Here is a first attempt at defining a set of strategic principals for technology within a non-profit organization. Several strategies are common among organizations that successfully implement technology.

Have a Technology Plan

Your organization should have a Technology Plan. This is a printed version of the ongoing conversation you should be having throughout the organization about technology. The plan should describe what is currently in place, what is disfunctional, and where new opportunities lie. You should consider a time horizon of three years. An effective plan is one of the single most important factors contributing to the success of obtaining technology grants. It is important to remember that technology is a means to an end. However, it is also important to identify new opportunities for improvement and leverage.

Document Everything

As part of the technology plan, you should have complete documentation of your existing systems. Part of this is just due diligence. The idiosyncrasies of your systems should not be held hostage by a single technical person who may keep the system in their head. The act of documenting the system is itself a learning experience.

Standardize Software and Hardware

Technology is complex. The fewer varieties of the same component that need to be maintained the better. You should have a single hardware vendor for desktop machines, a single suite of office software, a single manufacturer of printers, and so on.

You should consider having a single standard for memory and components for desktop machines. This can be updated once a year or so to include hardware improvements.

Standardize Procedures

By standardizing hardware and software, you have the basis for standardizing procedures within the office, so that you can begin to build an institutional memory. For example, if you have a documented single procedure for producing a mail-merge, then everyone can learn that procedure, and the staff can help each other out when they have problems mail-merging. You should also standardize storage folders for word-processing files, backup procedures, email standards, virus protection etc.

Practice Good Computer Hygiene

All users need to be in the habit of practicing good computer hygiene.You should establish procedures for preventing and dealing with computer viruses and email spam and provide documentation outlining policies for computer use that are consistent with your mission and expectations.

Ok…What else?

Battery University

Everything you’ve wanted to know about batteries and their recharging.  I was interested to note that a new electric lawnmower recommended not discharging the battery all the way…whereas the old lawnmower, I used to run the batteries down flat (which maybe accounts for the poor performance of the batteries…which had to tbe replaced every year.  

Anyway, had I gotten my degree from B.U. maybe I’d be using the old electric mower today! But I’m delighted with the Neuton.

From Linux Journal’s Linux in Government column, a look at creating a desktop version for normal users.  What a concept.

Part I

Part II

From the Part I introduction:
For most of its existence, people have distributed Linux as a workstation or a server rather than as a desktop. In effect, the default workstation that has evolved has existed mostly for developers. So, when you install a Linux distribution with a graphical interface, it generally looks like what a developer might want. It performs similar to many UNIX workstations, which can seem slow for many knowledge workers. In this article, we look at the Linux desktop in a slightly different light. We think of it as a computer system that maximizes its strength as a consumer product. When we optimize Linux for the consumer, it becomes a fast interface.

This made a splash on BroadBand Reports. The town of Brandon will have a crack at high-speed wireless, provided by a company I had never heard of, a reconstituted LightShip? A sold-off portion of Adelphia’s Business Services?

Keyhole makes spy satellite photos available, and distributes an elegant viewer program to allow you to “fly” around the world and zoom in to see details. The resolution varies depending on the satellite photo that was used. At its best you can clearly see cars and trucks. I played with this on a rainy Sunday afternoon, for hours. It is compelling.

Zoom in on your favorite atomic energy plant. See the twin plumes of steam from the cooling towers on the left. You can clearly see the twin reactors. There is a disused third reactor at the bottom of the picture, with its domed containment. building.

This imagery would have its uses for anyone working with or studying land-use patterns and urban sprawl to name only two ideas.

There is an active user community that creates new overlays and interprets existing data. Someone has found all the campsites along the Apalachian Trail. Someone has found all the U.S. atomic plants. Someone found a Concorde sitting on the tarmac in Toulouse. There is an overlay of air pollution hot spots, which can be shown on any portion of the world to create a gobal polution map.

The flyovers are amazing, and you can change your angle of perspective so that you aren’t directly over an area but appear to be flying to it. They acquire updated imagery on a regular basis.

After playing with this for several hours, a couple of questions and ideas come to mind.

• What are the ways that ordinary citizens can use this information to document environmental problems? For example, could it be used to docuement clear-cutting of forests, or water pollution?
• How can this application be misused? Is it helpful to terrorists?
• If what we’re seeing is this good, presumably the military/intelligence versions of these images are orders of magnitudes better. Can they tell whether my shoes are untied from 150 miles up?

While I’ve complained loudly about cheap HP ink-jet printers, and all-in-one printer/scanner/fax machines, this number seems to be working well out of the box.

This unit is an inkjet printer/scanner. List price is around US$179.00. You’ll need to add a USB cable for another $24.00 or so, and when you start to buy cartridges for it, they’ll run over $50.00 for a combination of black and a photo color cartridge.

Output is impressive, and if you have memory cards from a digital camera, you can put that in and print directly. It makes nice borderless glossy photo prints on the sample HP photo paper which comes with the unit.

With an HP print server, the unit can be placed on the network and you can scan and send the scanned files directly to up to five workstations, or print to it across the network.

The software installation takes about 30 minutes, and they devote several pages in the manual to troubleshooting problems that come up if you attach the printer via the USB cable before installing the software.

We’ll put this one in the “preliminary recommendation” category.

Tech Friday is our Friday feature that consists of miscellanous programming, database, hardware, or network management esoterica, that we’d forget if we didn’t write it down somewhere right after discovering it.

Just received notice that Symantec Anti-Virus has an update to version 10.0, and the update is downloadable.

After moving to a new parent server, I was attempting to figure out how to update the clients so that they look for the new server. Deep in the bowels of the tech support knowledgebase is a document describing how to do it. Essentially, you need to find a file grc.dat which is on the server, and copy this to the following folder on the client workstation:

[OS Drive]:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition\7.5

Note is that the 7.5 folder name is applicable even for SAV versions 8.0 and 9. Even though the document doesn’t mention it, the client Norton Anti-Virus version 7.6 (which looks identical to SAV 8.0 and 9.0) seems to update fine using the same method. Maybe we can get all the workstations back in sync by upgrading to version 10. Just not today.

A Quick Look at Macromedia Captivate

Here is a useful review with examples and ideas for Macomedia Captivate.  The one inaccuracy I found was the promise that you can have a presentation up and running in five minutes. I don’t think so.  But the software learning curve is reasonable, and the results promising. 

The review is from the American Society of Training and Development web site;  Learning Circuits.  They also have blog. From the heading:

Learning Circuits Blog is dedicated to sharing ideas and opinions about the state of learning and technology. Please use it to launch trial balloons,debate with others, and challenge assumptions. Join us in sharing pointers to new and interesting stuff. Continue the discussion of issues raised in Learning Circuits. Raise questions you’d like the Learning Circuits community to answer.  

And from the May 12th entry: “Just Showing Up”

On my long-term and short-term projects, I am around motivated and talented people.

Both have implications for formal learning. But first, let’s test the premise. Are people seeing this in their own workplace?

Internet Nonprofit Center : The Nonprofit FAQ

In their own words:

Scores of items of information and advice about nonprofits are included in this online resource. The items come from discussions on email lists, in UseNet, and other sources.

The list of articles on automation is extensive.

Nonprofit Online News: Frictionless Fundraising

A thoughtful article by Michael Gilbert of the Nonprofit Online News.  Just as relevant now, as it was when written in January 2003.