Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

This is old news, sort of. A ways back, Six Apart promised that it would open source MovableType, their flagship software product, and the software that underlies their TypePad service. Yesterday, they finally released it. This blog (and my personal blog) were on TypePad for years, and I rather like the MoveableType interface and feature set. Their new version, MT4, looks pretty good, and it’s a great thing that it’s now open source (released under the GPL v2, interestingly enough.)

I’m liking Six Apart more and more these days. They are really putting their money where their mouth is, in terms of working toward more openness. They’ve been supporting open standards for years. Had this happened 6 months ago, when I was ready to migrate my blogs, I would have just migrated them to MT4, instead of WordPress. But, that said, I like WordPress, too.

I imagine that this is a bit of a response to WordPress (others think so too.) It will be interesting to see how this all plays out - both are incredibly strong applications. MovableType is written in Perl, which I hadn’t realized until I was doing research for this blog entry. But in any case, it should work on all generic hosting environments, and it looks easy to install. So here’s another good option for organizations that want powerful blogging software to use on a generic (read: cheap) hosting environment. Hurray!

As I’ve mentioned before, there has been a lot of thought and interest in the issue of opening up social networks, outside of what has been, until last week, totally closed silos. I linked to a great thought piece a while back on opening up the social graph (that is, your network of friends.) Jon Stahl pointed me to a great article, also about opening up the social graph. There is a Google group (called Social Network Portability), that you should definitely join if you are at all interested in these issues. Of course, OpenSocial has blown the doors off of all of this, and what’s come out of it is quite interesting. Folks on that list are beginning to talk about how to implement portability.

There are an amazing number of new sites that have launched over the weekend (I imagine people sitting in their home offices with lots of caffeine and pizza.) Here are some I’ve found so far, that I’ll be following:

• OpenSocial Zen - meant to be a place for developers to share ideas. They haven’t really started yet, but hopefully it will be an interesting place to watch
• OpenSocial Directory - a directory of the apps that already exist to use OpenSocial (talk about caffeine and pizza!)
• OpenSocializr - a Ning social network on OpenSocial (I guess that’s logical)
• OpenSocialBlog - an interesting blog about OpenSocial

Why do I have the feeling that every domain with “opensocial” is taken (opensocialblog.com, opensocialcats.com …)

So why is this important for nonprofits? First off, it means that in the short term, it will be possible to write just one application, and reach multiple social networks, thus expanding reach. In the long term, if the whole web 2.0 cyber world becomes, instead of a bunch of walled gardens where data moves in only very limited ways between them, a fully permeable space where data flows freely, it will be possible for nonprofits to have much greater reach and impact, whether it be for fundraising, advocacy or constituency-building.

As you will have undoubtedly figured out - this blog moved! I’ve moved it off of Typepad, and onto Wordpress. I’ve been rather impressed by how easy Wordpress was to set up and use, and how easy the migration process was. I’d recommend it to anyone.

To recap, I took the following steps:

1. Set up my blog on a different domain (in this case, it was zenofnptech.com.)
2. Choosing a theme
3. Migrate the posts and comments (exporting it from typepad, importing into wordpress - all web gui based, very easy.
4. Modifying a few things (see this link.) There are a few changes. Wordpress now uses dashes instead of underscores, so that’s something you don’t have to worry about. All importing requires now is just going to the Wordpress import tool and specifying the file. That’s all. You don’t have to worry about using mod_rewrite at all.
5. Getting the varied blogrolls and badges, etc. copied over.
6. Letting people know
7. Changing the DNS of the old site (and changing the site on wordpress.)
8. Done.

The feed should stay the same. If, for some reason, yours stops working, try this feed.

Michelle Murrain received her B.A. in Natural Science and Mathematics from Bennington College, and her Ph.D. in Biology from Case Western Reserve University.  She first started to work with nonprofits and technology in 1996, when she assisted a local women’s health organization with a Linux server that provided email and a website. That was also her introduction to open source software, which she has used consistently since that time.

Michelle has been involved in developing content and applications for the web, specifically for organizational, research and educational purposes, since 1994. In 1996, Michelle started a consulting practice that served the non-profit and educational sectors, primarily in the areas of developing database-driven web-sites, the implementation of Open Source software, and strategic technology planning. She has worked with a wide variety of nonprofit organizations, mostly in human services, women’s health and education. From 2003 until 2005, she worked with Database Designs Associates , based in Boston, MA. She was on the board of Aspiration , an organization that fosters software development in the nonprofit/NGO sector, and she presently is on the board of NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network.

