Web of Change: Not your average technology conference

Last Updated on Wednesday, 30 August 2006 02:58 Written by Steve Wednesday, 30 August 2006 02:57

Oh man I can’t tell you how excited I am about the upcoming Web of Change conference. It’s a really great annual gathering that exists at the nexus of the two fields I am most passionate about: technology and social change.

It takes place at the amazing Hollyhock Leadership Institute, north of Vancouver, Canada.

This year the agenda has been specifically honed to bring kick ass organizers to the table. Adrienne Maree Brown from Ruckus Society will be there as will be ibrahim abdul-matin from the Movement Strategy Center. See all the confirmed attendees!

I’m participating in a session about software integration and another about using process mapping to increase effectiveness. Kyle Tanner from Central Washington Industrial Areas Foundation will be there with me to talk about our project mapping their organizing work to Salesforce.com. It should be a lot of fun!

If this sounds like your cup of tea, email to request a spot. I’d love to see you there!

Integration by the Users

Last Updated on Friday, 25 August 2006 09:08 Written by Steve Friday, 25 August 2006 09:08

Dan over at Jitterbit has a nice post that I found myself saying “Amen” to with each sentence.

SOA’s [service oriented architecture's] been coming on for quite a few years now, but the early promise hasn’t panned out as much as some people have hoped…My question is why has it been so difficult to connect the dots (so to speak) between all of these applications? SOA was supposed to combine the promise of best of breed within an open framework.

That sure is the promise of software as a service (AKA SaaS). Pick software the is really good at a single area, or core competency. Then integrate all those components together for a complete package that supports the way you do business. That’s what I see as the future of software. I think it’s coming sooner than later. Dan makes a great point about why it hasn’t been sooner:

What we’ve underestimated, I think, is the ability and the willingness for SaaS applications to integrate with each other. We want to have our cake (complete suite) and eat it too (best of breed). Of course, there hasn’t been much incentive for SaaS application companies to make the connections to other apps. They’ve got products to improve and customers to satisfy. Integrating with peripheral competitors falls pretty far down on the to-do list.

We’ve seen the same thing. We use Salesforce.com and we use Democracy in Action. We’d love to see them integrated. Salesforce.com has zero incentive to build an integration, and it turns out Democracy in Action doesn’t have much incentive either. They don’t have many clients who use Salesforce.com, and they have plenty on their plates with their current customers and platform.

That’s why we’re starting to see the connections being made by the end-user, at the organizational or departmental level. The end users are the only ones truly motivated to integrate apps because they have the most to gain…Today, it’s starting to feel like the last of the puzzle pieces are falling into place.

I can start building these integrations as I need them. I built a simple one between Salesforce.com and dotproject. When Democracy in Action’s API becomes a bit more documented and stable I could integrate it with Salesforce.com as well. I wouldn’t need the developer time of either company, just access to their APIs and some decent coding ability.

In the nonprofit sector, people like me are the “users” Dan is talking about. We can build these integrations as we need them. Sometimes they’re ugly, sometimes their elegant. Either way they help us get our work done by connecting software systems together.

Dan says “it’s starting to feel like the last of the puzzle pieces are falling into place,” and I have to agree with him.

Now with half again more capacity!

Last Updated on Thursday, 24 August 2006 07:09 Written by Steve Thursday, 24 August 2006 07:09

I’m happy to announce that the second employee in our database program is starting today! Michael Paulsmeyer will be working part-time with me to serve environmental nonprofits with CRM implementations using Salesforce.com. Welcome Michael!

Michael is starting in the Executive Masters program in Information Systems at the University of Washington. It’s a great program run by Mike Crandall who has a long and storied history in the nonprofit technology world. Mike referred Michael over to me and it looks like a really good fit. (The pic is from the last day of his recent cross-country bike ride to Seattle.)

I talked earlier about my desire to expand our capacity in the program and I got lots of good feedback from you all. Thanks again! Michael has a long background in technology consulting. What was the most interesting to me was his work at Tangoe where he helped telecommunications clients model their provisioning processes in Tangoe’s software. Have I mentioned that process mapping is an important part of my job?

I’m really excited to have Michael on board, and even more excited to think how he’ll be cranking out great work in no time flat. I’ll keep this blog posted on how we’re working together, dividing up projects, and any new ideas we come up with.