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News for June 2004

24 June 2004

How Healthy is Your Civil Society Sector?
	In How Healthy is Your Civil Society Sector?, Lester Salamon explains the new Johns Hopkins Global Civil Society Index, a set of indicators being developed to measure the capacity, sustainability, and impact of the civil society sector in various countries. Posted: 6/24/04; 11:22:55 AM #

Weaving Our Strategies Together

I met Jon Ramer recently at the Planetwork Conference. I introduced myself because I was impressed with his paper on Weaving Our Strategies Together (PDF), which develops a systems perspective on the issue of how organizations partner with each other. I have enormous concerns about the costs of collaboration and how they serve to isolate organizations from valuable connections and coordination. Ramer and his co-author Greg Steltenpohl move that conversation forward by looking at the social protocols of partnership formation. Posted: 6/24/04; 11:22:48 AM #

23 June 2004

Philanthropic Capacity Building Resource Database
	The Human Interaction Research Institute's Philanthropic Capacity Building Resource Database contains 318 descriptions of capacity building programs being carried out by various U.S. foundations. Posted: 6/23/04; 12:01:07 PM #

Civil society-driven policy websites in ten nations
	The Association for Progressive Computing has helped set up civil society-driven policy websites in ten nations. The collaborative process that led to these portals looks interesting. It will be important to see if there are ways to measure the effectiveness of the sites. Posted: 6/23/04; 12:00:52 PM #

Quality metadata makes for successful web content
	I have always argued that metadata --data about data, such as titles, summaries, categories, and keywords -- should be treated with as much respect and flexibility as we treat documents. Gerry McGovern underscores this when he points out that quality metadata makes for successful web content. Posted: 6/23/04; 12:00:36 PM #

22 June 2004

A literature review of community informatics initiatives
	If you are interested in the "digital divide" or other issues related to ICT in the context of communities, I recommend you peruse Brian Loader and Leigh Keeble's literature review of community informatics initiatives. The full report is available as a PDF. Posted: 6/22/04; 11:47:07 AM #

NABUUR
	It's amazing how often the simple solutions are the best ones. NABUUR is an elegant project which matches up online volunteers with particular villages in developing countries that might need the volunteer's expertise. Posted: 6/22/04; 11:46:49 AM #

The Corporation

I highly recommend the new documentary entitled The Corporation. Without resorting to packaged ideologies, it provides a unifying framework for understanding many of the disparate issues with which our sector struggles -- economic issues, environmental issues, social justice issues. It's more than a little discouraging in places, but the clarity of the critique offers some hope. Posted: 6/22/04; 11:46:19 AM #

Who Knows?
	In Who Knows?, Jay Cross gives us a snapshot of the emerging challenges of "knowledge management". I like the emphasis on finding people who know, rather than distilled knowledge itself and I particularly like looking at mentorship as a form of knowledge management. Posted: 6/22/04; 11:45:43 AM #

Considering the Alternative
	In Considering the Alternative, Matt Jadud has summarized his findings about proprietary systems for online learning and concludes that open source systems have much to recommend them. Posted: 6/22/04; 11:45:27 AM #

France Challenges Microsoft in Software Re-Fit
	The government of France is considering weening itself from expensive dependence on proprietary software for one million state owned computers. Posted: 6/22/04; 11:45:04 AM #

14 June 2004

How Org Charts Lie
	In How Org Charts Lie, Rob Cross and Andrew Parker look at something I have been working on for years: How it's important to map out the actual flow of knowledge within an organization because rarely does that match the formal management structure. Posted: 6/14/04; 12:13:05 PM #

How to use weblogs to create engaging learning experiences
	In How to Use Weblogs to Create Engaging Learning Experiences, Maish Nichani outlines some ways to take advantage of the strengths of weblogs -- personal voice, chronological orientation, small chunks of text -- in a learning context. Posted: 6/14/04; 12:12:55 PM #

"Collaborative Management" and the Public Sector
	Jim Cashel has written a piece on Collaborative Management and the Public Sector. It's a decent little overview of some of the issues and major players, with a slant toward open source software. Posted: 6/14/04; 12:12:43 PM #

