NTEN - which makes sense - most faith-based organizations aren’t large enough to pay tech staff, and don’t have enough infrastructure to benefit from an organization like NTEN. The truth is the nonprofit technology field is overwhelmingly secular. I don’t think this is a problem - it’s just reality, an interesting reality.

Technorati Tags: 07NTC, nptech, nten, religion

I’m facing a reality that many people live with every day (like my parents.) And I thought I could live with it. I thought it would be fine. I thought …

What is it? No broadband.

Where I’ll be living quite soon is in, as some have called it, “the land time forgot” - Shutesbury, Massachusetts. It’s a great rural town, with not a lot of people (population 1900). But the people are spread out far enough that neither the cable company, nor the phone company finds it worth it to install the infrastructure for broadband. And, cell phones don’t work there either, so any cell-based broadband is out, too.

My options seem to be:

• Live with dial-up and wait for the powers that be (Verizon, Comcast, someone else) to finally offer broadband
• get really sucky satellite internet at astronomical prices with long contracts, and very extreme download limits (possibly too low to even bother with)
• become my own ISP by getting a T1 and sharing it by WiFi or some other method (if that will even work, given how far our neighbors are from us.)

So, all I can say is that this seems to be a great opportunity for thinking deeply about what’s important to me. There are things I take so completely for granted, like Skype, downloading big Linux ISOs, bittorrenting video files, etc. that I won’t be able to do anymore, unless I pretty much go with option 3. Options 1 and 2 will limit what I can do fairly dramatically. Is all of that worth it enough for me? I can pretty much do any work I need to do with dial up (in fact, satellite will make things like doing SSH sessions impossible - so that’s another mark against it.) I could rent an office in town. I can go to Rao’s, or the Book Mill a few times a week. I could be patient - waiting for technology to catch up.

As a Buddhist teacher might say: it’s all fodder for practice. In this case, practicing patience, and getting used to going to get tea while websites load.

Technorati Tags: puppy

I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a while, but have gotten sidetracked. A while ago, a group of folks got together to create the “Integration Proclamation.” They say:

Technology integration, also called “interoperability,” means getting one program to seamlessly share data with another program — ie, getting programs to “talk” to each other. If you’re a progressive, you should care, because “dis-integration” is killing us.

There are a lot of great tools out there for progressives — email systems, volunteer databases, donation engines, social networking tools, the list goes on and on. But because these tools can’t talk to each other, we can’t use them effectively. Ask organizers about their tech tools, and you’ll hear the same story over and over: too many overlapping databases, systems that don’t work together, hours wasted importing and exporting and de-duplicating lists. In a recent study about progressive technology, lack of data integration was cited as the #1 universal complaint.

I’m encouraging everyone to sign the proclamation, and, if you are a vendor or consultant, tell your clients you’ve signed it, and are working to make integration between applications a reality.

Technorati Tags: dataintegration, nptech, interoperability

A number of people have written me, and said that they appreciate that there is a blog with a spiritual take on technology. I initially intended to do a lot more about that, but got kinda caught up in the geeky stuff. (I can’t help it.) But I do want to spend more time thinking about this issue.

One of the things that I have tried to do with this blog, and will continue to, is to get underneath the surface issues. Like getting underneath the surface issues of the recent CRM vendor mergers, or getting underneath issues relating to open source software. And, like the tradition that the name of this blog comes from, I want to look at technology without attachment or aversion - with an openness to different ways of thinking about, or doing technology in the nonprofit sector. I don’t think I live up to that quite as well as I’d like, given my preference for open source solutions. (Which reminds me of what was said by the 3rd Zen Patriarch - “The Great Way is not difficult for those with no preferences”)

But it is all pretty unformed - how do I bring my deep commitment to spirituality (and, in fact, a commitment that is at the core of my life) to this work? How do I talk about these issues in a way that people from all perspectives and traditions can appreciate, from completely athiestic, to deeply religious? How do I help people to dig deeper into the core of issues when we usually spend a lot of time on the surface? These are the questions on my mind, and as I think more, and learn more, I’ll write more here. Feel free to comment on things you’d like to see me explore, or the kinds of things you’ve explored yourself.

Technorati Tags: spirituality, technology