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News for March 2005
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 29 March 2005 |
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| NewsClues RSS Proxy |
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If you want a technical snapshot of one piece of how we filter incoming news items here at Nonprofit Online News, you might want to take a look at the NewsClues RSS Proxy. It is an attempt to apply some machine learning principles to large amounts of incoming information and is similar to one part of our system. It's nice to see these ideas out there.
Posted: 3/29/05; 10:41:40 AM # |
| Seth's Blog: Shortcuts |
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I just finished teaching a great series of workshops on email newsletter marketing. It amazes me how often people want shortcuts to building a base of subscribers. I like what Seth Godin has to say about shortcuts: Sorry, there aren't any.
Posted: 3/29/05; 10:39:59 AM # |
| Blogging NTC 2005 |
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If you didn't attend the recent Nonprofit Technology Conference in Chicago, you could do worse than follow the links available on the list of people who were Blogging NTC.
Posted: 3/29/05; 10:39:11 AM # |
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28 March 2005 |
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| South Africa and Human Language Technology |
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I learned from my SANGONeT hosts that South Africa has a population of 46 million people with 11 official languages. In an article by Janet Paterson and Pamela Weaver I learned about the role of new technology in grappling with this linguistic diversity. I was particularly interested in the way South Africa is keeping its precious public moneys in the country by investing in open source software as the basis for new tools such as pronunciation dictionary platforms that allow readers of a language to communicate with others who only speak it.
Posted: 3/28/05; 4:21:48 PM # |
| Digital Photography Hacks |
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It might come as some surprise to those of you who are familiar with my distaste for excessive visual design that I am otherwise a very visual person. This comes out in my passion for good diagrams and mind mapping, but it is also expressed in my love of good photography and the power of a single, well chosen image. Derrick Story's Digital Photography Hacks is filled with valuable advice. The eleven different ideas for camera phones would be of particular use to activist organizations dealing with real time events on the streets. Most of the other advice would help many low budget organizations be able to have more professional looking photography for much less money. The book is well worth the investment.
Posted: 3/28/05; 4:12:10 PM # |
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26 March 2005 |
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| Steal This Computer Book 3 |
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Wallace Wang is a stand up comic and the author of the long running Boardwatch column "Notes from the Underground". The third edition of his guide to "what they won't tell you about the Internet", entitled Steal This Computer Book, is a simply amazing resource. It explores issues such as online censorship and filters, computer intrusion and spying, and other online abuses, as well as how to keep them from affecting you and your work. It also looks at the light and dark sides of online activism and it has a great section on computing on a shoestring budget. I highly recommend this book.
Posted: 3/26/05; 3:53:45 PM # |
| IT Ethics Handbook |
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Stephen Northcutt's IT Ethics Handbook is a very valuable resource. This isn't because it clearly answers the hundreds of ethical questions it raises -- from the responsibilities of programmers and system administrators to the privacy of email -- but because it so clearly identifies these issues and calls out the range of possible answers. I can't think of a single issue that didn't have some bearing on the role of nonprofit technology professionals or the leaders responsible for setting policy in their organizations.
Posted: 3/26/05; 3:53:24 PM # |
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24 March 2005 |
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| The Three Pillars of Social Source |
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In The Three Pillars of Social Source (12 page PDF), Gideon Rosenblatt of ONE Northwest takes a stab at a taxonomy of nonprofit technology provision with the goal of greater focus and coordination among the players. He identifies the three pillars as application developers, application integrators, and application hosters, and speaks out strongly against conflation of those roles. I have to say I agree, at least in part. We learned this lesson at Social Ecology: When we decided to get out of the consulting business (where we were competing with our natural allies, the integrators), business boomed for us. I think the greatest flaw in this analysis, however, is that it is still too technocentric. There is still a fourth pillar (or perhaps it is the roof itself, to stretch the metaphor) which consists of communication professionals, such as marketing staff, fundraising consultants, advocates, organizers, and all the rest of the professionals whose communication vision and needs are meant to be served by technology.
Posted: 3/24/05; 9:33:56 AM # |
| Charityfacts |
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The United Kingdom's only professor of Nonprofit Marketing and Fundraising has launched a new web site called Charityfacts, to help educate the British public about nonprofit organizations.
