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News for May 2003
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 27 May 2003 |
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| Building An Open Source Office (part 2) |
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Another good case study from the LINC Project: In part 2 of Building An Open Source Office, they describe their work with a group in Missouri called Grass Roots Organizing. Sadly, so long as Microsoft dumps software into the nonprofit market below market prices, truly open solutions like this one will be harder to justify.
Posted: 5/27/03; 11:28:59 AM # |
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21 May 2003 |
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| Social Ecology to close as ASP |
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With a heavy heart, I must report that Social Ecology will close its doors as an ASP this Summer. We incubated the company four years ago, put stock in the hands of other nonprofits, and helped guide it to some modest success in the field. I'm proud of the vision, the software, and the people who made it happen. I'm sad at this turn of events. I will share my thoughts on this some day. There is a lot to reflect upon.
Posted: 5/21/03; 3:47:52 PM # |
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20 May 2003 |
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| Freedom Under Fire |
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The ACLU has published Freedom Under Fire (PDF), a report on the new restrictions on dissent in the United States since 9/11. It's a sobering read for any nonprofit that takes positions that are not consistent with the values of the current U.S. administration.
Posted: 5/20/03; 10:51:15 AM # |
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19 May 2003 |
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| Cyber Lodge |
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Cyber Lodge is an effort to bring open source software to the labor movement. This is very smart. Plus I admire that their front page is a web log.
Posted: 5/19/03; 9:33:11 AM # |
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15 May 2003 |
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| Questionable Microsoft donations in Europe |
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At the opening plenary of the N-TEN conference, I raised questions about the potentially damaging nature of Microsoft's donations of software to the nonprofit sector. Although I'm not a lawyer, I also suggested that, as a monopoly, their below market price distribution of software might very well be a form of illegal competition for a particular market. This got a rather noisy response from the audience and serious questions later from the good folks at Discountech, who plan on helping Microsoft scale up those donations. Well, the first signs of this being a major issue are now coming to light in Europe, where Microsoft's donations to schools and government may well be both anticompetitive and illegal.
Posted: 5/15/03; 12:37:43 PM # |
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13 May 2003 |
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| McKinsey slams nonprofit efficiency |
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McKinsey has released a report slamming nonprofit efficiency. My thoughts? I want to see comparisons to the government and for profit sectors. I want to see analysis about the tradeoffs between efficiency and innovation. I want to see trend lines. Yes, there are huge opportunities for improvement, many of which I have been advocating for years. Yes, there is resistance to change. But promotional bomb throwing by large consulting firms makes me a little uncomfortable.
Posted: 5/13/03; 12:23:29 PM # |
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8 May 2003 |
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7 May 2003 |
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| Open Source Resistance to Interoperability |
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For years I have asserted that interoperability between nonprofit software tools would be a key to both innovation and affordability. This has generally been met with vague agreement, but no action by developers. I have sometimes hoped that open source developers would be strong supporters of this, but in many cases they have done the least. As it turns out, according to some observers, this resistance to interoperability is a characteristic of open source development in general.
Posted: 5/7/03; 12:41:01 PM # |
| The Early Days of a Better Nation |
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I'm linking to Ken Maclead's weblog here not because it has anything to do with nonprofit organizations, but because I love the title: The Early Days of a Better Nation. The title derives from two quotations. Alastair Gray: "Work as if you lived in the early days of a better nation." Graydon Saunders: "If these are the early days of a better nation, there must be hope, and a hope of peace is as good as any, and far better than a hollow hoarding greed or the dry lies of an aweless god."
Posted: 5/7/03; 12:40:50 PM # |
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6 May 2003 |
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| The Little Book of Peace |
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Fieldstone Alliance has made the full version of their Little Book of Peace (PDF) available as a free download. It's a lovely little workbook for young people that ties together the varying forms of violence in our society and calls for a thoughtful, personal response.
Posted: 5/6/03; 11:12:09 AM # |
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5 May 2003 |
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| Relevance is More Important Than Style |
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With nonprofits continuing to send out enormous HTML newsletters to their constituents, it's time for yet another reality check. One is to be found in David Kirkpatrick's look at web advertising that actually works. He concludes with what I always thought was rather obvious: Relevance is more important than style.
Posted: 5/5/03; 10:44:59 AM # |
| The Practice of Democracy |
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The Practice of Democracy (PDF) is an excerpt from Starhawk's Web of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising, from New Society Publishers. It's a great little piece on the mechanics of affinity groups and collective decision making.
Posted: 5/5/03; 10:44:46 AM # |
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4 May 2003 |
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2 May 2003 |
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| Little Sister 2003 |
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While most nonprofits and funders ignore the implications of the new security state for their work, some people are banding together to address it directly. Many will be gathering next week at Little Sister 2003, being held in Vancouver, Canada. It will focus on community organizing and the security and legal needs of autonomous movements. It's the first conference of its kind.
Posted: 5/2/03; 1:00:34 PM # |
| Trust by Design |
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Peter Morville has written a short and compelling piece on Trust by Design, in which he explores systems of communication and the building of that crucial social capital that is trust.
Posted: 5/2/03; 1:00:06 PM # |
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1 May 2003 |
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