Monthly Archives: September 2007

links for 2007-09-29

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Nonprofits, Open Source and Leadership: ONE/Northwest and the Plone Community

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My colleagues and I at ONE/Northwest have been spending a lot of time engaging with an Open Source software development community (the folks who make Plone) over the past two years. It’s been an amazing learning experience.

The following essay summarizes our experiences and attempts to tease out someulearnings both for nonprofits and for Open Source communities

This is a really rough first draft. I invite your thoughts, feedback, questions and criticisms. Tell me what parts (if any) ring true with you. Tell me what to cut. Tell me what I missed, or what I just plain got wrong.

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Ready to Rock the WoC!

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Ok, can I just say that I am officially Very Excited about heading up to Web of Change 2007?  Jodie and Sarah and the whole WoC crew have been doing a tremendous job of pulling together an fantastic agenda and and amazing group of people.  I can’t wait to meet all 90 of them!

I’m incredibly thankful for the opportunity to once again drink in the delights of Hollyhock and to spend face-time with so many old and new friends.

And for those of you who don’t yet know what ovenracking is: be prepared! :-)

SideTrack: a less-annoying trackpad driver for Mac OS X

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So, yesterday I whined a bit about the MacBook’s trackpad.  Today was problem-solving mode.

Turns out it’s mostly the lame Apple trackpad driver, rather than the hardware itself.  Fortunately, there is an alternative: SideTrack. It adds back the nice scroll-at-edge feature us Synaptics users have grown used to, and adds a bunch more bits of trackpad configurability that Apple didn’t see fit to include. 

It’s $15 shareware; I’m going to try it out for a while to be sure it’s worthwhile.

Hint to Apple: buy this guy’s software and ship a better trackpad driver.  It’s lame to have to pay an extra $15 for something that should work better out of the box.


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Mindless Droning Consumerism

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A little known fact is that I haven’t actually bought a personal computer for myself since 1993, when I purchased a PowerBook 145B before leaving for a semester in Denmark.  (Actually, I think my parents may well have paid for it!)   Since then, I’ve always used various work computers, or computers belonging to my now-wife, Molly.

It was a good 14-year run.  But now it’s over.

I just bought a MacBook.

(For the curious/geeky: White, 2GHz, 1GB RAM (soon to be upgraded), 80GB HD.  The bottom-of-the-line model.)

I’ve never been a huge Apple fan, and I’m unlikely to become one.  But the fact is that the MacBook is a nicely designed laptop, with good perfomance, at a very reasonable price ($1099, plus tax).

I’m looking forward to using it.

Things I already like:

  • The keyboard looks a bit scary, but feels surprisingly good.  Not as good as my work ThinkPad, though.
  • The screen is sharp and bright.
  • It’s a nice size.  Not too small, not too big.
  • The MagSafe power connector, which connects magnetically and pops out when tripped on, is so elegant and simple that I can’t believe nobody thought of it until now.  Every laptop manufacturer should copy it ASAP.

Things that already annoy me:

  • Apple’s touchpad.  It’s just not very sensitive.  It’s still way behind the trackpad on my ThinkPad at work.
  • Only one mouse button has been a bad idea for a long time, and still is.  Two-fingered right-clicking on the trackpad is a partial solution, but I’d really like two buttons.  Steve Jobs’ “one button” dictum be damned.

Hitched

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Saturday, September 8th.  Leavenworth, Washington.  A little after 5:00 PM, PDT.



We are both thrilled to have shared this past weekend with so many dear friends and family — and with each other.

Big thanks to Steve Andersen for the above photo; there will be lots more here soon.

Why a perpetual state of anxiety?

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Alison Fine just wrote a report on the use of social media tools among Overbrook Foundation human rights grantees, for, um, the Overbrook Foundation.  Her top-line finding: “a perpetual state of anxiety” among nonprofits about “Web 2.0″ tools:

  • Overall, the grantees are firmly entrenched in the Web 1.0 world, meaning that grantees use the web largely as a source of information rather than interactivity. 
  • A small handful of grantees, for instance Witness, the ACLU, Breakthrough, WYNC Public Radio, are using social media in spectacular ways to engage their constituents in conversations.
  • Most grantees are not taking advantage of easy-to-use social media tools effectively. The first is the fact that only half have blogs, and that only half of these groups allow comments on their blogs.
  • Survey respondents and group discussion participants often felt a “common struggle” in understanding which tools are critically important to their work and were at a loss as to where and how to get help for selecting and using new social media tools.

Alison asks for comments.  Here’s mine, which is admittedly not based on having read the report yet:

I wonder how much of this anxiety is the product of nonprofit sector consultants and pundits hyping Web 2.0 tool after Web 2.0 tool.  

How short was the hype cycle of MySpace?  Of Flickr?  Of YouTube?  Of Facebook?  Of Second Life?  Are all of these important?  Equally?  Should all nonprofits be doing all of these things, plus blogging, social bookmarking, IM, screencasting, user-generated content, etc. etc. etc.?

I think the message that nonprofits are getting from us “yes, and wait until you see what we’re excited about next!”  I’ve seen a lot more enthusiasm for these tools than reflective analysis of their real-world value in organizations with scarce resources.  And I think that’s what’s creating a lot of anxiety.

Or maybe I’m just having a curmudgeonly day. ;-)

I’m looking forward to digging into Alison’s report in depth.

(Hat tip to Beth.)

Brian Blogs

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I’m pleased to welcome Brian Gershon of the Web Collective to the blogosphere.  Brian’s a long-time Plonista, a frequent co-conspirator, ONE/Northwest’s next door neighbor, and as smart and nice as they come.


“The Chandler Knowledge Worker”

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Remember Chandler?  Mitch Kapor’s open-source “Outlook killer” that was supposed to change how we manage information forever? 

Well, that was a few years back, and while they still haven’t gotten to a 1.0 release, they’ve finally put out an interesting “0.7 Preview” version.  And along the way, they’ve really done some amazing thinking about how knowledge workers need to manage information.

I’ve not checked out the software yet, but I was struck by their vision document, titled “The Chandler Knowledge Worker.”

Often called a project manager or product manager or program manager, our Preview Target User however is a special breed of PM. They work closely with every member of their team, acting as a communication hub. They know how to ask the right questions to gather input and feedback. They identify problem areas, figure out when meetings need to happen, who needs to be there, what needs to be discussed, and then they facilitate the discussion to define concrete next actions and ultimately drive their team towards informed decisions.

They go on to offer an intriguing diagnosis of what’s wrong with the current state of the art in personal information management, which underpins Chandler’s different approach.

As the prototypical “Chandler Knowledge Worker” it will be interesting to see how Chandler works.

Kudos to Mitch and the OSAF team for having the wherewithal to stick with a project that has become far more interesting and complex than they ever imagined, I’m sure.