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News for December 2005

29 December 2005

Seven Knowledge Management Mistakes

Writing for me is a way of testing my ideas, a tool for thinking. Sometimes, that thinking is s real pleasure, which was the a case with writing our newest feature article, based on a section of my recent Logic of Learning workshop: Seven Knowledge Management Mistakes. The seven mistakes that I explore are called: 1. Let's Go Shopping! 2. Taxonomy Too! 3. Mixed Messages. 4. "Best" Practices. 5. Documental Illness. 6. Another Thing to Read. 7. The Work of Art. Posted: 12/29/05; 10:01:22 PM #

28 December 2005

Strategies for Digital Empowerment

The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency has eloquently captured their strategies for digital empowerment in a couple of well prepared documents that are available for download. Their approach emphasizes people and capacity, rather than technology, with a focus on democracy, human rights, and social development. This seems much wiser than many other approaches, which seem technocentric and focused on business. Posted: 12/28/05; 12:39:26 PM #

Opera Employee Blogging Policies
	Does your organization have a policy for employee blogging? You should. Here is one that I like, because of the ways it balances organizational interests with freedom of expression: Opera Employee Blogging Policies. Note that these are the policies of a software company, not a company of singers. Posted: 12/28/05; 12:31:28 PM #

World Dialogue on Regulation
	I'm always interested in discovering how people actually use their tools. So, it was fascinating to study the summary of findings of Telecom Use on a Shoestring: a Study of the Financially Constrained in South Asia. This was a recent study of over 3000 telecom users in India and Sri Lanka with monthly incomes of less than U$D100. Posted: 12/28/05; 12:27:31 PM #

26 December 2005

Work as a Spiritual Practice

Because the focus of my work has often been on the role of the human heart and spirit in good work, I have read most of the contemporary books that purport to be on the subject of meaning in the workplace. Many of them are just intellectually emaciated vehicles for various types of executive poetry. Those that aim at a mainstream corporate audience understandably shy away from some central questions of work and values. How do you find equanimity if, deep in your heart, you are not comfortable with the outcomes of your work? Unless you are on a path toward changing those outcomes, I don't think you will find any peace, only the illusion of peace that comes from denial. While Lewis Richmond's Work as a Spiritual Practice doesn't hit people in the face with this question of Right Action, there's no doubt in my mind that the world would be a very different place if even a small proportion of our business leaders followed some of its practices. It's my belief that the nonprofit sector is particularly suited to these ideas, especially those practical tools offered in the book for facing failure, control, stress, scarcity, and gratitude. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is facing difficult times in their work or seeking a sense of the sacred in the workplace. A little mindfulness will work wonders. Posted: 12/26/05; 4:11:27 PM #

Working Virtually: The Challenges of Virtual Teams

I have probably read twenty or thirty mediocre books on distributed work over the last ten years. It seemed for a while that everyone who had something banal to say on the subject would get published with dotcom fury and buzzword laden titles. In that context, my love affair with Idea Group Publishing (this time under their CyberTech imprint) continues with my reading of Working Virtually, by Robert Jones, Robert Oyung, and Lise Pace. This book is clearly the result of thoughtful experience. Distributed work has become a reality around the world in its post-hype period and this book documents that reality in ways that are directly applicable in practice. I found several chapters worth the effort of careful study, including How Teams Work Virtually (which addressed skills, tools, and mixed media of communication), the Virtual Team Maturity Curve, Managing a Virtual team, and Applying Tools for Maximum Impact. Posted: 12/26/05; 2:05:31 PM #

Envisioning Information

Edward Tufte's Envisioning Information is a classic in its field, as are its precursor and successor volumes. I have slowly been learning to give myself the time to work on good diagrams and illustrations for my lectures, workshops, and articles. I enjoy the work immensely and there can be tremendous payoff for my audiences if I get it right, but there isn't the numerical satisfaction of a word count at the end of the day. But I am always reassured about my investment when I return to Tufte. I find that deadly text based slides are still too common at the conferences I attend and I wish most presenters would simply do without. But if you must have slides, consider three or four well developed images rather than thirty or forty bullet points. In this book, I recommend the section on Color and Information, for those of you who are wondering if your use of color is undermining your message. Because I am often trying to explain processes and dynamic systems, I suspect I'll be spending a lot of time in the coming months studying the chapter on Narratives of Space and Time. Posted: 12/26/05; 1:51:17 PM #

