Zack Rosen, David Geilhufe and ...

The "latest and greatest" in open source devleopment for non-profits session was excellent, but I won't try to summarize. Way too much discussed, most of which I understood, some of which I simply missed. (And notes are of no help. I can't listen and write. I don't have the enthusiasm anymore. I keep imagining Alan Bennett at one of these things. Or better, trying to explain this stuff to him over lunch at a monastery ruin.)

 One great line that stood out from the opening of the session: "Go forth and deploy!" I.e, dive in. Funny thing is that is EXACTLY what we've done with Manila since 2000 at <a xhref="http://www.bayareawritingproject.org">BAWP</a>. Looking back from the perspective of some of the deployment challenges mentioned in this workshop, we haven't done badly at all. Big question is, where do we go next? Open Source solution like Drupal makes sense based on what the presenters said here. OS communities of active developers, downloads and forums. A chance to avoid duplication of efforts (nice example of VolunteerMatch and HandsOn Network - 80% of the same stuff needed for both organizations yet 5 years ago each was alone in its development efforts, granting that such a challenge might have been an impossible challenge for open source at that point). Lots said about the need for the intermediary agencies (what Kern County Superintendent of Schools web team has played for us, an Application Service Provider). The fact is that to engineer something you need money. And it helps to no end if you have a fundamental need and some sort of notion of how the software might work to accomplish what it is you want to accomplish. Loved this comment (paraphrased): "Hey if it works for social change and it's Microsoft, so what? That's what differentiates this Open Source conversation from a commerical vendor conversation. Bravo for MS! Next topic?"