Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

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

I was reading about the GetActive/Convio merger, and I have some thoughts about it…

It is clear that the CRM/Fundraising space is getting interesting, first with the entry of Salesforce, and, now, the mergers of GetActive and Convio, and Blackbaud and Target. Consolidation among vendors means that some customers will be dealing with different (and larger, potentially less friendly) entities. It also means fewer options. On the other hand, perhaps it means that these new, larger entities can provide services and resources that the smaller ones could not.

It doesn’t really change anything. Nonprofits still have decisions to make about what software to use. And, it’s still clear that CRM/Fundraising software is where the money and resources are going in nonprofit software development. And it doesn’t change any equations about whether or not to choose open source solutions - they are still open, free, useful, but can’t really compete yet in terms of usability and functionality in comparison to many of the commercial solutions, and that will remain so for as long as nonprofits choose to spend money on commercial solutions instead of pooling resources to collectively create and/or sustain and improve open source options.

In the final analysis, in the days, weeks, months and years following these, and other mergers, no fewer people will be homeless, no fewer women will be battered, no fewer children will be hungry, no less environmental damage will be done, no more people who need it will get mental health services. But a few more people will have a lot more money in their bank accounts. And this, I think, is one really important thing to think hard about. Are the means that progressive organizations use to reach their ends truly in line with their mission?

Technorati Tags: crm, fundraising

I know you’ve been waiting for this. Here is, finally, chapter 4. This book is really good, but it’s also very slow going. It will take me a while to finish it, I think. I’m hoping to really read a lot of it in the next couple of weeks.

A note, for those of you that don’t read my personal blog: I’m moving on Tuesday, from California back to Massachusetts - a very long meandering trip that will take about a month (it’s a long story - read the blog). So I’ll probably be doing more blogging on my personal blog than on this blog, just because I won’t have lots of online time, and I’ll be more in a travel mode, than a thinking-about-technology mode. But I do have a bunch of things on tap, like continuing with Benkler, finishing my Open Standards series, and continuing the open source databases. I also have been doing a bit more thinking about what is, in some ways, the undercurrent of this blog: spirituality and technology. There have been some interesting ideas marinating, that I’ll share soon. OK, on to Benkler…

Chapter 4 is called “The Economics of Social Production.” In this chapter, Benkler is laying out an important argument: people engage with social production for a variety of motivations, and that it is possible to generate economically significant amounts of effort with motivations that are not economic. In addition, the increasing involvement of social production in market-based business will change the way that business is organized. His basic argument is summarized as :

“It is the feasibility of producing information, knowledge, and culture through social, rather than market or proprietary relations - through cooperative peer production and coordinate individual action - that creates the opportunities for greater autonomous action, a more critical culture, a more discursively engaged and better informed republic, and perhaps, a more equitable global community.”

I think that’s something we can likely all agree is a good thing.

First, he asks “why do people participate” - he talks about the simple economic models of human motivation - which assume that there are “things people want, and things they want to avoid” and those can be translated into money - a universal medium of exchange. He explains, with some great examples, of why these are wrong. “If you leave a fifty-dollar check on the table at the end of a dinner party at a friend’s house, you do not increase the probability that you will be invited again.” He then talks about the importance of social capital over money: “If you want to get your nephew a job at a law firm in the United States today, a friendly relationship with the firm’s hiring partner is more likely to help than passing on an envelope full of cash.” People would rather participate in some things for social standing and recognition, rather than money.

He then talks about feasibility and efficiency of peer-based production vs. market-based production, and comes up with this stunning statement:

“A society whose institutional ecology permitted social production to thrive would be more productive under these conditions than a society that optimized its institutional environment solely for market- and firm- based production, ignoring its detrimental effects to social production.”

His arguments are compelling, and interesting. He then talks about how social production has emerged in the digitally networked environment, and the ways in which it has interfaced with market-based production - using examples such as Red Hat and IBM. And he talks about how the relationship between users and businesses changes:

“Active users require and value new and different things than passive consumers did. The industrial information economy specialized in producing finished goods, like movies or music, to be consumed passively, and well behaved appliances, like televisions, whose use was fully specified at the factory door. … Personal computers, camera phones, audio and video editing software and similar utilities are examples of tools whose value increases for users as they are enabled to explore new ways to be creative and productively engaged with others.”

The nonprofit take-away came to mind for me was to think about the model of nonprofits as passive consumers of software, vs. nonprofits actively engaged in collaboration in a peer-production environment - they are more able to define clearly what that software looks like, and how it works for them.