23 December 2005

Recommendations and Total Cost of Ownership Analysis

It's been years since I allowed myself to get sucked into public conversations about operating systems. They were fun for a few minutes and these days my attention is all on the network. But small and medium sized organizations still need good advice about new computers. If you're a large organization, there are too many variables, but the smaller you are, the more likely it is your needs resemble those of many other small and home office (SOHO) users. Winn Schwartau is a well-known security consultant who has done his own Recommendations and Total Cost of Ownership Analysis. The report is available as a PDF with an Excel spreadsheet for supporting data. It's focused on small businesses and home users and is very application to the circumstances of most nonprofits. It includes a simple way to do your own cost analysis. It's also funny. Posted: 12/23/05; 9:19:23 PM #

llinois A-G Tells Gas Stations to Donate Money to Red Cross or Face Gas Price Gouging Charges

This isn't earth shattering news or a valuable resource, but I have to say it intrigued me. Evidently in the State of Illinois, the Attorney General has threatened gas stations with gouging charges unless they donate to the Red Cross. Must be nice. As if we needed another way in which your nonprofit and mine are not the Red Cross. Is this sort of use of the law even legal? Or maybe, given everything else going on in this country right now, all we need is fear and authority.... Posted: 12/23/05; 9:03:05 PM #

22 December 2005

Beyond Lip Service to Mission

In the first of a series of improvements coming to our programs in 2006, we have decided that some topics deserve to be treated in a single in-depth online briefing, rather than in a series format. The first of these is entitled Beyond Lip Service to Mission: The Risks, Failures, and Opportunities of Nonprofit Technology Planning. For years, many nonprofit technology planners have been leading organizations down a path of resistance to change, long sales cycles, inappropriate technology, unexpected costs, and unused tools. But the field is now mature enough for us to know better, for us to bring technology more fully into the service of the missions of our organizations. We'll be teaching these ideas in this single intensive briefing, on January 26th, 2006. Posted: 12/22/05; 8:25:17 PM #

Giving So It Matters

Bishop V. Gene Robinson gave a stunning speech entitled Giving So It Matters at October's OutGiving Conference. I will quote the most important thing he had to say: "There are two kinds of giving, but I like to think of it as downstream giving and upstream giving. It's not enough to pull the drowning victims out of the river, you need to walk back upstream and find out who's throwing them in." During our time of winter reflection here in the north, it is good to draw inspiration from these words, and then start marching ourselves and our organizations upstream, where there is justice to be done. Posted: 12/22/05; 7:58:03 PM #

New York Police Covertly Join In at Protest Rallies

I'm old enough to remember the Nixon administration and its aggressive conflation of national security and political opposition. The revelations keep piling up about domestic surveillance, with the latest being extensive video evidence of New York Police Covertly Joining In at Protest Rallies. Only one of two things could come from this: A backlash that restores civil protections, transparency, and accountability, or the sad erosion of the bonds of trust that make our civil society possible. I hope that you and your organization aren't waiting for someone else who you think may be more formally involved in "civil liberties" work to help us avoid the latter. Posted: 12/22/05; 7:52:41 PM #

U.S. Surveillance Moves Rile LGBT Groups

Hundreds of organizations have been combing through the meager records made public in the wake of of revelations about the U.S. military spying on domestic citizen groups. So we learn that a gay rights student organization at the New York University Law School was classified as "possibly violent" and that a kiss-in organized by a similar organization at the University of California at Santa Cruz was labeled as a "credible threat" of terrorism. As Dave Barry would say, I'm not making this up. Posted: 12/22/05; 12:21:29 AM #

