Politics, the environment, technology, activism. And stuff.
Posted in General on Feb 17th, 2010
We’ve got two open positions at Groundwire right now: one for a CRM database consultant and one for a manager for our “Groundwire Labs” innovation program. Both are incredible opportunities for a creative, entrepreneurial social change technologist who wants to join one of the most accomplished teams in the nonprofit sector. I’ve been here for nearly [...]
Posted in General on Jan 24th, 2010
Center for a New American Dream has a nicely done “Alternative Gift Registry” tool (currently the #4 Google result for “gift registry”!) that allows you to create gift registries that de-emphasize consumerism (used goods, donations to charity, experiences rather than stuff, etc.). This is a great example of a nonprofit advocacy group coming up with [...]
Posted in General on Jan 12th, 2010
After some soul-searching, and a prod from my dear friend and inspiration role model Sam Dorman, I’ve decided to unplug myself from “web 2.0,” “the social nets” or whatever we call the rapidly-expanding tarpit of social networking sites these days. Long story short: I’m increasingly convinced that the constant stream of tweets, status updates, Facebook wall [...]
Posted in General on Jan 12th, 2010
It occurred to me yesterday that the real challenge we[1] face is not the question of “how do we apply technology tools to organizations?” but more “how do we help organizations & people transform themselves so that they are more able to harness the power of technology?” [1] “we” = those of us standing astride the [...]
Posted in General on Nov 30th, 2009
Michael Gilbert writes: Coolness is not innovation. That which is innovative is not always cool. More importantly, that which is cool is not always innovative. Indeed, cool can be seen as inherently conservative. If an invention is not already well on its way to adoption in certain (possibly small, probably themselves cool) [...]
Posted in General on Nov 1st, 2009
Seth Godin overgeneralizes again, but usefully (emphasis mine): Any sufficiently overheated industry will eventually resemble high school. High school is filled with insecurity, social climbing, backbiting, false friends, faux achievements, high drama and not much content. Much of this insecurity comes from a market that doesn’t make good judgments, that doesn’t understand how to reliably choose [...]
Posted in General on Aug 13th, 2009
… or at least that’s my theory. I think it would be very interesting to take a truly random sample of nonprofits (any ideas on a good methodology?), and do some online research to find out how many of these nonprofits are actually being talked about “organically” online. My bet: under 10%. This thought occurred to me because [...]
Posted in General on Jul 21st, 2009
Lots of nonprofit technologists are unapologetic Apple fanboys (and girls). I’ve owned and used Apple products over the years, and while some have been fine, they rarely make me swoon. I think of Apple as just another mega-corporation that sometimes makes nice computer hardware, not some extension of my personal brand identity. Apple is hardly a [...]
Posted in General on Jul 3rd, 2009
I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be taking a sabbatical from ONE/Northwest, beginning around July 20th and lasting through early November! After 13 years at ONE/Northwest, I’m feeling a little fatigued. Worse, I feel like I’ve become disconnected from the wellspring of inspiration that makes social change work possible. I need to simultaneously unplug and reconnect. I [...]
Posted in General on Dec 23rd, 2008
The good folks at Idealware have added another nice article to their “A Few Good Tools…” series, this one titled “A Few Good Email List Discussion Tools.” While the article provides a pretty good overview of the space, it leaves out a few supporting details that I think are worth noting: Idealware’s article [...]
Posted in General on Dec 8th, 2008
Michael is once again spot-on, although he buries his lede a bit: If I were to write a description of an online seminar for nonprofits that captures what I see going on, it would probably be something like this: Title: Don’t Fall Behind in Raising Money: 27 Free Tips, Tricks, and Hacks for Online Fundraising This description might [...]
Posted in General on Jun 2nd, 2008
Gavin Clabaugh’s got a fun (and wise) new riff on the larger forces shaping our world: I see this third force everywhere. I see it hiding inside the inaccurately named thing called “social networking. I see it embedded in “American Idol.†It follows me to the grocery store. It wakes me up at night. It’s busy [...]
Posted in General on Feb 28th, 2008
Please go read this incredibly insightful reflection by Eugene Eric Kim. If you’re too lazy, I’ll clip the most important part for ya: The following day, I co-led a session on this topic with AngusParker. Two of the participants were dealing with the specific challenge of connecting members of a national network of leaders in [...]
Posted in General on Feb 3rd, 2008
Superbowl time. I couldn’t care less about the football. But I’m reminded of my all-time favorite Superbowl ad, which speaks to me in that geeky nonprofit technology consultant way:
Posted in General on Jan 30th, 2008
… those of you reading in an aggregator will have to click on through to see a Sprout in all of its glory. Congrats to Carnet and the Sprout Builder team on an amazing launch, and thanks for sneaking me into the beta. I can’t wait to play around more and create more really cool widgets [...]
Posted in General on Nov 21st, 2007
Next time one of your major outsourced communications services gets hacked, please don’t: Wait a month to notify your users Send out the notification email the day before a long holiday weekend I agree with Allan. That’s pretty weak.
Posted in General on Nov 15th, 2007
Right this very minute, ONE/Northwest is hosting a “brain trust” event where 60+ people are gathered to talk about online social networks and their potential for powering social change. Here’s a liveblog of my notes: Gideon Rosenblatt, ONE/Northwest (http://www.onenw.org) Executive Director We are a capacity builder that helps environmental groups engage people in environmental protection. Thanks to Aron Thompson, [...]
Posted in General on Oct 12th, 2007
Tom Moroz, Open Society Instiute Intro by Alan Runyan: the future of open source software looks very much like the path that nonprofits and civil society organizations have blazed. Heard a lot about Seattle 2006 conference and the strong community. At first I wondered what the connection between open society and open source was, but the more I’ve [...]
Posted in General on Oct 10th, 2007
Thanks to the heroic efforts of Vincenzo Barone, Christian Scholz and the team at City of Science, we have two channels of live video from Plone Conference streaming on the web and in Second Live. All the details for tuning in are at: http://ploneconf.comlounge.tv/
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 27th, 2007
Our database consulting practice here at ONE/Northwest is continuing to boom. We’re looking to add another database consultant to our team here in Seattle:http://www.onenw.org/about/jobs/CRM-ConsultantCome help us build next generation relationship management systems for kick-ass environmental groups!