In this new year of infinite possibilities, we will see the power of inspiration come to fruition. The tide is turning, and individuals and organizations are realizing that inspiration is what creates action and yields results. Guilt, sadness, and fear can have powerful short term effects, but ignighting the flame of the human spirit is the only way to create long-lasting action.

This year, netCorps will inspire our clients to embrace not only technology, but this new paradigm of leadership through inspiration. We will empower our clients to harness the infinite power of the internet. With this medium, they will not only carry out their mission, but inspire all those that interact with them. Together, we will create websites that call forth the inner spirit, email campaigns that incite hope, and blogs that get people thinking and moving. The information age has had its time, now is the time for the inspiration age.

Inspiration is what each of us craves deep down. As we go through our daily grind, we look to the guardians to remind us what it’s all about. We at netCorps are lucky enough to have those guardians as our clients, and to share their dreams. The guardians of the environment, human rights, and the will of the people…the guardians of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. With these our clients…no, our partners…we will create a world in which all those dreams we have can live…

The dream of a green planet, where everyone breathes fresh air, and drinks clean water.

The dream of an abundant planet, where everyone has more than enough to eat and plenty of safe housing.

The dream of peace, in which we all work together to further the human race…one people, one planet.

The dream of lives filled with joy, love, and happiness…where every child is ferociously hungry for knowledge, and we have an educational system that empowers them.

The dream of a just society, in which all are treated equally, with respect and compassion.

The dream of a forwarding society, in which those who make mistakes are not locked away and shunned, but rather loved, educated, and empowered…given the chance and the tools to not only repay their debt, but to understand and embrace the fulfillment that comes from contributing to society.

I believe that deep within EVERY person’s heart, is the will of good. It does not matter what religion or philosophy you have or don’t have…honor, love, commitment, valor, hope and compassion…these are the qualities we all share and cherish. Let this be the year that everything changes. When all of us make the shift, from focusing on what is wrong, to focusing on what is right…from what is broken and needs fixed, to what is possible and gets to be created. The year of win-win, synergistic relationships, in which we create ideas together that are better than any of us could have created alone.

Through technology, we will reconnect humanity. We will inspire the hearts of millions, and retake the ground we have lost. We will be children in the playground again, where everything is possible. Remember when anything was possible, it was only a matter of persistence and time? Now is the time…social networking tools, superior search technology, ultra in-expensive hardware and software, and compassionate capitalism come to a head this year. This will be the year we look back on and say “wow, it all started in 2008…who could have imagined”.

And it WON'T be who wins the presidential race, the gubernatorial race, or the senate race...it will be the same force that created this country, and the same force that continues to empower it...the people!

Are these the thoughts of a computer scientist gone over the edge? Maybe. But what is life for if not to play the biggest game possible?

So in this new year of hope and excitement, let us use our new found tools to inspire the masses, to remind them of their dreams, and to invite them to come play with us. Let’s fill their hearts with joy, and their minds with dreams. Let’s make this the year that everything changes!

Peace, love, and knowledge,
Sean Watson
netCorps Technology Consultant

Folks have finally awakened to the reality of climate change. While many are worried that it all will still be "too little, too late", there is exciting momentum building in all sorts of areas--from renewable energy technologies (from big to small, my favorite one right now a "microwind energy generator"), to a renewed examination of food production and consumption, resource conservation in buildings, transportation options and much, much more.

All this is enough to make an "ecogeek" like myself giddy.

What is really exciting in this latest wave of concern and action is that there is a tangible connection between the local and global aspects of the decisions we make. I've been inspired by activists in cities and countries that are not only making commitments to change, but actually making progress.

A significant source of energy consumption--and one that individuals, nonprofits and businesses can directly impact--is computer usage. If you assume that the typical desktop computer draws about 100 watts of power and you run that every day (even leaving the computer in "idle" mode at night and on the weekends uses power), the environmental and financial costs of an individual computer quickly adds up--to the tune of $100 a year or more, and that doesn't include a monitor, printer or other peripherals, or any of the other computers in a typical nonprofit office. As energy costs rise, Google projects that it will soon cost more to power a computer for four years than it does to buy a new one.

Computer usage in the broadest terms includes the basics: things like desktops with monitors, keyboards and mice, laptops, printers, copiers, etc. It includes network switches, routers, modems and wiring. And, importantly, it includes servers--servers in the office that share files and data, servers managed by others that host websites, databases, web-based applications, email and more.

Minimize Energy Consumption, Maximize Performance

Central to the quest to "green" our information technology is finding the balance between low energy use and high performance. Better, probably, to say "appropriate" performance. A server, or a workstation for someone crunching a lot of data or doing a lot of graphical work--these should be machines up to the task. A workstation for someone doing basic office work like email, web browsing, word processing etc. doesn't have to be a top of the line system. The good news is that there are many ways to squeeze both noticeable energy savings and performance out of both types of systems.

