Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NTEN just released their CMS satisfaction survey. There is some great food for thought, although in some ways, the results aren’t so surprising. Most people (67%) want an easy to use interface. Most people (57%) also want ongoing support.

The single largest CMS used was Drupal, at 15%, followed by Plone and Joomla (approx 8% each.) Wordpress (which was not originally in the survey, they parsed this data out from the “other” category) was at 2%. Further, in looking more at the “other” category (which made up 29% of the CMS) there were quite a number of other FOSS CMS, including ImpressCMS, Zope, Movable Type, and Typo3.

All of the free and open source options did quite well in terms of Quality, Usability, and Value. The other questions, that are really more geared toward particular vendors, for FOSS CMS are not really applicable to the CMS itself, but to the consultants or vendors who implement it - which is bound to be variable.

Only two proprietary CMS systems, Antharia’s and Ektron, had scores as good as the open source CMS.The CMS options from the big three (er, now the big two) didn’t score as well.

Anyway, the survey report, and survey data are worth looking at if you are shopping for a CMS.

NTEN is doing some great work getting information about the use of different kinds of tools in the sector, and how people are using them. and how they like them. They are doing a CMS satisfaction survey, and the more info that they get, the better. So go rate your CMS!

This is a rant. And it is a rant on behalf of the hundreds (thousands?) of nonprofit organizations whose website is stuck behind a custom CMS - one that was written by some web development shop or another, and migration off of that custom CMS is going to be a nightmare.

As the author of a custom CMS (it did have the advantage that it was released as open source, but it never caught on, so it still counts as custom) I know what it is like to put my heart and soul (and time) into a CMS, and want my clients to get what they want. I wrote that CMS back before there were any really good open source ones, like most of the custom CMS out there.

But, that was then, and this is now. There are quite a number of really good CMS systems (both open source and proprietary - I’d say there are a good solid dozen) that have large user bases, many developers and vendors who implement them, and their are lots of new modules and functionality being added every day. There is absolutely no way that one single web development shop can provide a CMS solution that is better in quality or functionality than what is available out there right now. In fact, even if you just focus on the “big three” open source CMS - Drupal, Joomla and Plone, 85% of nonprofits will likely have their needs fully met. The other 15% might want or need a more specialized CMS (like OpenACS, or a proprietary one,) or might need some modules developed for them.

Most custom CMS that I’ve seen lately are sorely lacking in features and/or usability, in comparison to what’s out there, and available. Of course, one could argue that migration off of one of the more popular CMS to another one is difficult - as difficult as migration off of a custom CMS. This isn’t the case for a couple of reasons: 1) The more popular these CMS get, the more people need migration help, and the more resources are available for them (just google “joomla drupal migration“.) 2) More people than just the person who set the CMS up can help do the migration. Unfortunately, relationships with vendors go bad, and being stuck with data in a custom CMS makes migration away from a bad relationship that much harder.

This is the moment for nonprofits to stop accepting proposals with custom CMS, and to make it clear in the RFP that a custom CMS will not be acceptable. It’s also the time for web developers to let their babies go, and start building their business on a well-developed CMS. (Hint: I hear there is way more Drupal demand than supply of expertise.)

Back in August, I did a review of web conferencing tools, with a decidedly unusual slant - as a presenter, I had to be able to share my Linux desktop. It was, perhaps an odd perspective, but in any event, I figured it was time to revisit this, and review what I’ve found.

Earlier, I’d found that the only tools that would work with presenters using Linux were ReadyTalk and WebHuddle. ReadyTalk is proprietary and not free (as in beer). WebHuddle is free, and open source. There does seem to be an active (but small) user community. There is, however, only one developer, and there hasn’t been a release in a while, so it’s unclear how long-term viable WebHuddle is.

I had been encouraged to look again at Yugma, because they said that Linux desktop sharing would happen before the end of last year. Well, it seems that it still is “coming soon.” But interestingly, Yugma is now integrated with Skype, which totally changes the whole audio on a separate channel issue. It does mean that everyone who is involved in a webinar needs to install Skype - but that seems to be a minor issue, to my mind. But, you can’t use the Skype edition on Linux yet, either.