21 December 2005

Britain Will be First Country to Monitor Every Car Journey

In 2006, Great Britain will be the first country to monitor, record, and store every car journey in the country. Thousands of existing traffic cameras will be enabled with license plate recognition software, the data will be collected in a central database and stored there for two years. Just as with the U.S. no-fly list and other databases, the information will be redistributed to various national and local authorities. The article is almost entirely boosterism, with the exception of one off-handed mention of civil liberties issues. I wonder: How this will affect the comfort that citizens have in attending meetings? What will happen when the data finds its way into political or commercial hands? Posted: 12/21/05; 11:35:53 PM #

How to be an Activist

It's been around for years, but I just came across Elizabeth May's article on How to be an Activist. It's a simple introduction to lobbying, press relations, grassroots campaign tactics, and some of the philosophical, social, and emotional basics of what it means to be an activist. I would give this to any new volunteer in an advocacy organization. The fundraising advice is weak and caters to some of the classic weaknesses of many organizations, such as an unfortunate predilection for raising money from events. But there is plenty of practical wisdom in this short piece to make up for that. Posted: 12/21/05; 11:17:29 PM #

eRider Starter Kit

In the process of researching an article for a forthcoming publication from N-TEN, I found myself lingering over Tactical Tech's free ebook called the eRider Starter Kit (92 page PDF). In essence, it's a basic guide to nonprofit technology consulting and it shows the maturity of the field and the accumulated wisdom of Theresa Crawford and her colleagues. For example, it goes further than most such guides in developing some opening inquiries that are not too technocentric. It's packed with checklists and other forms that would provide solid support for the integrity of any consultant. It's published under a Creative Commons license, for the widest possible distribution. And it's prominently labeled version 1.0, so I would encourage every user to offer their feedback for future editions. Posted: 12/21/05; 11:09:16 PM #

20 December 2005

Nonprofit Online News Journal: December 2005 Edition

The December 2005 Edition of Nonprofit Online News Journal is now available. This issue has contributions from Jonathan Peizer, Rashmi Sinha, Lester Salamon & Alan Abramson, and Chris Richards. I've written the first in a series of articles about nonprofit knowledge management, entitled The Logic of Learning. The Quicksheet for this month's issue is a Decision Tree for First Time Nonprofit Blogging. Posted: 12/20/05; 3:27:18 PM #

ACLU: FBI Spy Files
	If you want to find out if the FBI has been spying on your organization, there is no single way to do so. But you can start by looking at the files that have been made public by the ACLU. They are highly redacted, but it's a start. Posted: 12/20/05; 11:55:57 AM #

F.B.I. Watched Activist Groups, New Files Show

We have clearly returned to the days of J. Edgar Hoover. In yet another sign that the government is taking broad steps to undermine the freedoms of our civil society, we learn in the New York Times (login required) this morning that the F.B.I. Watched Activist Groups such as the pacifist Catholic Workers Movement, Greenpeace, something called the Vegan Community Project, and others. In Mexico, many people are afraid to be seen as getting involved in activism of any kind, for fear of police attention. We're heading rapidly in the same direction. The most committed will, of course, become even more so. But if this goes on, we will see everyday citizens increasingly uncomfortable with civic involvement. I have already started to hear stories of people unsubscribing from nonprofit mailing lists and alluding to the risks of even receiving email with certain content or from certain groups. Posted: 12/20/05; 11:30:22 AM #

18 December 2005

Voices in Wartime: The Anthology

Sometimes simply talking about a subject is a radical act. Such is the case with talking about experiences of war during a period of hostile political polarization. That's why Voices in Wartime: The Anthology is such an important book. Edited by Andrew Himes, who founded Project Alchemy as well, the book as a whole takes no position on any particular war other than the premise that our hearts need to be opened to the voices of those who have experienced them. Through poetry, stories, and reflection, we get to share the experiences of soldiers, war correspondents, and others. If anything is missing from this book, it's the voices of those who have no formal role in war, other than to hide or die. The book doesn't spare us their experiences; we just hear them through other voices. It's hard to pick what moved me most in this book. The poetry is well chosen and diverse. The war correspondents are profoundly insightful. Take time for reflection with this book. It's worth it. Posted: 12/18/05; 7:16:00 PM #