Link TV
	At the PlanetWork conference, I was reminded of the existence of Link TV, an online service that aggregates worldwide news from the Middle East. I absorb things more quickly through text, but if you're interested in video that you probably don't see every day, I recommend that you check it out. Posted: 6/14/04; 12:12:24 PM #

11 June 2004

An open-source shot in the arm?
	In An Open-Source Shot in the Arm, The Economist explores the value of the open source model for medical research. Nonprofits and funders who focus on health care should be paying close attention to this. Posted: 6/11/04; 1:41:55 PM #

10 June 2004

Building Distributed Communities of Practice
	Stephen Downes has published an excellent set of notes from a recent conference on Building Distributed Communities of Practice. There are lots of wonderful international examples and some good thinking, ranging from the minutely technical to the abstract. Posted: 6/10/04; 11:18:47 AM #

In the Business of Health and Charity
	In The Business of Health and Charity, Richard Muhammad looks at the pressures and paradoxes faced by nonprofit health care providers in the United States. Posted: 6/10/04; 11:18:36 AM #

3 June 2004

What Kinds of Writing Have a Future?
	In 2001, Robert Horn won the Diana Lifetime Achievement Award for Information Mapping by the Association of Computing Machinery. He delivered an insightful and inspiring speech entitled What Kinds of Writing Have a Future? (PDF) upon receiving the award. I recommend it to anyone who is thinking about effective communication. Posted: 6/3/04; 12:02:30 PM #

Wiki Life Cycle

Too many nonprofit projects are conceived of as permanent and monolithic, if they are seen as having a future beyond the next funding cycle, that is. But projects have a life cycle and a healthy planning process accounts for that. That's why I enjoyed the Wiki Life Cycle document, which nicely walks us through the stages of online community as exhibited in the collaborative environment of wikis. Posted: 6/3/04; 12:02:20 PM #

Social Roles in Electronic Communities
	Scott Golder has developed a taxomony of Social Roles in Electronic Communities. To me, the roles he identifies are both familiar and useful: Newbies, Celebrities, Elders, Trolls and Ranters. Posted: 6/3/04; 12:02:08 PM #

Worksheet on Meeting Face to Face or Virtually
	Nancy Settle-Murphy of Crysalis International has published a worksheet to help in assessing whether to meet face to face or online (PDF). It's a thoughtful tool for resolving the costs and conflicts of the new options for collaborative work. Posted: 6/3/04; 12:01:55 PM #

1 June 2004

Developing Hierarchical Metadata and Taxonomy

I have often been quite skeptical of knowledge management strategies that focus on creating elaborate taxonomies, but at the same time, I am fascinated by their value. Categorzation adds explicit knowledge by showing the relationships between ideas. In Developing and Creatively Leveraging Hierarchical Metadata and Taxonomy, Christian Ricci takes a suitably skeptical approach to the subject. Posted: 6/1/04; 6:29:37 PM #

Consulting with Nonprofits: A Practitioners Guide

I have been consulting with nonprofits for twenty years. So it was with pleasure that I found I had things to learn from the basic manual, Consulting with Nonprofits: A Practitioners Guide, by Carol A. Lukas, published by the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation. It's a mindful and practical guide and could serve as a kind of steadying hand to any consultant in the field. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on Artistry which focuses on roles, relationships, and ethics. Posted: 6/1/04; 6:29:26 PM #

Educational Wikis: features and selection criteria
	I have been mentioning wikis a lot recently. Educational Wikis: features and selection criteria is a solid introduction to the options available to educators and others. Posted: 6/1/04; 6:29:16 PM #

Community Tied To One Technology
	Anyone who has been involved in online community can identify with the issues raised by Community Tied To One Technology, a wiki article that makes a case for a more emergent, web like architecture for online community building. Posted: 6/1/04; 6:29:04 PM #

Internet Access Is Pipe Dream for Africans
	When you look at the numbers showing Internet access in Africa, you'll see how far we have to go to cross the digital divide. It's a stark and sobering picture. Somalia, for example, has 200 Internet users in a population of 11 million. Posted: 6/1/04; 6:28:45 PM #