Paying Attention to the Complete Lifecycle of your Computers

As we consider minimizing energy consumption and the environmental impact of our computer systems, we need to look "cradle to grave". How, and with what materials, are computers constructed? How do we use the computers to minimize energy consumption and maximize longevity? And, when the time comes, how do we appropriately "dispose" (reuse/recycle) of our computer systems?

Help Making Sense of it All

Fortunately, there are emerging systems to guide us through purchasing decisions that take the environmental "footprint" of computer systems into account. The "Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool", or EPEAT, is certainly the easiest and most comprehensive tool that takes into account the environmental impacts of the manufacturing, use and disposal of computer systems.

Energy Star, a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy, offers verification of Energy Star qualified office technology. Energy Star certification covers more products than EPEAT but only looks at the energy consumption of technology during its "useful life" and does not evaluate the environmental and energy consumption issues during manufacturing or disposal. The Energy Star standards for computers were revised in July of 2007 (now version 4.0). EPEAT is requiring Energy Star 4.0 compliance for any products certified after July 20, 2007, but will keep products that met Energy Star 3.0 certification prior to July 20, 2007 in their database until January of 2008, after which time only Energy Star 4.0 certified systems will be included in the EPEAT database.

In Europe, the Eco-label program certifies a variety of products including computer equipment. The Eco-label program essentially merges the energy savings focus of Energy Star with the lifecycle analysis of EPEAT in one program.

Manufacturing/Fabrication

How a computer is constructed and what pieces go into the system are critical. EPEAT looks at the reduction and/or elimination of environmentally sensitive materials such as cadmium, lead, mercury, PVC, and other chemicals and metals. It also rates computers on the percentage of post-consumer recycled plastics as well as bio-based plastic materials used in the construction of computer components and how computers are packaged for delivery/sale (minimization of packaging and use of recycled content and ease of recycling packaging materials). EPEAT also rates the simplicity of upgrading and/or replacing components to help extend the useful life of computer systems.

Disposal/End-of-Life

How long can a working computer remain useful? Once it eventually needs replacing, how easily can it be recycled? In addition to criteria governing how easy it is to upgrade and repair a system, computers certified under EPEAT must have the option for an additional three-year warranty or service agreement, meaning that the possible life span of an EPEAT certified computer needs to be at least six years. Once a computer has reached its useful end of life, EPEAT ranks systems on how easy it is to disassemble the computer and what percentage of the materials are reusable or recyclable.

If a computer can still be useful to someone, maybe just not your organization, reuse is the first course of action. TechSoup maintains a list of organizations that accept computer donations, and is a good first place to look. If the computer cannot be reused, recycle the system. Many cities and counties are beginning to offer residential curbside electronics recycling and electronics recycling companies will often pick up equipment for recycling if there is sufficient volume. Computer vendors like Dell, Lenovo, HP, Apple and others offer mail back programs for unwanted equipment. Office Depot recently launched a national program that, for between $5 and $15 you can purchase shipping boxes of various sizes and Office Depot will recycle all the equipment that fits in the box.

Use it, Don't Abuse It

Sure, buying an EPEAT Gold or Energy Star 4.0 certified computer will take you far towards minimizing the environmental footprint of that computer system. How we use our computers, though, is also critical in addressing the energy consumption issue.

The majority of energy consumed by our computers happens when they are idling. Estimates suggest that up to 85% of the energy used up by computers occurs when we are away from the machine--at lunch, at meetings or simply not at the office. There are two simple solutions to dealing with this:

1. Turn it off!

For a while, a great debate waged as to the benefits of turning a computer off when leaving work at night as opposed to leaving it on. Would turning it off wear out the moving parts? At some point in the past, the answer probably was "yes" or at least "maybe." But advances in drive technology and the reduction of physically moving mechanical parts in computers has disposed of this argument. If this is still your concern, lay it to rest and shut down your computer before you leave.

A second reason why computers are often left on at night is to allow for scheduled data backups or other maintenance. If this is how your systems run now, consider changing how your data is backed up. For offices with multiple computers, central data storage (servers, shared drives) is a better solution for back up and file storage in general. Let these machines handle your data and back up requirements so other systems can be turned off.

For offices with one to three machines that do not need to share data in this way, individual backups can be done to CD, DVD, external drives or online services. These backups can often be set up to be done incrementally so, after a baseline backup is done, only files that have changed are backed up each time. In the case of many online backups, these backups are often done throughout the day, meaning that the file you created 15 minutes ago is probably already backed up. If backing up to CD, DVD or other local storage, schedule automatic backups for over a lunch hour or during routinely scheduled staff meetings.

In the initial example of a computer using 100 watts of power running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, energy consumption would cost approximately $100 a year. Running the same computer only 8 hours a day drops the cost by two thirds to approximately $33 a year--and the cost would drop even more if the computer is off for entire weekends as well. Turning off any technology when it isn't in use is the single easiest thing any individual or organization can do to conserve the energy used by these machines.