The Iraq War and its Consequences

In 2004, Irwin Abrams and Wang Gungwu edited The Iraq War and its Consequences and the insights are no less relevant today than they were at the time they were compiled. Nobel Peace Prize laureates, eminent scholars, and others help paint a picture of how the world order has been affected and the framework of issues that civil society will be dealing with for a generation or more. Posted: 12/18/05; 6:31:05 PM #

Radical Collaboration

James Tamm and Ronald Luyet take a proven and practical approach to successful working relationships in Radical Collaboration their 2004 book. There's nothing in here you wouldn't find in the work of Marshall Rosenberg and others, but this book puts five essential skills into a very neat and conservative package. The title of the book might lead you to think this is about organizational collaboration, but the focus is on five interpersonal skills that focus on reducing defensiveness: collaborative intent, truthfulness, self-accountability, awareness of self and others, and problem solving and negotiation. I recommend this book for any person who struggles with defensiveness in themselves or others as well as for organizations that want to reduce the element of defensiveness in their corporate culture. Posted: 12/18/05; 5:42:44 PM #

The Knowledge Sharing Approach of the United Nations Development Programme

Kim Henderson does a great job describing the knowledge sharing approach of the United Nations Development Programme (12 page PDF), with a focus on their six years of experience applying a "Communities of Practice" approach to their far flung activities. She identifies the ingredients of a healthy CoP, successful operating modalities, methods to promote participation and ways to link CoPs to policy outcomes. Posted: 12/18/05; 5:15:13 PM #

Frist AIDS Charity Paid Consultants
	Well, this is what I call corruption in a nonprofit organization. Facts remain to be uncovered, but it sure looks like a couple of AIDS charities provided money laundering services for Bill Frist's political machine. It's shameful. Posted: 12/18/05; 5:10:04 PM #

Havana's Operation Miracle Helps Eye Patients See Light

Although the emphasis in my own work has always been on civil society in general and social change in particular, I am frequently moved to tears by genuine acts of simple charity. It seems that Cuba and Venezuela have set about using simple surgeries to help many of the world's blind. I am a little late in learning about Operation Miracle, since it was launched back in July of 2005, but the project has already restored the eyesight of over 100,000 people. Flights, accommodations, and food are paid for by the Venezuelan government. Cuba is providing the doctors and five tourist hotels have been put at the service of the project. They hope to perform 500,000 more operations in 2006. Posted: 12/18/05; 5:08:24 PM #

The LifeStraw - The Invention of the Century?

Genuinely appropriate technology always gives me a particular kind of thrill and reassures me that there are technologists out there who know that an understanding of the social and economic context into which they introduce a tool is of utmost importance. Some are describing the LifeStraw as the invention of the century and they may just be right. No, it's not full of "ajaxy goodness" or being called "clean water 2.0" or any other such silly hipness, but instead is just an elegant way to give clean water to as much as half the world's population and save as many as 6000 lives a day. I'm just waiting for some rapacious multinational corporation to undermine this technology as part of their continued pursuit of water privatization. But for now, I'm just proud to see such an invention. Posted: 12/18/05; 4:53:44 PM #

My Shame as a Diplomat

An employee of a major American NGO describes the effects of the deteriorating respect of the United States by Europeans. He is based in Berlin, the German capitol, where I have family and friends. I can personally testify to his experience. He says: "Yeah, we'll continue to meet with the politicos here, but we do it all while trying to avoid talking about where our organization is from and how it derives its wealth. We do it ashamed, and they pity us." Posted: 12/18/05; 4:42:08 PM #

16 December 2005

Benchmarking Digital Inclusion

A new report entitled Benchmarking Digital Inclusion (36 page PDF) groups countries together on the basis of factors such as size, economic strength, and technology infrastructure. It argues that if the leaders in each group could help those doing less well, millions more people across the world would be online. This report is partly promotional in nature, coming from a consultancy that would help share such practices, but the numbers are solid and the recommendations sensible. Posted: 12/16/05; 11:06:29 PM #