I went back to look at DimDim - and lo and behold - DimDim went GPL! They now have a community edition, and there seems to be an active community of users. In addition, DimDim has an integration with Moodle (PDF)! And also an integration with SugarCRM. Now things are getting interesting. Perhaps if DimDim were also to release a version that integrated with Skype … I can’t figure out from looking around their site whether it is cross-platform enough to share desktops, but I signed up for the beta, so I guess I’ll test it out.

In doing a bit more research (which I guess I hadn’ t done this summer) it turns out that Webex seems to allow desktop sharing with Linux. I’m hoping to test it out soon, as well.

This is what I want: The community edition of DimDim that integrates with an open source VOIP system and Moodle. That can share my Linux desktop. That would be the holy grail. But at least it does appear that there might be increasing numbers of options out there for the likes of me.

It seems like not so long ago that I helped an organization build a Linux email and web server, that we plugged into a college internet connection, so that they could begin to take advantage of the wonders of the internet. It was, at the time, the only affordable way to do it - there was no broadband, and a T1 was far outside of the realm of affordability for nonprofits. I even remember writing a grant to some federal agency that probably no longer exists to help create a local infrastructure to get nonprofits online. When was that? 1995.

It wasn’t so long after that that virtual hosting companies became ubiquitous, and affordable for nonprofits. But it’s only been in the last few years that mega storage, and mega processing power were available to organizations to power big web applications and the like.

Amazon seems to be leading in the next wave of evolution of hosting - pay only for what you need, when you need it. They started out with their S3 - simple storage service. And now, there is E2 - Elastic Compute Cloud - use only the storage, processing power and bandwidth you use. I did a quick calculation of what my own usage might be, and actually, my Dreamhost account is a better deal. But for much larger/high-traffic sites, or sites that fluctuate a lot, it might be a great idea, especially if you want dedicated hosting.

The news today, and why I’m bothering to talk about this, is that Red Hat announced that it will offer RHEL - their enterprise distribution, on Amazon E2. If a nonprofit organization has a server, it’s actually not so unlikely that it is running RHEL. A lot of organizations of all types want support, and are willing to pay for it, and Red Hat is, at this point, built the best business model around this than any other distro (Canonical, with Ubuntu, is sneaking up behind, but I’m not sure it has the “enterprise” style some people look for.)

So running RHEL on Amazon E2 is a potentially low-cost, low-pain way for nonprofits (with appropriate levels of tech staff, of course) to dip their toes into hosting complex applications on Linux, without having that noisy box in the corner.

I’ve been writing a surprising amount about nonprofit CRM tools lately. It’s such an interesting space, and there are some really intriguing things happening with software in that space.

NTEN is trying to get a handle on all of this, and find out what people use, and how much they like what they use. I can’t wait to get my grubby little fingers on the data on CiviCRM and Salesforce.

So, let your voice be heard! Fill out the survey.

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.

At NTC, there was a lot of talk about the “big three” open source CMS packages that most people these days in our sector are using: Drupal, Plone, and Joomla. I’ve had a fair bit of experience with Drupal - nosi.net is run on Drupal, and I’d done a Drupal install once, and helped with some now and again. I hadn’t had experience with either Plone or Joomla, but in talking to folks both at NTC and Penguin Day about Joomla, I got intrigued.

I have a new endeavor (see the last post) that needs a new website, and I figured, why not? I hear Joomla is dead easy to install, and I need dead easy right now, so let’s try it. Well, guess what? Installing Joomla is dead easy. I could do it with my eyes closed. I set up a mysql database in my standard generic virtual hosting setup, copied the downloaded and unzipped Joomla folder into my webspace by FTP, and fired up my browser. Four or five clicks later, tada! A website.

Um, sorta. I guess that’s where it gets interesting when you work with a CMS, right? What are all those content types, and where do they appear, and how do you get things to look exactly like you want them? It’s the same, really, with Drupal, only different. CMSs do share that pretty serious learning curve - but I’m getting over it, slowly.

So I like Joomla. Do I like it better than Drupal? I’m not yet sure. It definitely focuses a lot on the eye candy, which is nice, actually - I like that the admin interface is pretty. I know, that’s silly, but it’s true. In some respects, it’s easier to use, although in others, Drupal can be a bit easier. It’s a tossup, so far. They both seem to pretty much have very similar feature sets. We’ll see how I feel as I progress with it, and see how far I can go. I hear that all of the “cool chix” use Drupal, though (Linuxchix is about to launch it’s new Drupal-based website.) There is, I think, a bit of a geeky bias toward Drupal. So, maybe since I’m becoming a bit less of a geek, Joomla’s a good pick? But Joomla is pretty darned geeky. Like what is a mambot, anyway?