On to chapter 5…

Technorati Tags: books, intellectualproperty, nptech, opensource, peer2peer

This will be my last post of the year - I’m off to do some writing in a totally different genre. I wish all happy holidays, and a happy new year. When I get back, I’ll complete my series on the Wealth of Networks, continue the series on open standards, and probably start a series on specific open source tools that I use on a regular basis. (I promise I’ll try to complete these two before I start on the next one!) There will also, of course, be more neo-luddite, curmudgeonly posts on Web 2.0, software development in the sector, intellectual property, and other thorns in my side.

Angela of Grassroots.org tagged me, so it’s my turn to tell 5 things most people don’t know about me:

• I’m learning to play the bass guitar
• I’m learning spanish, because my partner is fluent
• My upcoming goal is to bake all of our bread (I just this afternoon finished a wonderful Rosemary Foccacia, next on my list is challah for next Friday.)
• I am a fan of Pandora
• One of my favorite writers is Sherri Tepper

So, I’m tagging Allen Benamer, Michael Stein (East Coast), Marnie Webb, Michelle Martin, and Jen-Mei Wu. Have fun!

Here are a few links to round out the year:

• Laura at Idealware wonders who will pay for Eben Moglen’s first loaf of bread.
• Katrin at NTEN has a great roundup of end of the year posts from the nptech blogging crowd (I’m in it!)
• Beth describes hype cycles - good to think about in the Web 2.0 swirl.
• Michele Martin talks about building nonprofit networks - good info for me right now!
• OpenID is growing in popularity. It’s probably time for me to get an i-name.
• The Queen does a podcast.
• VMWare releases a public beta of Fusion - which is the competitor to Paralells - the software that lets you run PC OSes on a Mac. I’ll be trying it out to compare.
• Nick Carr gives us his top 10.

<rant>

Many of you know that I have a real desire to ease nonprofit pain in two particular areas: vertical apps, and data integration. This simply comes from my years of working with nonprofits who are struggling with their data issues, and need good solutions to them.

I just finished reading Allen’s recent posts about the new wave of widgitized donation functionalities that some big (and not so big) players in the nonprofit technology web services space are pushing out. Yes, it’s a good thing that there are lots of competitors in the field of CRM/fundraising in general, and a lot of them are doing some really interesting on-the-cutting-edge stuff, which is great.

What ticks me off is that by far, the richest (and I mean that in many possible senses) area of software development in the nonprofit sector is … fundraising. I understand how important fundraising is (especially now as the coordinator of an organization that needs money,) but why aren’t there 5 big companies jockeying for space to provide nonprofits with reasonably priced, say, client management packages? Or one of the thirty-five other mission critical tasks that nonprofits need to do to make the world a better place?

I know, I know, fundraising is one of the functions that almost all nonprofits share, and it is where the money is, and software developers have to make a living (er, well, Kintera is making more than a living - they are maximizing shareholder profit,) but if just a fraction of the time, energy and money spent on building CRM and fundraising software/services (how many gazillion of them are there?) went into other software and data needs of organizations, I daresay they might not be in as much of a pickle as they are in terms of making choices about vertical apps.

</rant>

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech, web2.0

Allen, one of my favorite bloggers (who I only recently started to read, which is my loss), has a great curmudgeonly post on Web 2.0. (I consider Allen a fellow neo-luddite, whether or not he agrees with that characterization.) He then follows it up with a pointer to an interesting post on the power consumption of avatars for Second Life, which should absolutely give everyone pause. I didn’t even think about that aspect of it when I wrote my curmudgeonly post about SL quite a while ago now.

Holly seems to agree with him, although she’s more of a cheerleader for Web 2.0 than Allen is, for sure.

What I’d like to do is unpack Web 2.0, and give nonprofits pointers and resources around the specific Web 2.0 tools that will actually matter to them (which, to my mind, is Open APIs and RSS, basically, and maybe some collaboration tools like wikis, or blogging for some organizations for whom standing on a soapbox is an important mission-connected activity), and stop holding it up as a package that is not, as Holly says, going to be the sector’s savior.

Let’s give nonprofits the tools they are really going to use to make their lives easier, and serve more people. We geeks get to play in the sandboxes of Web 2.0, or whatever is coming down the pike. And that is certainly fun.

Technorati Tags: nptech, web2.0

As someone who has developed web database applications for clients, I always hate when they get errors. Things like this make me feel so much better. Even the big guys, with big budgets, mess up sometimes… It also means at least these guys are running windows.