Gulf Coast Hunger Spreads as Food Banks Struggle
	Hunger is spreading as food banks along the Gulf Coast are struggling. According to a study from America's Second Harvest, demand in the worst hit areas tripled but the food banks are struggling with destroyed facilities and other limitations to their work. Posted: 12/16/05; 11:00:22 PM #

Report of NSA Spying Prompts Call for Probe

The revelations of domestic spying just keep piling up. Now we learn that President Bush himself ordered surveillance of thousands of U.S. citizens without court orders. If you're a U.S citizen, and have made a phone call or sent email to someone outside the country in the last three years, they might be watching you. Have you expressed an opinion critical of Bush or his wars? I would be quite willing to wager that this makes the chances much higher. Republicans and Democrats alike are alarmed by this, given that the act is, by any reasonable standard, a crime. Posted: 12/16/05; 10:55:34 PM #

America's Most Popular Internet Companies are Helping China Crack Down on Free Speech

The most popular Internet companies in the United States, including Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo are helping China crack down on free speech and crippling the development of civil society there. These companies have grown fat on the freedoms of the U.S. and it's reprehensible to see them hiding behind "business is business" language when it comes to China. This is not some small cultural difference; China imprisons and shoots dissidents. Is any regime off limits, if it has enough money? Posted: 12/16/05; 10:44:47 PM #

Trust in All Institutions Declining
	An annual poll that tracks public trust in major institutions has shown a widespread downturn in the last year. Trust in NGOs is still high, but declined as well, in ten of the seventeen countries surveyed. NGOs held their own in the U.S., but did particularly poorly in India and Brazil. Posted: 12/16/05; 10:37:34 PM #

15 December 2005

International Agencies and Organisations with an ICT Focus
	I recently stumbled across this directory of International Agencies and Organisations with an ICT focus. It's woefully incomplete, but will give you a nice glimpse of the landscape. Posted: 12/15/05; 12:45:05 PM #

CivicSpace Event System Workflow Diagrams

It's great to see a nonprofit software developer using workflow diagrams to help connect their design work with the business processes of their users. For years, I have been wishing this was a widespread practice, but for now I will have to celebrate CivicSpace's use of such tools in developing the workflow for their event management systems. Take a look. I hope you will be inspired to use this technique to map out your own work, whether or not you are involved in software. Posted: 12/15/05; 11:47:02 PM #

Teaching RSS: A Discussion

I've been evangelizing about RSS (a simple content syndication format) for a while, so it's great to see people like Marshall Kirkpatrick taking the lead in developing approaches to teaching RSS. He emphasizes demonstration and he's developed pitches of varying length with which I encourage you to experiment in your own efforts to leverage this tool for sharing information. Posted: 12/15/05; 11:36:01 PM #

Online Giving White Paper

Craver, Matthews, and Smith have published a paper on the state of online giving in the U.S. (15 page PDF) as of October 2005. Their observations include: (a) In terms of the proportion of donors giving online, we are still in the early stages, but progressing rapidly, particularly in political campaign giving, disaster relief, and issue advocacy. (b) Generational differences are not as important as education when it comes to predicting online giving. (c) An organization's best donors are the ones most likely to want to give online. This last observation is consistent with my recommendation for the last ten years for organizations to build their online work around their existing donors. Posted: 12/15/05; 11:29:41 PM #

Scan of DoD Protest Database Tracker

In some cases, you might not have to just guess whether you or your organizations are being spied upon by the U.S. government. Take a look at this scan of a Department of Defense database of protests (8 page PDF) to see if you might be in there some place. We need to start publishing all of these, from every agency, so that we can see how vast the scope is, so every community and organization can see how they might be affected, and so that we can act together before this erodes the culture of civil society even further. Posted: 12/15/05; 11:09:35 PM #

Is the Pentagon Spying on Americans?

