Project management consulting and training for social change organisations.
Over 110 people showed up for Web 2.0 for Good in the vaults of the RSA this afternoon to have 24 conversations (give or take) about Web 2.0 and social change. I'm really happy with how the event went and want to thank the sponsors, the RSA and askCHARITY; our host, Policy Unplugged; our facilitator, Johnnie Moore; my co-coordinator, Juhi Shareef; and all of the participants for making it all happen. It was great to meet you all and to eavesdrop on the really meaningful conversations you were having as I walked around taking pictures :)
nptech, importantprojects, web2.0, web2.0forgood, W24G, conference, open space, ecampaigning, webofchange
A few months ago my friend Matt Cowan introduced me to Richard Gizbert, a fellow Canadian-in-London and former ABC war correspondent who was sacked by ABC in 2004 after 11 years of life-risking service for refusing to go into any more war zones (specifically Iraq). Since then, Richard has taken ABC to court for wrongful dismissal and won (w00t!), although the process has basically bankrupted him and his compensation has yet to be decided — I believe the next appeals hearing is in July.
In parallel with all of this, Richard has joined Moonbeam Films to develop "The Listening Post," a weekly television program examining global media bias for the soon-to-be-launched Al Jazeera International.
Matt put me in touch with Richard because he thought I could help the Listening Post producers explore ways to incorporate video bloggers into the show; essentially they're hoping that Listening Post viewers will provide feedback on and/or input into the program in the form of audio or video "letters to the editor" they can broadcast as part of a weekly segment of the show called "Global Village Voices."
Global Village Voice submissions will be made and managed through The Listening Post website; I've been retained to help refine their requirements and find a suitable vendor.
More later as things progress :)
projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, nptech, importantprojects, thelisteningpost, open source, cms, communitybuilding, aljazeerainternational, AJI, iraq
Today we performed the last two of the three open source product/feature evaluations we're conducting as part the Greenpeace UK CMS project — Jean-Paul Ladage of Zest Software in the Netherlands took us through a presentation and demonstration of Plone this morning, and Dan Robinson of CivicActions in California did likewise with Drupal this afternoon. Thank you, Jean-Paul and Dan, for the time and effort you both put into your presentations — they were fantastic :)
Our next steps now are to review and interpret the results of all three evaluations, consider the "non-functional" requirements we've identified that will also impact our final decision (e.g. cost, time, strength of community, our product roadmap, etc.), and to plan the next phases of the project given all of the above. To do so, we need to work with a number of people from within Greenpeace and beyond...more later as things progress :)
projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, nptech, importantprojects, greenpeace, productevaluation, plone, drupal, open source, cms
Back in August of 2004, I met and became friends with Phillip Smith, founder of Community Bandwidth, organizer of Social Tech Brewing and co-convenor of Web of Change. Since then, we've had quite a few great, really enjoyable conversations over pints about project management and the not-for-profit sector — about whether or not project management processes are "lightweight" enough to work with social movement projects, whether or not "traditional" project management makes sense on community/volunteer-based and/or open source projects, and so on.
Now Phillip has posted a piece on project management vs. time management, arguing that for not-for-profits, training in the latter is more important than the former because few not-for-profits are in a position to put "traditional, top-down project management processes into practice." Ahem.
While I don't disagree with Phillip on the value and importance of personal time management training in the not-for-profit sector (very different from project time management training and a topic for another post), I'd like to address the whole "traditional- project-management-is-heavy-weight-and-top-down" thing briefly.
When Phillip says "traditional project management," I think what he really means is "bad project management." Not-for-profits do not have the time or money to apply project management processes inappropriately (and nor do/should other types of organizations). But "traditional" project management does not suggest that they do so — according to the PMBOK, "project management is the [appropriate] application of knowledge, skills, tools & techniques to project activities to meet project requirements." If the project management processes being used on your project are too heavy-weight or inappropriately top-down, they are not being applied correctly. And that's bad project management, traditional or otherwise.
projectmanagement, timemanagement, softwaredevelopment, nptech, importantprojects, community bandwidth, phillipsmith, socialtechbrewing, webofchange
Today the Greenpeace UK web team performed the first of three open source CMS product evaluations we'll be conducting over the next couple of weeks — Greenpeace International took us through a 2 hour presentation/demonstration of Planet 2, the OpenACS-based CMS used by over 20 Greenpeace National Regional Offices. Thank you, Martin and Tom, for putting together your presentation and addressing all of our questions :)
In terms of the process we're following at this point, our top 35 requirements have been dropped into our feature evaluation spreadsheet (see Figure 1, below), where team members will assign numeric scores for each requirement during product presentations/demonstrations. As with our requirements scores, our feature scores will be averaged when they're all in, which will then be translated into an overall letter grade (e.g. B-, C+, A) for each product.
Figure 1 — scoring products by requirement.
Our Drupal/CivicSpace and Plone evaluations are still to come — stay tuned for more!
projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, nptech, importantprojects, greenpeace, productevaluation, planet2, openacs, open source, cms, open source