Technorati Tags: cms, drupal, joomla

As you know, nonprofit data management has been a really important issue for me for a long time. So I thought it would be a great subject for the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants hosted here today.

There are some great posts for today:

• First, Katya’s Nonprofit Marketing Blog has a great post with an article from Cheryl Gibson about implementing a CRM system in a nonprofit. It’s chock-full of information about what you need to start, different strategies, and potential pitfalls. My favorite quote: “A mutual understanding between the nonprofit organization and the database implementer that converting a database involves organizational change, and this can be stressful and threatening for employees. Both the database implementer and the nonprofit organization will need to establish in the project plan the metrics and deliverables that comprise success.” I wish all nonprofits understood this!
• IDI’s Blogger Relations has some good ideas and resources on data management - they suggest, and I agree that it is critical to managing fundraising strategy.
• Michelle Martin, over at The Bamboo Project Blog, talks about two cool web 2.0 tools, i-Lighter and Google Notebooks for managing online notes and such. I’m a fan of Google Notebook myself, but I’ve never heard of i-Lighter - I’ll have to check it out.
• Kivi at Nonprofit Communications, talks about how to keep track of the kind of data that writers need to keep track of - editorial calendars. I want to do more and more writing, and doing this sort of thing might be pretty helpful for me.
• Beth has some advice for dealing with too much data - write it down (er, on a wiki that is.)
• Finally, if data management stresses you out, here are some tips!

Keep track of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants, no matter which blog is hosting, by subscribing to the Carnival feed.

Technorati Tags: carnival, data management, nptech

Well, both in the process of learning about all of the very cool web 2.0 apps out there, and beginning to try and use them to create content and organize my life, I have come to the following conclusion: the apps are great, but integration still sucks.

First, there’s the blogging issue. I keep 2 blogs of my own, and contribute actively to one community blog (at nosi.net) and could, potentially, contribute to quite a number of others. I don’t get paid to blog, so I don’t really want to spend my time doing that. And, I also don’t want to do too much cross-posting of content. But the community blogs do provide a way for a wider audience to read the content that I have created. Unfortunately, the nptech world hasn’t yet caught on to the “Planet” phenomenon of the open source world (see Planet Ubuntu Women.) These are sites that are simply aggregators of the blogs of those involved in a particular open source project (like, in this case, women involved in Ubuntu). It’s a great idea, I think. I’m aggregated on live.linuxchix.org - a planet for those who are involved in Linuxchix. I think it would be very great to have a few nptech-focused “planets” out there. I think those are better ideas than community blogs - and it’s so easy for people to get involved. (Hint to NTEN: Affinity Group Planets!)

Second, is bookmarking. I now have accounts at del.icio.us, ma.gnolia, furl, and stumbleupon. They each have their good points and bad, strengths and reasons I use them (I use furl, for instance, to save pages I think might go away, or become paid content after a short time being free.) But I’m really getting toward the end of doing double or triple bookmarking. It’s just so … painful.

And then there are to do lists. Right now, I am a pretty multi-faceted person (well, I always was, but right now, I am very much so in practical terms.) I am working on several projects, both collective and personal. And I like and use to do lists. But, I have some to do lists I need to share, and others I don’t. And, of course, not everyone I work with is choosing the same to do list or project manager. And even if they were, they might not integrate well (For example, I use three different Basecamp accounts - which don’t integrate with each other.) Wikis are another great collective to do list/project management tool, but they don’t integrate, either.

Luckily, it seems that most of the project manager type apps in web 2.0 land are either using iCal, or integrating with Google Calendar (my present calendaring software). So that’s good. But the integration there even can be clunky. And it’s one way. I can’t change a basecamp milestone in Google Cal, I have to go back to that particular basecamp account to change it. Sigh.

It’s a mess out there. Anyone going to help clean up? I’m getting tired of wasting more time in front of my computer. I’m ready to save time so I can go out in the sun.

Technorati Tags: linuxchix, nosi, nptech, nten, opensource, web2.0