2. Give it a Rest!

Turning off your computer at night, over the weekend or during times when you will be away from it for an hour or more can have a huge impact on energy consumption. When turning your computer off isn't an option, make sure it is at least taking advantage of whatever "sleep mode" functionality it has. Putting a computer into sleep mode basically shuts or slows down computer components like the monitor and hard drive, helping the computer use less power. To check your computer's available power management settings, check the following:

On a Macintosh:

1. From any application select the Apple menu
   
2. Select "System Preferences..." (OS X) or "Control Panels" (OS 9) and then click on "Energy Saver"

On a Windows-based computer:

1. Point your cursor at the desktop background and right-click
2. Choose "Properties" from the pop up menu
3. Go to the "Screen Saver" page; in the lower right-hand corner near the ENERGY STAR® logo click the "Settings" or "Power" button. This brings up another dialog box where you choose power management settings.

From these screens, you can set when the monitor is turned off, when the hard drive spins down and when the computer will go in to "system standby" or "sleep mode". Generally, turning an unused computer monitor or hard drive off after 10 or 15 minutes and sending a computer into standby or sleep mode after 30 minutes is a reasonable rule of thumb. These settings will minimize power use but also make it so your computer will wake up quickly when you return from that meeting or meal. These and other recommendations regarding turning off and using standby settings can be found in the Green Computing Guide from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Other Usage Recommendations/Considerations

In addition to buying EPEAT and Energy Star certified computers, turning them off when not in use and taking advantage of power-saving features at other times, other basic practices can further decrease the environmental and financial costs of your computer systems:

• Printers, scanners, copiers and other peripherals? Unless there are important reasons to leave these on (we've had experience with some color printers, for example, that consume a lot of ink during start up), turn them off at the end of the day and leave them off until you need them. Otherwise, if they have a low-power mode, make sure it is enabled.
  
• When making purchasing decisions, also consider how "powerful" a computer you need now and for the next several years. And don't only look at the one computer that needs to be replaced. Would replacing a different computer in the office with a new machine and using that hand-me-down at the first location be possible?
  
• Could a laptop be a replacement for an aging destkop? Laptops by their very nature consume far less power than a desktop and offer other benefits to the user and organization.
• Wired vs. wireless? In new office space it is tempting to consider a completely wireless solution to connect computers to office networks and the internet. Wireless requires less material (far less copper or fiber since there is little network cabling needed) and will potentially use less power although wireless routers and access points could add up to the same amount of power used as network switches. The performance trade-offs, however, between wireless and wired could easily tip the balance in favor of building out a wired network. The more users on a wireless network, the slower it is likely to be.

 
Servers, Websites and More

Many nonprofit offices have one or more servers managing file sharing, backups, database access, email, website or more. These machines tend to be high on the energy consumption scale, employing multiple hard drives, power supplies, fans and more. As the energy efficiency of individual computer components continues to improve, the energy costs of these computers will probably go down, although this will likely be overshadowed by rising energy prices.

Except for an organization that is managing its email, website and other systems on in-house servers, every nonprofit is using a hosted server for one or more critical services--web, email, database, etc. When the energy and support costs are factored in, maintaining in-house servers can easily be a big cost center for an organization although these costs are certainly justified for many groups. One way to quickly size up the energy costs of your servers or any equipment is to plug in a nifty product called a Kill-a-Watt energy monitoring device that will tell you exactly how much electricity a particular electronic gadget uses and how much it costs to run that gadget each year. Add up all those costs and moving email, web hosting, backup and other services to an outside provider could make financial and organizational sense.

But does it make sense from an energy conservation standpoint? Data centers--huge facilities with hundreds or thousands of servers, power supplies, back up power supplies and more--use enormous amounts of energy. While improvements in power management and the energy conservation of server components will continue to improve, there is a reason companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are building new data centers in places like Eastern Oregon and Washington that offer access to relatively reliable hydro-power (supplemented by growing wind farms). Still, recent reports, like one from IT analyst firm IDC, suggests that at least for larger organizations, using outsourced, data center-based services makes financial and environmental sense. And, with energy costs going up, it makes financial sense for the companies to get every ounce of efficiency from their data centers.

Green Data Centers?

While there are currently no EPEAT or Energy Star ratings for hosting services and data centers, many green or at least "greenish" services exist. Hosting companies and data centers are taking on initiatives to improve the efficiency of cooling systems and manage the power consumption of servers, tapping directly into renewable power systems, buying green energy credits from utilities or purchasing "carbon offset credits" to mitigate their environmental impact.

If your server requirements are such that a green data center or hosting company isn't an option, purchasing green energy or carbon offset credits for your organization/office is another option. While going with a company that purchases these credits or buying your own through your utility or a third-party isn't the same as actually using green energy to power your computer systems, it is the next best thing.

Go Forth and Conserve

The best and easiest strategies to reducing the environmental footprint of your computer systems are to:

• purchase EPEAT Gold certified computers and Energy Star 4.0 certified peripherals that are appropriate to your organization's needs,
• turn them off when not in use, and
• set up energy conserving power management settings when the machines are idling.

