This post is based on my notes during a short presentation by the Ushahidi folks. It was one of the projects that caught my attention--it seems to me to have far reaching implications not only in regions that are experiencing unrest, but in any situation where crowdsourcing might have value.

On May 27 and 28th, the third NetSquared will take place in San Jose California. The idea behind NetSquared is to explore the use of the Web and emerging technologies to foster social change.

Our mission is to spur responsible adoption of social web tools by social benefit organizations. There's a whole new generation of online tools available – tools that make it easier than ever before to collaborate, share information and mobilize support. These tools include blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, podcasting, and more. Some people describe them as "Web 2.0"; we call them the social web, because their power comes from the relationships they enable.

I have been asked to present on Drupal as it relates to social change and the non-profit community. My background is heavily rooted in the non-profit world, having worked for various arts based non-profit companies. I also studied arts, technology, theatre, and non-profit management at Virginia Tech. My presentation will occur on the 27th between 4:45 and 5:45 pm.

In both the nonprofit and opensource world, there is the notion of a "commons" in which each community benefits. The idea of nonprofit or not-for-profit as a name confuses people. Indeed, a nonproft can and should make a profit. At very least it should cover its yearly costs.

I have a long standing relationship with Techsoup.org. First as a consumer of the software deals that they offer to nonprofits through Compumentor. I help moderate one of the Techsoup forums on emerging technologies. The forums have become a vibrant community with many members who freely share knowledge with others in the nonprofit community.

In June, blogs were added to the mix. The Techsoup crew have been adding compelling content consistently since the blogs were launched offering up tidbits that are cross referenced in the forums allowing for community participation.

Drupalcon 2007 is complete.  I have some thoughts and reactions.

First off, thanks to the organizers of this conference.  This was the first time I have attended a Drupalcon--I was introduced to Drupal in August of 2006 and only recently began working for pingVision heavily in Drupal--and I thought that it was pretty well organized for the first one to break 200, 300, 400 attendees.

My thoughts come from a Management/PM mind set--not from a Development or Theme mind set.  I think this is appropriate as Drupal is "growing up" and becoming more of a norm in the business world.  It seems that at every turn, more mid-sized organizations are opting for a Drupal solution.

I've researched different project management systems over the last 8 years or so.

I've played with Microsoft Project quite a bit and have found it to quite useful in very linear projects but the tool can be quite complicated and sometimes managing the tool takes longer than managing the project.

The emergence of Web 2.0 applications and social networking was bound to spawn new tools.

Back in my WESTAF days, I used BaseCamp when working with Work Industries on search engine optimization. Really BaseCamp is a fancy to do list with some other features. One thing that I think is pretty slick about BaseCamp is the ability to integrate into BlinkSale, the invoicing system I use for my personal consulting. BaseCamp is good for small projects but doesn't really suit larger projects.

In a meeting at work today, there was a discussion about the use of Drupal in enterprise environments. This was triggered by Josh Koenig's posting on the subject yesterday. It is worth the read. It also got me thinking.

It seems that there is little or no awareness of Drupal in the mind set of Fortune 500 companies. I am guessing that when leadership in these companies wants a Web site overhaul, they have a sense of what they want it to do and pass it off to consultants to figure it out.

First, most companies are dominated by Microsoft in every aspect of daily efforts ranging from Exchange servers, to SQL databases, to the Office suite. As such, most bricks and mortar consultancies come from the Microsoft world. There are very few bricks and mortar Drupal houses.

Just a few weeks ago there was a Microsoft "Partners" meeting in Denver. The downtown literally doubled for a few days. So, the natural consultants to go to are well versed in Microsoft.

Second, most companies in the Fortune 500 group are very conservative. They have needed to be to maintain the status of being Fortune 500. Drupal is a disruptive technology--not something that established companies tend to embrace.

How does one do business with companies in this tier if one is an opensource community? I don't really know the answer to that question. However, strangely enough, I believe some of the lessons are being taught, learned, and experienced by the arts and cultural nonprofit sectors. I recently ran a four hour Web 2.0 seminar for the Association of American Cultures and worked with 40 or so people from the arts and cultural nonprofit sectors. Web 2.0 is a philosophy they MUST figure it out as participation in the traditional arts has been dropping like a stone. What is my mantra to these groups?

MEET THEM WHERE THEY GATHER

If you want to build audience go to the blogs they frequent and post, go to the forums they enjoy and participate, enter SecondLife and interact, and find them on Facebook. In short, listen to what they are interested in and let them know you care. They will meet you half way.

The lesson needs to be interpreted a bit differently for big business. One of the challenges for the Drupal community is representing the needs of big companies in terms they will understand. For example, if I were to say to somebody not in the know,

"Well you can manage to separate your groups and make them private by using og. Then if you want to track what changes that they make to their accounts you can approach accounts as nodes and use diff." and so forth.

Watch the face glaze over. og? nodes? diff? I would have glazed over a year ago.

We need to speak to the prospective company in terms they understand. We need to demonstrate that we will meet them where they gather (so to speak) in understanding needs and providing solutions for those needs in ways they get. In short, sometimes, we need to focus on the vision of the site and not on the tool.

In many ways the arts and cultural sectors and the Drupal community are alike. Both are very geeky in their own way and both are trying to find ways to reach out to those outside their normal domain.

Powered by Qumana

Eric Faden created a FABULOUS tutorial on copyright law using tiny short clips of Disney cartoons. He has kindly released this work under a Creative Commons license.

I was asked by a colleague if I would write a "How To" on Qumana.  I've been using Qumana now for several months to post to three different blogs--dogstar.org, imagespace.blogspot.com, and secondlife.techsoup.org.

What is Qumana?

1. Qumana is a free blog posting package that allows you to craft offline and post once you have completed editing your narrative.
2. Qumana is a tagging tool that allows you to easily control what tags are used.
3. Qumana allows you to insert ads if you want.

The software includes a very simple text editing menu bar that allows you to colour text, use bold, italics, underline, and crossout.  You can justify to the left, center, right or full block.  You can use bullets or numbered lists.  You can quote and indent.  It makes embedding pictures simple, will link for you and has spell check.

Tagging on blogs can have multiple benefits.  The first is, if your blog is searchable, the tags prove to be a way for readers to find like content.  For example, on this blog (built on Drupal), if you click on a single tag it will return all results that match that tag.

Try clicking on "npsl" and see the result.  In Drupal, a function called Taxonomy makes this magic happen.  We could, in fact add navigation to the site that would match a given tag essentially creating navigation to content that will for ever expand.