I'm beginning to wonder if there is anyone who is not spying on American activists. Now it looks like the U.S. military is spying on groups both large and small, including house meetings of Quakers! I wish I could point you to the full 400 page report referred to in the NBC coverage of the matter, but at least this is getting mainstream attention. In other countries, I have seen what even a hint of this kind of domestic spying can do to the willingness for people to get involved, not just in politics, but in anything. If you depend in any way on an environment conducive to public involvement -- whether it's through donations or volunteering -- I hope this issue is on your board's agenda. Posted: 12/15/05; 11:05:26 PM #

13 December 2005

Scott Anderson's Keynote at Syndicate

Hewlett Packard's Scott Anderson recently delivered a keynote on blogging, which is neatly summarized by Ed Batista. It seems that the company has managed to integrate its interests with the openness of blogging, through some obvious insights (people dialog with people, not corporations) and guidelines (no flacks, lawyers, or censorship, but please show good judgment). I'm thinking: If Hewlett-Packard's executives, lawyers, and communication staff can embrace blogging, why can't yours? Posted: 12/13/05; 5:30:21 PM #

A Beginner's Guide to Effective Email
	Originally written back over the course of the mid-nineties, A Beginner's Guide to Effective Email by Kate Sherwood, has aged well. Unless you are totally enamored of rich text or HTML email, even the parts on formatting are still useful. Posted: 12/13/05; 5:21:02 PM #

Everything's Broken

In Everything's Broken (ad-supported article at Salon), David Weir looks at the situation in Biloxi, Mississippi now that it's been three month's since Hurricane Katrina. It seems that the big government assistance that was promised is nowhere to be found and the big charities have largely withdrawn. In both cases it may be because public attention has waned. People fear the worst for their communities, in Biloxi, as in so many other places on the Gulf Coast and around the world. The state goes back to helping the rich and the people are left to help each other. Posted: 12/13/05; 5:09:54 PM #

11 December 2005

Calls for Probe into Attack on Free Expression at WSIS

Over 140 civil society organizations have signed a letter asking the United Nations to investigate attacks on free expression at the recent Internet Summit in Tunisia. Concerns include harassment of delegates, assaults on journalist, denial of entry to the country, blocking websites and other censorship, and the disruption of meetings of civil society organizations. Concerns about Tunisia were raised well in advance of the summit at every opportunity, including the SANGONeT 2005 conference in South Africa, where I recall the Tunisian ambassador giving one of those typical non-answers so characteristic of diplomats. The outcomes of the summit do seem somewhat tepid to me and I wouldn't be surprised if widespread suppression had something to do with it. This is sad news. Posted: 12/11/05; 11:16:57 PM #

The Rise of Professional Journalism
	In an excerpt from their new book, Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols present a brief, eye opening history of The Rise of Professional Journalism. As someone who floats at the edges of the world of journalism -- as a blogger, as a source, as an editorialist -- I'm fascinated by how the profession came to be so captured by the powerful. Posted: 12/11/05; 11:01:49 PM #

10 December 2005

Email Design Guidelines for 2006

I highly recommend Campaign Monitor's Email Design Guidelines for 2006. In brief, their six recommendations are: (1) Never use images for important content like headlines, links and any calls to action. (2) Use alt text for all images for a better experience in Gmail and always add the height and width to the image to ensure that the blank placeholder image doesn't throw your design out. (3) Add a text-based link to a web version of your design at the top of your email. (4) Ensure your most compelling content is at the top (and preferably to the left). (5) Test your design in a preview pane, full screen and with images turned on and off before you send it. (6) Ask your subscriber to add your From address to their address book at every opportunity. Posted: 12/10/05; 4:58:13 PM #

Accidental Activists

I'm always fascinated by the personal stories of people who become committed agents for social change. Some people's stories are subtle, full of gradual realizations. Some, like Craig and Cindy Corrie, have moment's of truth. In their case, it was when their daughter was killed by a Caterpiller bulldozer destroying Palestinian homes. The Corries' lives took a sudden turn to a new path, carrying on their daughter's work for reconciliation in Palestine and fighting the Caterpiller company's profiting from what they see as war crimes. Posted: 12/10/05; 4:55:52 PM #