With continued advances in energy conservation technologies for computer systems, newer desktops, laptops and peripherals will certainly consume less power than current models. Of course, this doesn't mean you should run out and replace perfectly good systems now. Taking in to account manufacturing and disposal issues, it is probably better to adjust how and when existing computers are used rather than simply upgrading. So when the time comes, feel good about selecting a new system that meets EPEAT and Energy Star certification.

Consider the impact of your servers and hosting environment as well. Just because they are "somewhere else" doesn't mean they don't need to be an important part of your energy conservation.

The research group Gartner Inc. recently released a report which put "Green IT [at the top of] the list of strategic technologies that companies should consider in their planning processes" for 2008. This is just as true for nonprofit organizations. As we look to maintain or increase our effectiveness and efficiency, we need to be making decisions with long-term impact. Integrating and implementing a green IT strategy is an easy way we can all influence the financial health of our organizations and, more importantly, the ecological health of our communities and the world.

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In addition to the links provided above, I have collected a number of "Green IT" resources which can be found here: http://del.icio.us/mlattere/greenIT. You can also click on that link to subscribe to the RSS feed of this growing list of resources.

So much information, so little time. At least it seemed that way, before I fell in love with RSS. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a method that allows information on the web to be collected--by a keyword, a tag, a type of content, a content author, etc.--and then made available to anyone who wants it. Some content is collected by the publisher. Want to get the latest Science and Technology headlines from Google News? Go to http://news.google.com, click on the Sci/Tech link and then click the RSS link. Not specific enough? Create your own feed based on a Google News search. Instead of just "Science and Technology" maybe I want to see articles on "Green Technology" so I can search on that and click on the RSS link to access that feed.

Wait--a what? A feed?

Sorry. Let me back up. RSS has been around for a while, but the every day use of it by common folk (that would be most anyone who isn't a proudly self-identified "geek") has languished due to a lack of easy software to collect and read RSS feeds. What is the point of creating or promoting RSS feeds if no one out there is listening?

But with the ability to subscribe to feeds through Internet Explorer 7.0, the Firefox web browser, Microsoft Outlook 2007, Mozilla's Thunderbird email software and a host of web-based and free RSS reader applications like Google Reader,  RssReader, FeedReader and more, investing in RSS finally makes sense.

How can/should nonprofit organizations use RSS? RSS, essentially, is a way for you to allow members, constituents, peers--anyone really--to get timely information from your organization delivered to them quickly and easily. A 2006 article by Phil Shapiro, explains:

"As an example, RSS feeds can be used by a nonprofit organization to distribute different kinds of information to different people. One RSS feed could be the organization's calendar of events or classes. Another could be a call for volunteers. A third feed might be information for funders. The more feeds an organization offers, the more narrowly tailored the information delivered to people served by that organization or supporting that organization."

How do you go about creating an RSS feed? Well, there are at least three answers to that and it mostly depends, for lack of a better term, on software. 

First, if your website is using one of many "content management systems" to manage site information, RSS is very likely already available. This means that you can create RSS feeds for things like calendar items, news and press releases, articles on a certain topic and more. Plone, the content management system we use, for example, offers an RSS feed on the built-in News and Events pages, as well as any "Smart Folder" (basically a page built to display certain site content based on keywords or other criteria). Additionally, any search that a visitor makes on the site is also instantly available as an RSS feed. In this way RSS can be used by both the content publisher to promote certain content (your latest news) as well as by the content reader to make it easy to track new content from your site specific to his or her interests.

The second way to create RSS feeds is to start using software that supports RSS. Basically, start using third party tools that offer feeds. Blogging tools, video sharing services, photo sharing services, news services and others almost all offer RSS feeds. Upload your videos to YouTube (or one of several other video sharing services) and create a custom RSS feed of them and promote that on your site. Use Flickr to do the same with your photos. Use Google News or Yahoo News to create a search about your organization or issues that interest you and your constituents and publish that feed to your website. And by publish to your website, I mean you can literally display that content on your website using other third party tools/services (widgets, they are called these days), as well as sharing the link to the feed so your constituents can have that content essentially "beamed" to them on regular intervals--the same way that email is delivered to their inbox.

The third way to create RSS feeds from your website is to use a third party service that creates RSS feeds to do the work for you. These services often charge for this, but if you don't want to figure out how to write the code to generate RSS feeds or you don't want to use other tools that already offer RSS feeds, then a third party service might be the way to go, like FeedYes, PonyFish and others. More information on this approach, as well as software that can be used to build feeds for use on your website, can be found in the recent TechSoup article, "Easy Ways to Publish Your Own RSS Feeds."

The upside of creating RSS feeds (of your own content or content of interest to your constituents) is you instantly have a new fantastic way to "push" content to your constituents, including both the content you want them to get as well as content they are specifically interested in receiving.

This is why I ultimately fell in love with RSS. Because there really is just so much information out there. And despite the fact that I said I'd visit those websites on a regular basis, I don't. And email lists, even if they are grouped around a topic, don't hold my interest with every post.