In 2005, Michelle took a sabbatical from nonprofit technology work to get her Certificate in Theological Studies at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. She is currently Coordinator of the Nonprofit Open Source Initiative (NOSI), and she does some strategic technology consulting as well. She blogs on other issues in her personal blog, Metacentricities.

I’m folllowing Kivi on the NPBlogtipping bandwagon. I think it’s a great idea, although I’m one day late. I promise in April I’ll be right on time (oooohh, that could be fun, April Blogtipping on April fools day …) By the way, I think blogtipping is a great idea for our sector, and it’s a great way for me to think more about all of the blogs that I read.

I have one note: I feel a little strange giving tips - a lot of the blogs I really like are way better than mine. But anyway …

1) Ed Batista’s blog.

What I like: I like reading Ed’s perspectives on organizations, how they work, and the kinds of strategies and approaches that are around to work within organizations. I like the wide variety of resources he brings to bear - he’s introduced me to a lot of great writers and thinkers in varied areas. I like the design of Ed’s blog as well.

My tip (more of a request): I’d love to hear more about your perspectives on how technology can help (or hinder) organizational management, dynamics, and change.

2) Jonathan Piezer’s Philantherapy blog.

What I like: As a longtime fan of JP’s, it’s great to hear his perspective on the nonprofit sector. He’s down to earth, ruthlessly honest, and gets right down to the heart of things. I like JP’s take on the development side of nonprofit issues.

My tip: JP, write more! And tag your posts so more people can find them - they are gold.

3) Deborah Finn’s Technology for the Nonprofit and Philanthropic Sector.

A note: Deborah is an old college friend of mine.

What I like: I hear about a lot of new things from Deborah, and she explores a lot of new tools, and asks good questions. She uses her experiences to talk about technology issues. Her posts are thoughtful and accessible for non-techies. I like that she includes graphics in most of her posts. She has a fabulous, and up to date blogroll/link list.

My tip: Allow non-registered users to comment - I imagine you’d get more comments that way. Also, a minor technological thing - the RSS feed is a bit wonky sometimes (strange formatting, and it’s not always clear when there are new items.)

Technorati Tags: npblogtipping, nptech, blogtipping

It’s the end of the year, and it seems a good idea to post about what’s on my agenda for the next year, and what kinds of things I’ll be working on, thinking about, and writing about in 2007.

First off, for those of you that don’t know, I am the new coordinator of NOSI - the Nonprofit Open Source Initiative. I’ll be working half-time for NOSI, to start the ball rolling on some interesting projects on its own, and in collaboration with other organizations in the sector, including NTEN and Aspiration, among others, and to raise money to help make NOSI a sustainable organization going forward.

I’m also still doing technology implementation work with Database Designs, and that work will be mostly maintaining and improving code that I generated before I went on “sabbatical”, and increasingly doing more work at a meta level - project management, training and the like. I’ll likely have more info on that stuff soonish.

I also am very interested in doing a lot more writing - the API whitepaper for NTEN should be out soon, and there are other things I’ve got up my sleeve in terms of more concrete writing - some for NOSI, some just for the greater good. I will be focusing on open source tools for the most part.

I think it will be an interesting, and exciting year.

I will be blogging a bit more this week, but then I’ll be offline for the Christmas week, doing other kinds of writing.

This is great. It’s the announcement for NTEN’s video/mashup contest. You gotta watch the video!

Technorati Tags: nptech, nten, 07NTC

On my regular blog, for reasons that are mostly historical, there is tag-team blogging going on between me and a fellow religious blogger by the name of Scott Wells. The issue is - using used laptops with Linux (specifically Ubuntu) for cash-strapped churches or nonprofits. I realized that the series would be of interest here. So:

• First, Scott starts off with the main issue: what kind of laptop would be good for running Ubuntu
• I follow up with an answer sort of from the horse’s mouth, and ask a follow up question about how to get people to use Linux.
• He answers my question quite deftly, and asks some more questions
• And I follow up with some details about why linux is so great for used computers.

We’ll see how far this goes…

Why on earth did they pick the most obnoxious, polluting, gas guzzling, view obstructing vehicle possible to promote their new version of Windows Automotive? I guess it’s in character.

Via Engaget, of course.

I came across this site called we-make-money-not-art today, thanks to BoingBoing (as usual, the some of the most interesting technology stuff gets posted there first). It’s chock-full of interesting tidbits (like the prayer rug that gets lighter the better it’s pointed toward mecca.)

What really caught my eye was a cube that plays video. It’s a new project (just in prototype phase) that sounds really interesting - make a cube you can easily carry around, with six faces of video on it. Strange, but interesting.

Might be a neat site to watch.