Posted: 3/24/05; 9:25:18 AM # |
| Report on the @Stanford Newsletter |
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Thanks to Mark Carr, I learned about this report on the effectiveness of @Stanford (21 page PDF), a free email newsletter for the university. It's nice to note that they tested not just perceived effectiveness (which, alas, is what most evaluation tests), but also some metrics of actual effectiveness. They found positive correlations to many of their communication objectives, including giving. The recommendations include many expansions to the newsletter program.
Posted: 3/24/05; 9:09:17 AM # |
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23 March 2005 |
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22 March 2005 |
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| Going Virtual: Distributed Communities of Practice |
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Paul Hidreth's Going Virtual: Distributed Communities of Practice studies the concept of communities of practice and explores one such community that crosses international boundaries. Just the opening chapter on What is Soft Knowledge is worth the price of the book for anyone who wants to get clear on the history of the concepts involved. Because of its origin as a doctoral dissertation, the book has a fantastic bibliography. Finally, the appendix includes some methodologies on Flow Models and Sequence Models that deeply complement our work on Communication Centered Technology Planning.
Posted: 3/22/05; 12:24:48 PM # |
| State of the World 2005 |
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I am on a long term quest for all those methods that can bring together the progressive 90% of the nonprofit sector. Ways of framing and presenting issues so that they cross organizational boundaries is one such method. The annual State of the World book, compiled and published by the Worldwatch Institute, is a great example of this kind of work. The 2005 edition brings together such issues as peace and security, disease prevention, food systems, the oil economy and others under the single conceptual framework of sustainability. With well thought out contributions from a large range of experts, this book is a must read for any nonprofit leader who wants to connect their work to the big picture.
Posted: 3/22/05; 12:16:40 PM # |
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21 March 2005 |
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| Civiblog |
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The Citizen lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto has launched Civiblog, a free weblog hosting service for civil society organizations working in the humanitarian, development, and human rights sectors.
Posted: 3/21/05; 11:13:15 AM # |
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18 March 2005 |
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14 March 2005 |
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| Sunshine Week |
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Seven in ten Americans are concerned about government secrecy. The amount of information being requested by citizens and citizen organizations is increasing, but the amount of information released is decreasing. And while it makes me proud to know that the US Freedom of Information Act is used as a model by countries around the world who are seeking more open government, it's sad to see the fundamental democratic principle of transparency and accountability deteriorate before our eyes. That's why I'm voicing my support for Sunshine Week, a national campaign to call attention to this issue, which kicks off today.
Posted: 3/14/05; 12:04:10 PM # |
| Kazaa, the Red Cross, Asset Protection and Mysterious Trust Fund |
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Here is a tale of international financial intrigue on an enormous scale involving the Red Cross, the Kazaa file sharing company which is under attack by the music industry, and a mysterious trust fund (with what might be all of Kazaa's cash) purportedly set up by Kazaa in the wake of the asian tsunami disaster to benefit the Red Cross. And if that isn't interesting enough, here is the latest clue to the tangle: The Red Cross has never heard of this trust.
Posted: 3/14/05; 10:24:20 AM # |
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11 March 2005 |
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| How to Start a Startup |
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Paul Graham writes about How to Start a Startup. It's very tech oriented and I don't entirely agree with a few of the business values expressed, but I still think that it makes a key point about investing in the right kind of people early on. I especially like the emphasis on prioritizing unanimity over inclusion at the early stages of a project. A lot of nonprofits could benefit from that discipline.
Posted: 3/11/05; 12:49:46 PM # |
| Penguin Day |
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Aspiration and other groups have been organizing a series of Penguin Days to promote free and open source software for nonprofits. Looks like top notch marketing to me!
Posted: 3/11/05; 12:49:27 PM # |
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10 March 2005 |
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| ItrainOnline: Resources for Trainers: MMTK |
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The ItrainOnline Multimedia Training Kit has a nice range of material in support of media skills including producing content for radio, writing for the web, secure online communication, and a number of policy issues. Although mostly distributed under Creative Commons licenses, for some reason the files seem to be primarily in proprietary formats, which is disappointing. But the content itself seems valuable.
Posted: 3/10/05; 6:24:10 PM # |
| Forbes profiles ten corporate protest sites |
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Charles Wolrich of Forbes Magazine has written profiles of ten corporate protest sites. These are usually individual labors of love (or rather labors of hate) as opposed to traditional nonprofit websites, but they are an inspirational example of the power of passion, effort, and the World Wide Web.