With RSS, though, I can select exactly what information I want to get. So if I want to know what my peers are thinking about and learning, I can subscribe to their blog feeds. If I want to keep up on the latest environmental news on a specific topic, I can find a feed dedicated to that or I can make my own. I have, essentially, filtered the abundance of information on the web into my own personal information delivery service.

My fear, initially, was that by filtering this way I'd miss things, I'd shut off areas of information. Instead, the opposite has happened. Feeds I've subscribed to have led me to subscribe to other feeds--sometimes similar, sometimes not. Feeds from organizations I care about have gotten me more involved in their issues and their work, not less. And I am much more knowledgeable on things I care about and can act on those issues more quickly because of how fast and easy it is to get to the information.

I think that is the take-away message here for nonprofits as well. Sure, your nonprofit can (and should) be using RSS to keep up on issues and organizations by subscribing to feeds using your browser, email software or RSS reader, making you more effective in your work. More than that, though, RSS has huge potential to instantly share information with your constituents just by publishing it to your website, whether they visit your site or not. It also allows folks to tailor information from you to suit their interests, and that is fantastic. And it allows you to pull information from other sites and services (the latest YouTube videos on your issues, the latest news on your issues from the 4500 news feeds tracked by Google News) onto your website, making your site that much more relevant. The problem with the Web is that there is just so much of it, and every nonprofit is competing for keystrokes and eyeballs against all that other content.

So much information, so little time. Make the most of it--start using RSS.

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In addition to the links provided above, here are a few other resources to get you going:

Easy Ways to Publish Your Own RSS Feeds
http://techsoup.org/learningcenter/internet/page5820.cfm

Why Nonprofit Managers Must Use RSS — And How to Start http://techsoup.org/learningcenter/internet/page7325.cfm

Make your nonprofit more effective with RSS aggregation http://www.socialsignal.com/nonprofit-RSS

How to Create RSS Feeds for Your Organization http://marshallk.com/how-to-create-rss-feeds-for-your-organization

Mediation Works, based in Medford, Oregon, teaches conflict resolution skills and offers mediation services. Mediation Works supports individuals and organizations to help them resolve differences peacefully, building understanding and respect within families, organizations and communities in Southern Oregon.

netCorps’ relationship with Mediation Works began in the Fall of 2003. Picture a situation where everything is much harder than it needs to be and the technology in use is only making things worse. Computers weren’t networked. Users ran between machines to find information. Each computer ran different versions of software, so sharing documents was difficult. Because information was spread around it was impossible to back up. The whole office shared one email account so the office manager printed everyone’s emails and put them on their desks. The donated phone system was not fully functional. Plus there was only one voicemail box for the entire organization so no one could easily get messages. There was no database of constituents. Instead, each person had their own Excel sheet on their own computer with their own contacts. It was a situation generously described as “frustrating”.

Fortunately, Mediation Works’ Executive Director took these challenges and turned them in to an opportunity to think long-term about the strengths, health and goals of the organization. Fast forward four years and Mediation Works is an organization with tools and infrastructure that have helped grow fundraising and programs, encouraged staff retention, increased efficiency and let staff focus on their work rather than struggle to get their work done.

But that is jumping too far ahead. The starting point was a netCorps technology assessment.  Jenny Council had just started providing netCorps’ services in a new Southern Oregon program.  Mediation Works was one of her first clients.  “The technology assessment process,” explains Jenny “is a real opportunity for nonprofits to think big, to articulate their administrative, financial and programmatic goals and design a technology plan that will move them forward towards those goals … and of course also to vent about their awful computers.”

The assessment is done using individual staff interviews, inventory of the organization’s hardware, software, and skills; and analyzing current information management systems, strategic plans, programs and goals.

From this information we craft a detailed technology assessment report that outlines specific technology projects that could help the organization meet its strategic goals. For Mediation Works this meant:

-          improved efficiency through upgraded, networked and standardized computers;

-          improved communication made possible by a better phone system, centralizing electronic data and setting up email for all staff;

-          increased fundraising with the help of a central donor database system designed for expansion down the road;

-          improved reliability of infrastructure through regular backups, more control over what sort of technology donations the organization accepted and the adoption of a proactive approach to computer upgrades and replacements.

The outcomes have been a doubling in fundraising from events, the development of a workplace-giving campaign that has grown into $28,000 in annual income, better marketing of programs, enhanced communication with the Board, improved efficiency (and decreased frustration!) of staff and in infrastructure with the capacity to support Mediation Works’ impressive growth of programs and increased impact on the local community.

All because of improvements in their technology systems? Of course not, but, explains Mary Miller, Mediation Works’ Executive Director, “this is what we’ve been able to do so far with the right infrastructure, the right tools and the right support. There is no way we could have done the fundraising work with the Board without this new database. It supports our annual event, our volunteer management and a lot more.” And, according to Mary, what has made their investments around technology over the last three years has a lot to do with…vision. “It’s not about just bringing in any tech consultant and pointing at a computer that isn’t working and saying ‘fix it.’ It’s about having a consultant with vision, one who really understands our vision for our organization, who understands our culture, our language, our funding needs, our structures—who understands nonprofits. And it’s about having a consultant who has the breadth of hardware and software skills to evaluation technology needs in the context of our organization.”