Love Your Enemies

In Love Your Enemies (ad supported Salon article), Michelle Goldberg tells the story of Tom Fox, one of the four Christian peace activists who are facing death after their recent kidnapping in Baghdad. The deadline placed by the kidnappers has passed. Over 30,000 people have signed a petition asking for their release, explaining (as does this article) how Fox and the other members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams have worked to help the very Iraqi prisoners whose release the kidnappers are trying to force. Although I got hate mail the last time I said it, I will say it again: Tom Fox and his fellow peacemakers are the real heroes to me. Posted: 12/10/05; 4:47:25 PM #

The Submarine: Finding PR Influence Online

In The Submarine, Paul Graham describes how the Internet makes visible the heretofore submerged process of influence exerted by public relations efforts on news and commentary. Using simple searches, he tracks the proliferation of a new "trend" (men's suits supposedly making a comeback) to a public relations firm hired by Men's Warehouse. It's really nothing we didn't already know, but it seems like this would be a useful research technique in nonprofit educational and activist campaigns. Posted: 12/10/05; 4:38:45 PM #

Worker Privacy: You Have None
	Joanna Glasner gives a quick overview of the state of online worker privacy in the U.S. in Wired and the short answer is that there is none. I wonder what nonprofit policies are in this regard. Posted: 12/10/05; 4:17:58 PM #

FBI Put Peaceful Protesters in Terrorism Files

In today's news, we learn about the Chinese police massacring protesters and sealing off their village to hunt for organizers. I'm aware that, relatively speaking, we still have some precious freedoms in United States. But the growing evidence of domestic spying, criminalizing of dissent, and conflating activism with terrorism is still very disturbing. The latest news proves that the FBI does indeed put peaceful protesters in terrorism files. Posted: 12/10/05; 4:12:03 PM #

8 December 2005

The Modern Nonprofit Web Site: Strategies, Patterns, and Tools

Something has shifted in the last year or so, in regards to how nonprofits think of their websites. The second rule of the Email Manifesto -- "a website designed around an email strategy is more effective than a website designed around itself" -- is starting to make sense to more and more organizations. As a result, it has become an actual pleasure to teach web related workshops, where before it seemed that nothing could get past people's mesmerized interest in splash pages, elaborate taxonomies, and rich media. So, it's due to popular demand that the first workshop series of 2006 will be The Modern Nonprofit Web Site: Strategies, Patterns, and Tools. The centerpiece of this workshop was part of a recent all day session sponsored by the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation for local organizations and I'm excited to come back to teaching it to people online. Posted: 12/8/05; 4:38:28 PM #

6 December 2005

Inquiring Organizations: Moving from Knowledge Management to Wisdom

Idea Group Publishing continues to impress me with their thematic collections. The latest one I've read is Inquiring Organizations: Moving from Knowledge Management to Wisdom, edited by James Courtney, John Haynes, and David Paradice. The foundation of the book is the idea that it is inquiry that drives sharing and innovation. The contributors set out to explore different models of inquiry, starting with essential philosophical frameworks, moving through the use of email and information systems in pursuing lines of inquiry, and concluding with genuinely enlightening explorations of what mindfulness and wisdom mean in an organizational context. Posted: 12/6/05; 4:56:52 PM #

Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest

I have long admired Peter Block for his advice about consulting, but I first came to know his work from his book Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest. That someone like Block, who has a section in this book called "The Redistribution of Power, Purpose, and Wealth", can make a good living in corporate America, is a sign of hope. Too many business books are full of inspiration and stories, but lacking in tools for change. By contrast, this book is full of very practical ideas, such as reform of pay scales and job descriptions, that can be applied by leaders who want to foster integrity in their organizations. Posted: 12/6/05; 4:56:46 PM #

5 December 2005

Petition to Release the CPT Four in Iraq

While I generally dismiss petitions as primarily list-building tools, I have to admit there are some very prominent signatures on the petition to release the CPT Four. This petition refers to the four activists from the Christian Peacemaker Teams who were recently abducted in Iraq. However slim its chances of immediate success may be, I believe that the kindness and sincerity of this appeal reflects and reinforces the best in all of us. Posted: 12/5/05; 10:51:53 PM #

