NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoup.org - Cyber-Yenta

I'm here in San Jose, and ready to roll!

Deborah Elizabeth Finn — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:00:49 -0400

Greetings, fellow Net2 attendees!

I arrived in San Jose last night, and am eagerly awaiting the NetSquared conference!

After the conference, I'll be going on to San Francisco for a few days. My home base there will be the SF Nonprofit Technology Center (http://www.sftechcenter.org/).

I'm interested in all ways that needs and resources can be brought together seamlessly through information and communication technologies.

Volunteers are need for Wikimania 2006: Cambridge, MA, USA - August 4th-6th

Deborah Elizabeth Finn — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:27:56 -0400

This is a terrific volunteer opportunity for anyone who cares about knowledge in the public interest or online collaboration. The following is my redaction of the publicity blurb:

Wikimania 2006, the 2nd annual international meetup and conference of the Wikimedia Foundation, will be held August 4-6th, 2006, on the Harvard Law School campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The conference will feature presentations from Jimmy Wales, Larry Lessig, Brewster Kahle, Eben Moglen, Yochai Benkler, and Clay Shirky; along with some of the most active contributors to Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikisource, and the MediaWiki platform. Presenters and attendees will discuss the present and future of Wikimedia Projects; the dynamics of Wikipedia and related communities; publishing and verification of information; and technical updates and Mediawiki hacking.

Wikimania will be a chance to meet the people behind one of the extraordinary successes of the internet - a multilingual volunteer community of a hundred thousand people who are passionate about creating high-quality free knowledge for the world. For community members, it will be a chance to meet fellow Wikimedians, learn about what's happening today, and discuss current issues and the future of the projects.

For others, Wikimania 2006 will be a once-in-a-lifetime chance to participate in shaping the future of Wikipedia and collaborative knowledge production generally.

All sorts of volunteers are needed. If you're interested in getting involved, please go to the Wikimania 2006 Volunteer Teams web page, or send at email to wikimania-info @ wikimedia . org.

What do immigrant organizers need to know about databases?

Deborah Elizabeth Finn — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 16:53:52 -0400

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.

Advocating for new technology in nonprofit organizations

Deborah Elizabeth Finn — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 17:28:06 -0400

Photo by Beth Kanter

As the Boston N-TEN regional conference approached, I did a lot of agonizing about how to design a session on advocating for new technology in nonprofit organizations.

I'd like to report that it went pretty well, mostly because some top-notch colleagues agreed to help, and a fellow member of the Berkman bloggers' group agreed to present a case study.

The moral of this story probably turns out to be "when in doubt, pass the buck!"

Naava Frank deployed her considerable expertise as a facilitator and expert on communities of practice, Steve Backman and Eric Segal contributed the fruits of many years of experience as successful nonprofit technology advocates, and J Baumgart gave us a very frank and fascinating account of her adventures as an in-house advocate for RSS feeds within a department where making the case was mysteriously difficult.

Advocating for technology in the nonprofit sector is not an exact science: it's not the sort of topic that lends itself well to a straightforward PowerPoint presentation by an expert. Everyone is working with a different set of obstacles, unknowns, allies, resources, and strategies.

As session designers, we decided that the best approach would be to encourage brainstorming and mutual education. I hope that we succeeded to some degree, and that those who participated in the session will not only continue the discussion via the Boston 501 Tech Club email distribution list, but also post comments to my blog about other possibilities for enhancing the learning experience.

Bringing Wikimania to Boston

Deborah Elizabeth Finn — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 18:20:45 -0400

Toronto and Boston are currently competing to play host to Wikimania 2006, which will be an international gathering of those involved in the Wikimedia Foundation's various projects.

Although I'm very much a novice in this world, having just begun to learn how to edit Wikipedia articles, I'm delighted by the possibility that a large numbers of wiki-oriented geeks from many countries will land in Massachusetts next summer to discuss online projects for making knowledge in the public interest more accessible. (Here's a sample of these projects: Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, and Wikinews.)

Yesterday evening, I attended the local Wikipedia Meetup, convened by Sj, for a discussion of plans for Wikimania 2006. The Berkman Center for Internet & Society has very generously offered facilities at Harvard Law School, and Sj is busy lining up all the other necessities.

The Boston area's nonprofit technology community is becoming more cohesive than ever, and I'm hoping that we can welcome and make common cause with the Wikimaniacs if they come here. There's so much talk about Web 2.0, in which we will take online tools to the next level. Both the Wikimedia community and the nonprofit technology community are dedicated to collaboration in the service of noble causes, and therefore we would do well engage each other in dialogue about how Web 2.0 can help us achieve our goals.

The Dream of an Open Source Web-Based Database

Deborah Elizabeth Finn — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 22:12:21 -0400

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.)

NetSquared: Reinventing Nonprofit Technology Online

Deborah Elizabeth Finn — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 22:58:07 -0400

"Net² is an invitation into the marvelous, messy world of the Internet as a participatory, interactive community: a community created by its users....We don't know exactly what the Net² community will look like, or how it will change the face of the non-profit web. What we do know is that both the online and offline work of every non-profit can be enhanced by a dynamic online community in which organizations and users support one another. And we know that the creativity and commitment of the non-profit world is crucial to achieving the creative and community potential of the Internet itself."

This is the NetSquared call to action from the good folks at CompuMentor. They have brought us wonderful resources such as TechSoup, TechSoup Stock, TechCommons, and ConsultantCommons - and are now counting the days until the NetSquared conference in April 2006.

I was particularly pleased when Marnie Webb of CompuMentor commissioned me to come up with a collection of case studies for the NetSquared project. Since I already spend a fair amount of time blogging about internet-based communities, tools, and projects that are of interest to nonprofit organizations, this seems like a consulting assignment that is almost too good to be true.