Category: Tech

I have been really excited about the idea of a BloggerCon for/about women and it’s finally happening this weekend! If course, BlogHerCon is happening 2,786 miles away, so I won’t be there in person.

When I go to good conferences, I blog them there and then so that folks who aren’t there can get an idea of what’s going on. So I have been counting on the techie nature of this conference to provide pretty close-to-live output from the event online.
Continue reading “Talkin’ ’bout BlogHerCon” →

This is a list of resources I put together for my colleagues in public affairs before I left Planned Parenthood. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep it up to date, so I might as well publish it now before it’s all stale!
Continue reading “Helpful links for e-organizers” →

Good news. CiviCRM – the long-awaited, open source, web-based contact management database – has been released! It is still in beta, which means everything isn’t guaranteed to work perfectly. You can check it out at OpenNGO, where they have a “sandbox” where you can play around with the latest version without hurting anything.

This release is a good first step. In the future this software will incorporate tools like CivicSpace and others that will enable a wide range of interaction between organizations and their supporters. I’m especially interested in seeing the integration of advocacy tools like Democracy in Action.

Here’s one neat-o thing that CiviCRM does right now: integration with Google maps!

Others have written about this subject compellingly, but I have just recently seen the light on tagging. I even added them to this blog!

Tags are an increasingly popular and increasingly effective way to organize and find information online. Last weekend, Technorati was a crucial part of promoting and documenting the Live 8 concerts. Anyone blogging the concerts (including those with a critical eye) could tag them ‘Live8‘ or ‘Live8 Philly‘ and have their entries located by people around the world.
Continue reading “Why nonprofits should use “tags”” →

I have to admit, I was little grossed out when I first heard that a marketing company called Issue Dynamics had launched a practice in “Blogger Relations.” But then again, is it any less skeezy when I do it and call it “blogger outreach?” 😉

Anyway, I have to give them some kudos for putting a few of their presentations for nonprofits online. The latest addition is “Using Blogs and RSS for Your Organization” (5MB PPT), and it’s actually quite good.

Here are a couple of of my favorite slides:

The Blog Phenomenon

• Blog or Weblog = Web journal
• 7% of 120 million U.S. adults online say they have created a blog = 8 million people.
• 27% of internet users say they read blogs = 32 million people
• Political blogs driving growth = 9% of internet users said they read political blogs “frequently” or “sometimes” during the 2004 campaign.

Source: Pew Internet Project, Jan 2005

Continue reading “P.R. B.R.” →

This is an article I wrote for a newsletter at work last year.

Making the Net Work (folks who have been working with community technology for a long time) have developed this simple chart to show "how new technology without a new approach can just cause additional problems." The chart shows the change from old to new technology on the up-down axis, and the change from old to new strategies on the left-right axis. The ideal place to be is on the top right, using new approaches along with new tools.

But we often get stuck in the "technology trap." Who hasn’t experienced this…

•  You have a website but it’s never updated.
•  You received a donated computer, printer, scanner, or software package, but don’t know how to use it.
•  The leaders of your organization can’t or won’t use computers and shared online tools.
•  The few people who understand technology lord it over others.
•  Your colleagues can’t or won’t share information with each other efficiently or are suspicious of technical solutions.
Continue reading “The technology trap” →