BellSouth Withdraws Donation Over Free WiFi

Just as New Orleans becomes the first major city in the U.S. to offer free wireless internet access, BellSouth withdraws a promised donation of a building. Free wireless access is a powerful tool for small nonprofits and small businesses alike, but the telcos and cable companies would rather some people do without, so that there is the necessary scarcity for them to be able charge the rest for access. They have been successfully lobbying state governments to prohibit municipal WiFi and now it seems they will use the leverage of charitable donations in the fight as well. There is a lot at stake here and I for one find myself firmly on the side of New Orleans. Posted: 12/5/05; 10:29:57 AM #

1 December 2005

Spirit Rising

In Spirit Rising, Michael Nagler describes "A Hundred Flowers in Search of a Garden". That is his metaphor for the many progressive, spiritually motivated people who lack a coherent movement within which to do meaningful work at the scale of which their numbers would suggest they are capable. But his experience with this is the same as mine: Too many people want such a thing to come together for it not to happen. Posted: 12/1/05; 8:50:16 PM #

10 Ways to Keep Online Dialogue on Topic

Alexandra Samuel compiled 10 ways to keep online dialogue on topic from a recent conference on Building Democracy Through Online Citizen Deliberation. The ten methods, which to my pleasure are not very different from what we want to do offline as well, are: (1) Keep your goal visible. (2) Keep your rules visible. (3) Use moderation effectively — and sparingly. (4) Open a parking lot. (5) Create an alternative channel for free-form input. (6) Offer outside spaces for outside discussion. (7) Try and try again. (8) Be a role model. (9) Reframe off-topic comments. (10) Redefine “on topic”. Posted: 12/1/05; 8:42:47 PM #

Microsoft gets Support for Open Source Removed from UN Document

If you have been following the amazing progress being made in the adoption of open source software by governments and NGOs around the world, it might interest you to learn that Microsoft has gotten support for open source software removed from a United Nations document called the Vienna Conclusions. They were long under development and were presented last week at the World Summit on the Information Society, a gathering intended to address the digital divide and thus a particularly appropriate place for open source software. The statement that offended Microsoft? "Increasingly, revenue is generated not by selling content and digital works, as they can be freely distributed at almost no cost, but by offering services on top of them. The success of the free software model is one example." Unbelievable. Posted: 12/1/05; 8:35:22 PM #

British Campaigner Among Four Kidnapped in Iraq
	Over the weekend, four peace activists were abducted in Iraq. In my mind, those are the real heroes of this war, not the people who hide behind high tech weaponry and certainly not the people who hide behind the lies that have been told to get us here. But our culture sure does seem to honor the person with a gun far more often than the person with a heart. Posted: 12/1/05; 8:27:06 PM #

The Practitioner's Landscape

Well-informed nonprofit communication and technology consultants are aware of the field of complexity, but there are probably only a few who are able to put that field to any use in their work. The Practitioner's Landscape (six page PDF), by Glenda Eoyang, is a nice attempt to put the field of complexity of human systems into a sensible taxonomy. Her twelve categories, which derive from a three by four matrix that's meant to help practitioners apply the right tool in the right context, are: Butterfly Effects, Coupling, Balanced Scorecard, Reflection, Attractors, Future Search, Network Analysis, Intuition, Open Space Technology, Computer Simulation Models, and Nonlinear Time Series Modeling. Posted: 12/1/05; 7:09:39 PM #

Science in the Web Age

In Science in the Web Age, Declan Butler looks at the emerging use of weblogs and wikis in scientific communities. There are new knowledge building communities of practice emerging, which continue to use older tools, such as peer reviewed journals, along side these new tools, with their rapid response, high touch communication models. If scientists, with all their competition for resources and their high stakes inquiries, can incorporate new models, there is great hope that our own communities of good work can do the same. Posted: 12/1/05; 6:44:45 PM #