Steve Wright, Program and Technical Director of the Salesforce.com Foundation talks to us about how social benefit organizations are improving their operations by using Salesforce.com to gather and understand data.

Looking at the variety and proliferation of GIS-based custom applications, YourMappr, green map, and others, which seem to mostly feature their own datasets displayed within their own platforms, I'm wondering how these datasets can be integrated or layered with each other, and with other GIS-based data like Wikimapia.org data that is entered through other channels.

One of my favorite projects these days is the "Immigrant Organizers Information Technology Network," which a joint undertaking by the Center to Support Immigrant Organizing and Third Sector New England, and is funded by the Boston Foundation. Right now, I'm helping to put together a databaseclinic for a cluster of immigrant organizing groups in Massachusetts. 

The grassroots workers affiliated with these groups are the best in the world at advocating for immigrants, and they juggle an awe-inspiring amount of information about constituents, donors, policy makers, service providers, activists, and other stakeholders.  Most of this juggling is done in their heads, or on paper, or with Excel spreadsheets - very few of them also have expertise in database development.  What to do?

In June, TSNE offered these groups a "Databases 101" workshop, designed for smart people who are starting from scratch in learning about databases.  This month, the goal is to follow up with a clinic that will enable them to get down to cases about their specific needs. 

We've invited mavens from three local organizations - Database Designs Associates, The Data Collaborative, and Organizers Collaborative - to serve as "clinicians."  These folks all have extensive experience with both database development and grassroots organizing.  So far, so good!

But the remaining challenge is to craft the clinic in such a way that all of the immigrant organizers come away with a feeling of confidence, a practical understanding of how databases can help them, and a list of action items to take back to their offices.

Among adult educators, there's considerable consensus that subjecting people to yet another PowerPoint presentation just isn't the answer, so I am currently on a quest for better ideas.

Gary Price is the editor of ResourceShelf.com, the News Editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, a contributer to Docuticker.com and a librarian. 

Price graciously spent a long time with me on Instant Messaging doing the interview that follows.  You can click on any of the summary points below to skip to that part of the interview, then click your browser’s “back” button to return to the top, or you can read the whole story straight through.  All off-site links will open in a new window, so you can check them out without leaving the interview.

I have a delightful client who dreams of an entirely open source web-based version of the Organizers Database.  (The current version, which has many avid fans, is open source, but runs on a Microsoft Access platform, which is proprietary software.)