Posted: 3/10/05; 6:11:14 PM # |
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9 March 2005 |
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| The Knowledge Activist's Handbook |
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Victor Newman's Knowledge Activist's Handbook is far and away the best "knowledge management" book I have read in a long time. I say this despite the fact that I had to overlook the author's periodic snide remarks about things he regards as too alternative for the business world and the fact that he works for a pharmaceutical company. Newman has a very sharp mind, which he applies to a set of superb deconstructions of the sacred cows and wasteful habits of the field. For example, he argues persuasively that it's far more useful to look at how to nurture knowledge creation, rather than think of knowledge as some sort of asset to be managed. Every bit of analysis is also accompanied by practical questions that can be immediately applied.
Posted: 3/9/05; 1:41:12 PM # |
| The Culture of Fear |
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Originally published in 1999, Barry Glassner's book The Culture of Fear is more relevant than ever. The book explores the wide gulf between what people fear and what is actually dangerous to them. One of the classic examples is the way people are afraid of strangers abducting children, whereas nearly all abuse is perpetrated by people known to the child. The sad thing to me is how many public policies, not to mention how many nonprofit organizations, are founded upon and even reinforce the false fears. It's easy to get votes and money for programs that are based upon these fears, but I think both are shameful acts. I would recommend this book to any funder, or even a wise individual donor, who is remotely concerned with the effectiveness of their contributions.
Posted: 3/9/05; 1:33:05 PM # |
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8 March 2005 |
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| Waangari Maathai: A Woman of Firsts |
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In A Woman of Firsts, Katrina vanden Heuvel profiles Waangari Maathai, the Kenyan woman who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize. Maathai is the first woman in eastern and central Africa to earn a doctorate, the first female professor at the University of Nairobi, and now, the first African woman to win the Peace Prize.
Posted: 3/8/05; 11:52:54 AM # |
| Loband |
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I met a fellow from Aidworld at the SANGONeT conference last week. They just launched a service called Loband that is targeted for communities and organizations with serious bandwidth constraints. It's a kind of proxy system that offers some excellent features for restricting the bandwidth used by web browsing. It requires no software installation, so I suggest you check it out.
Posted: 3/8/05; 11:49:20 AM # |
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7 March 2005 |
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| APC - ICT Policy Handbook |
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I picked up a paper copy of the Association for Progressive Communications' ICT Policy Handbook at the recent SANGONeT conference in Johannesburg. The handbook, which was edited by Chris Nicol in 2003, is still fresh and relevant, with chapters on the national policies and politics that drive up the cost of access in developing nations as well as chapters on all the major policy areas that affect civil society organizations around the world. The book is available in full online.
Posted: 3/7/05; 5:19:42 PM # |
| The Funding Environment in South Africa: How real are the crises? |
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The folks that sponsored last week's SANGONeT conference on ICTs and Civil Society in Johannessburg run a fund development assistance web site called Thusanang, which means "helping each other". I recommend an article by Saliem Fakir on The Funding Environment in South Africa, in which the author issues a call for greater internal reflection by the nonprofit sector on issues such as leadership and accountability. It also touches on the fascinating story of NGO funding after apartheid and what can happen to a sector after it wins a major victory.
Posted: 3/7/05; 5:18:55 PM # |
| Go Open Source - Online SA Open Source Community |
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I was handed a copy of The Open CD at the recent SANGONeT conference. The CD is a collection of open source software selected by Go Open Source. The software on the CD is bundled for Windows users, but you can't determine that by looking at the CD cover, which was pretty annoying. I suppose that an organization using an open source operating system (like Linux, BSD, or Darwin) might already know where to find open source applications. But that knowledge might be limited to the person who set up the computer, not the user that finds themselves needing some particular functionality to say, design a brochure.
Posted: 3/7/05; 5:17:20 PM # |
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3 March 2005 |
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2 March 2005 |
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| Civil Society Building |
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I heard a presentation today about a project quietly launched by Hivos in December 2004. Civil Society Building is an online knowledge exchange network for professionals from around the world involved in building civil society organizations and communities. There is already some superb content on the site.
Posted: 3/2/05; 9:18:50 PM # |
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