Jenny is proud of all that Mediation Works has accomplished in the last few years, and the way in which they embraced and moved forward with the technology plan piece by piece. “Once nonprofits see that investing in systems really can provide a concrete pay back, that it helps them reach their goals, it is hard to stop wanting to make that investment. Mediation Works is now ready to take the next step in their development database and their communication technology to help with education, marketing and fundraising. Keeping Mediation Works’ vision at the center of what can sometimes be an otherwise dry technology planning process is key to our approach. It is that vision that informs our work and makes their success possible.”

In our work of nonprofit technology assistance, we are asked to advise and support pretty much anything you can think of. Old equipment that really should have been retired years ago. Crazy and potentially inappropriate software someone's husband or kid or Board member just absolutely thought a group should use. I was even asked to help network a Nintendo DS for a group the other day to their wireless network. It's a game, no it's a computer, no it's...something. 

So when some tools come across our radar that really do work well, are a good fit and actually help the groups we support, it is really exciting. Here are a few from the last couple weeks:

Wufoo

Form building on the web couldn't be easier. Need a volunteer sign-up form, simple event registration form, a survey, donation/membership form integrated on your website? Want to enable fast online payment? Want this all for a bargain price? Wufoo is all that and is slick, has easy to handle reporting, quick data exports and more.

Knoppix

A full-on operating system that fits on a CD with word processing, web browsing and a ton of utilities for, as I rediscovered late last night, mounting hard drives and (hopefully) recovering data from damaged drives. Two hours of effort salvaged a group's email, database and accounting data. Yes, they thought I was pretty amazing. Thank you, open source Linux development!

Carbonite, Mozy, xDrive

As a follow-up to the data recovery story above--welcome to the affordable world of online data backup. For as little as $50/computer/year, reliable and easy online backup services are a small organization's first choice for automated data storage.

CompanionLink for Google Calendar

This is more of a personal triumph for me--I've wanted to synchronize my Outlook calendar to the web for a long time, but didn't want to go the route of Microsoft Exchange or a hosted Exchange service. Free tools such as Remote Calendars were tantalizing but ultimately frustrating and flaky--your experience may be better than mine. But for $30, CompanionLink for Google Calendar now handles it without fail. A quick Scheduled Task and it does an automated update every 3 hours. I feel just a tiny bit geekier--and that is a good thing.

EventBrite

Say you want more than Wufoo can offer for event registration but don't want to pay a lot? After reviewing a bunch of low-cost event registration systems (including EventWax which was a close second), EventBrite gets my vote. Easy to use, lots of flexibility and features, a snippet of code you can embed to start the registration process right on your website, and definitely one of (if not the) most affordable event registration tools out there with this number of features. Free to use for events that are free and just 2.5% (minimum of $.99 plus any merchant fees which, with PayPal, run about 3%) for any paid events.

What slick, affordable and appropriate tools are working for you? Let us know!

The daily morning dog walks in my Portland neighborhood would make me believe that folks around here could feed themselves (and then some) with the fruit trees, the berry bushes of every variety, the edible plants growing from any available space and the raised beds thick with greens, tomatoes and more. Always a gardener myself—I remember planting my first bush beans in a small rock garden at age five—the mild winters and temperate summers of this part of the Pacific Northwest have elevated my seasonal hobby into a near obsession to plant, grow and harvest every possible inch of our tiny urban lot.

Until this summer, my wife and I had always been “buy it and try it” sort of gardeners. Sure, we have a reasonably good sense of what will probably do well based on temperature, sunlight, watering needs. But the “buy it and try it” approach can end up with as many failures as successes, it seems. Why did I think the broccoli should go in the back of that bed, crowded out by the kale and chard and starved for sun? Hopefully I’ll remember that for next time.

But this year in our new city and our new house, we decided to take a long view of things. After all, we want to be here for quite a while. And we figured we should do things with a plan and a time table that, while not necessarily immediately gratifying in every sense, will ultimately be more satisfying—and more fruitful—than our usual approach.

So we hired, much to my surprise and eventual delight, landscape designers. In my walks I saw landscape work that I liked and tracked down the designers, worked with them to develop a plan and a budget, then revised the plan to meet our real budget, and ultimately got the help we needed. We had small walls of dry-stacked stone built, had many of the plants we crowded into tiny areas last fall moved to better locations and had a mix of berry bushes, herbs, and hardy (and climate appropriate) grasses and other flowering plants dug into the new mulch and organic fertilizer that the designers added to our yard.

The result is…fantastic. But in looking at the garden again this morning, I realized that it’ll be for a couple of years until the garden will really come in to its own—for it to be as productive and beautiful as it is in my mind right now.

And, being a bit more of a geek than a gardener, this whole process struck me as a perfect metaphor for how technology projects should also work.

I’ve seen more than my share of technology projects that never worked right or never lived up to their potential. Usually, the reasons for these less than satisfying outcomes include not doing proper planning, not funding the project appropriately, not bringing in the right help or not being able to sustain the project over time.

Planning

Without a good plan, how do you know when a technology project has achieved its desired outcomes? How do you know that you’ve selected the right tools, implemented the right systems? Without planning that takes into account the concerns of your stakeholders—your staff, board, clients, constituents, etc.—how do you know that your technology project will meet their needs? Just as with our garden plan, a plan that helped articulate our immediate and long term goals (no more mowing the lawn, plenty of edibles, pretty stuff to look at, low maintenance, etc.), a technology plan will lay out an organization’s goals and help define the steps to reach those goals.

Funding

“Budget to the plan, don’t plan to the budget” sounds great when you put it in quotes, but often isn’t realistic—I don’t know of many nonprofits with unlimited resources. However, it is better to create the best plan you can and then decide what you can afford (and what can be handled in later phases) rather than limit the planning process to a fixed budget. Budgeting to a plan also allows for more creativity in the budget (if we did this part now we could leverage those resources which would give us money over here to do this) versus planning to a budget (this machine + that software = budget and therefore the plan).

So, while I really wanted more mature plans in my garden this year, we decided on smaller (and cheaper) plants now so that in two or three years we’ll have the garden that we wanted that included the beautiful dry-stacked stone wall, rather than a garden that was smaller or didn’t have a wall or something else that would never had made it into the plan if we started from the dollar signs first. And we decided we could get the old plants out ourselves and use that money on something else and so on.

Getting the Help You Need

We could have designed and built our own garden, but it wouldn’t have turned out like this garden. Similarly, plenty of organizations can (and do) create their own websites, databases, etc. And for some groups and some projects that is absolutely fine. But for others…well, we’ve seen those websites, struggled with those databases, rebuilt those servers.

There is a reason that people specialize in a particular subject matter—we can’t all be expert brain surgeons or landscape designers or website developers. It is great to be excited about a specialty that isn’t your own or to take advantage of an outside interest or skill for the benefit of your organization, but nonprofits shouldn’t count on that. Website developers tend to build better websites than grassroots environmental activists because they are website developers and that is what they do—build websites. The landscape designers we worked with did, without question, a much better job on our garden than we ever could have. And they did a better job not just because it is what they do, but because they are also good at listening, at helping plan, at working with a budget, and at encouraging us to help—when and how it was appropriate to do so.

Sustainability

Technology systems are almost always meant to last for some meaningful period of time. The longer, usually, the better. To get the most out of a technology tool or system, and to make it last as long as possible, usually requires occasional or ongoing maintenance, training, support, upgrades, etc. Whether that means defragmenting a computer’s hard drive or adding new fields or tables to a database or training a new staff member on updating the website, all technology investments must be supported over time. Knowing this up front and attempting to budget for these ongoing investments is key to getting the most productive value from that investment. Sometimes, knowing this might mean spending more up front—on warranties or better equipment or more features. Or it might mean building in more time and resources for the system in an on-going way—training for users, planned upgrade budgets, maintenance and support contracts, etc.

Sure, for an extra $1500 we could have had the entire garden area built with a built-in watering system. Or, for about $100, we decided instead we could get some different hoses, sprinklers and timers—and to spend more of our own time maintaining and nurturing our gardens. If we knew that we couldn’t allocate our time to that maintenance, spending the extra money up front could have been a good investment. By doing the watering manually, we helped keep the project within our budget, but it will take more time to sustain that initial investment and there are now other variables that could cause the garden to eventually fail or not reach its full potential—our lack of time or plain old laziness.

In this situation, though, I believe we’ve accurately assessed our commitment to the outcomes of the project—a beautiful garden full of flowers and berries and other edible delights—and so we’ll put in the effort and our garden will, I hope, flourish. With proper planning, budget, support and commitment over time, so too can the investments our organizations make in technology.

So you think you want to add streaming video to your website. YouTube and Google Video now make streaming video a snap to share, although they can't magically turn us all into award winning videographers. If, however, you have meaningful good quality video that you want to get out to your constituents, streaming video from a service like Google Video or YouTube onto your website is a quick and easy way to go.

Since we do most of our website development in Plone, the steps for "embedding" the video in a webpage are specific to Plone websites. Google Video and YouTube, to their credit, make it simple to add streaming video to almost any website or blog.

The approach outlined in this documentation relies on a Plone Product called ATGoogleVideo. If you don't have access to this tool or simply want to "embed" links to video in your Plone pages, refer to the instructions regarding disabling Plone's safe_html transform found on the "Embedding videos in Kupu" page at Plone.org.

The first step is to upload your video to Google Video or YouTube (also owned by Google). Since the tools to stream video on a Plone site work for either service, we don't have a strong preference on which service to use. Google Video will allow for larger videos (over 100MB) and for longer videos (over ten minutes), so the size of your video file will probably guide your selection.

Both services require you to have an account in order to upload video files. Once you create an account, you'll be able to upload your video file.

For YouTube, the steps are very easy:

1. Click "Upload Videos" in the upper-right-hand corner of any YouTube page.
2. Enter as much information about your video as possible, including Title, Description, Tags, and Category. The more information you include, the easier it is for users to find your video!
3. Click the "Go upload a file" button.
4. In the next window, click the "Browse" button to browse for the video file. Select the file you want to upload.
5. Determine if you want your video set to Public or Private.
6. Click the "Upload Video" button.

 

For Google Video, the steps are similar for videos up to 100MB in length:

1. Once you are logged in, click on the "Upload your videos" link.
   
2. Click on the "Browse" link to locate your video file from your computer.
3. Enter a title and description for the video.
4. Select the genre and language for the video (if desired).
5. Select whether you would like the video to be included in Google Video's search or if it should be treated as "unlisted".
   
6. Check the box to agree to Google's "Upload Terms and Conditions" and click on the "Upload Video" button.

 

For videos larger than 100MB, Google Video offers the Desktop Uploader (versions are available for Windows, Mac and Linux).

Once you have your video uploaded to YouTube or Google Video, you'll want to "embed" it on your website--basically link to it so that it streams from within your webpage. Both Google Video and YouTube offer the code to enter into webpages or blogs, but with Plone the process is a little different. You'll still need some of the code, just a whole lot less.

First, you'll need to create a Google Video content item. To do this, click on the "Add to Folder/Add Item" drop-down menu when you are logged in to Plone (NOTE: this assumes that your account is a Manager level account and also that the ATGoogleVideo product is installed on your website--check with whoever provides technical support to you for your website).

 

 

 

Once you have clicked on "google video" from the drop-down menu, you'll be able to configure the item. You'll want to give the item a title and possibly a description (the same as you entered when you uploaded the video to YouTube or Google Video) and, most importantly, you'll want to enter the "docID" for the video itself.

The docID for the video is found either in the URL of the video or from the "embed" code that YouTube and Google Video provide.

For example, to "embed" the video Turning the Tide: Friends of the Coast Campaign, the North Carolina Coastal Federation first uploaded the video to Google Video. They then added the docID to the Google Video item on their website. The actual URL or address of the video on Google Video is:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7186620611333914604&hl=en.

The docID is inside that address, it is -7186620611333914604.

The video "A Voice for Change: The Tayna Fogle Story", a YouTube video uploaded by Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, has the URL or address of:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCl7hdAO-gw&feature=PlayList&p=
FFEC33B629CC2989&index=0

The docID is a little harder to find in this address, it is cCl7hdAO-gw.

Both Google Video and YouTube also provide an "embed" link to their videos that contain the docID as well. Use whichever approach (the "embed" link or the URL) seems easier.

Enter the title, description, docID and any other relevant information into the new Google Video content item and click the "Save" button at the bottom of the screen:

 

You can also select the Quality of the playback ("best" is recommended), whether the video should start playing automatically once loaded (instead of requiring the viewer to click on it to start it playing). You can also upload an image that will appear in a list of available videos that are linked on your website.

If the video doesn't play after you have gone through these steps, the first thing to check is the docID. Make sure that the video will play when viewed directly on Google Video or YouTube as well. If the docID is correct and the video plays on Google Video or YouTube, troubleshooting may require the assistance of whoever provides technical support for your website.

Infrastructure

These rules cover how your organization should be thinking and acting regarding the technology that keeps your office running--hardware (computers and other equipment), software (media, licenses, contracts) and services (internet, phone, etc.).

1. Build technology costs into your annual budget
2. Proactively replace equipment-- don't wait for things to break
3. Implement (and test!) backup strategy
4. Implement computer security "best practices"
5. Develop a Disaster Recovery Plan (and test it!)
6. Maintain an inventory of hardware, software, licenses, contracts, etc.
7. Just say “NO” to inferior computer donations

Information Management

1. Create and know your Privacy Policy Keep up with federal, state, foundation rules
2. Don’t let your database be a bottleneck for your organization 
3. Don't build your own database if an existing product will do
4. Consider a web-based database if your current database no longer meets your needs

Communication Management

These rules cover how your organization should be thinking and acting regarding your communication with constituents—using email, the web, etc.

1. Collect email addresses—and use them! (with permission, of course)
2. Decide why you have a website. Is it to tell a story, educate, advocate, provide services?
3. Identify your audience/s, your decision-makers and those who influence your decision-makers
4. Make sure the information is accurate, up-to-date, relevant
5. Create a website that is well organized, visually compelling and easy to keep up to date
6. Invest in a website that can help you interact with your constituents

Training and Support

 
These rules cover how your organization should be thinking and acting regarding building staff skills and knowledge and keeping your technology systems running.

Technology Planning

 
With a plan, all the preceding rules make sense, fit with your organization’s goals and objectives, and help move your work forward.

Create a technology plan, revisit your plan, update your plan, use your plan.