Project management consulting and training for social change organisations.
At DrupalCon DC in March I got to meet Kent Bye of Lullabot face-to-face for the first time, which was great (great to meet all the Lullabots I hadn't met in person before, actually, and to catch up with the rest of them).
Kent interviewed me for the Drupal Voices podcast — I got to talk about the Drupal projects I've worked on in the past, about Drupal for NGOs and about Scrum.
I think I'd had a bit too much coffee that morning but Kent did a good job of editing out the bits I was especially worried about — take a listen!
agile, drupal, drupalforngos, importantprojects, lullabot, nptech, projectmanagement, scrum, softwaredevelopment
Thanks for coming out to Drupal for NGOs at Development House last night! Those were some great presentations (from Anna Feldman of GreenNet, David Gildeh on the work he did for Ashoka and Thomas Muirhead of Macmillan Cancer Support)!
And speaking of presentations, I'm thinking maybe next month we shouldn't have any presentations — instead, I'm thinking we should run a couple of workshops, or run an open space meeting around how we can really start to benefit from being part of this community we've built over the last few months. Let me think about it some more. Watch for details here and/or on the Drupal UK site!
Happy Halloween!
developmenthouse, drupal, drupalforngos, greennet, importantprojects, opensource, nptech, softwaredevelopment
Just a quick post to thank everyone for coming out to Drupal for NGOs on Monday — great to see/meet you! You are one motley crew (see above).
Thanks as well to our presenters, Oliver McColl of GCAP and Francesco Moretto, and to the very nice people at Comic Relief UK for hosting us! Thank you all :)
Preparations for our October meeting are now underway — watch for details here and/or on the Drupal UK site!
comicrelief, drupal, drupalforngos, importantprojects, opensource, nptech, softwaredevelopment
Alright! The next meeting of Drupal for NGOs will be held at the Comic Relief UK offices near Vauxhall 34 days from today!
Presentations for September are TBD (and please contact me if you'd like to present) — watch the event page or the Eventbrite registration page for more details as things come together :)
If you can't make the meeting but want to join us at the pub afterwards, we'll be at the Morpeth Arms (and thank you, Dan Duke of Comic Relief, for the recommendation).
UPDATE: Oliver MacColl of GCAP will present! Still looking for one more presenter. Francesco Moretto will travel from Milan to present on using CiviCRM with Drupal! 18 11 4 tickets remain The event is now sold out!
comicrelief, drupal, drupalforngos, importantprojects, opensource, nptech, softwaredevelopment
Alright! The next meeting of Drupal for NGOs will be held at the Greenpeace UK offices in Islington 19 days from today!
Check out the Drupal for NGOs group Robert Castelo set up for us on the Drupal UK site, create an account if you haven't already and comment on the event page so we know how many people to expect (last month we had more than 50 and it was awesome).
Presentations for this month are TBD — watch the event page for more details as things come together :)
UPDATE: Owen Pringle of Amnesty International and Ben Steele, Ben Alexander and Martin Gill of Comic Relief will present!
drupal, drupalforngos, greenpeaceuk, importantprojects, opensource, nptech, softwaredevelopment
Next month I'm heading home to Toronto to participate in Social Tech Training, a three-day, hands-on, Web 2.0-oriented learning intensive for people working in the social change sector, presented by members of the Web of Change community in partnership with MaRS.
A whole bunch of people I really admire and respect are going to be there, I get to present on what I'm really, really into at the moment and I expect to meet dozens of people doing amazing and interesting work — it should be awesome :)
Hope to see you there!
importantprojects, MaRS, nptech, socialtechtraining, STT, toronto, webofchange
Photo by itzpapalotl, January 2008
I want to quickly plug the second installment of Managing Nonprofit Technology Projects, the Aspiration/Idealware-organised event I attended in New York a couple of months ago (and thoroughly enjoyed). Having just been at 08NTC in New Orleans, and with a trip to Toronto coming up in June, I'm not going to be able to make it there myself, but do strongly recommend it to any of you not-for-profit technology project managers out there who can :-)
All the details are available on the Aspiration site, but here's a snippet:
Interactive sessions and demos will allow a diverse group of participants to compare processes, tools, successes, and lessons learned. We will discuss areas such as team collaboration, project planning, software selection, migration, and project rollout, and map out the software tools — from project management packages to collaborative communication to issue tracking and more — that support successful technology projects.
aspiration, aspirationtech, conference, idealware, importantprojects, MNTP, nptech, projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment
Next week I'm heading to New Orleans! I've been invited to present at NTC 2008 so I'm making the long haul and staying for just under a week. I've invited Jenn Sramek of CivicActions to co-present with me — we're going to talk about how we worked together on amnesty.org last year. Here's a description of our session, Project Management for Techies: Delivering on Time and Budget — hope to see you there!
To deliver nonprofit technology projects in a fixed amount of time and for a fixed amount of money, project scope – the work to be performed by the project team – cannot also be fixed; the product of projects with fixed timelines and budgets must be determined up-front or over the course of the project, given project constraints.
In this session, we’ll take a look at two fundamentally different approaches to managing this challenge – the waterfall method (sometimes referred to as "traditional" software development) and Scrum (an "Agile" method), and talk about the implications of each on project management in a nonprofit context.
08NTC, civicactions, conference, importantprojects, jennsramek, nptech, NTEN, projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, training
Today I'm heading to New York City to attend Managing Nonprofit Technology Projects, a sold-out, first-of-its-kind, two-day not-for-profit technology project management conference hosted by Aspiration and Idealware. Needless to say I am psyched — I've wanted to participate in a conference like this one for a very long time :)
I get to facilitate three sessions while I'm there as well — one called PM Principles: Values-Based Project Management (where I'll pick up where I left off at Web of Change last fall), another called The Art and Science of Defining Scope (run don't walk) and another called Agile Project Management (where I'll be keen to share some of the things I learned last year managing Project IMPACT for Amnesty using Scrum).
I'm also very excited to meet Laura S. Quinn (who I've spoken to over Skype but never met in person) and Gunner (who I've heard is the single best facilitator in nptech). Thoughts and photos when I return :)
aspiration, aspirationtech, conference, idealware, importantprojects, MNTP, nptech, projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment
Photo by gokubi, September 2006
Tomorrow I'm heading to Vancouver for the 7th annual Web of Change conference. I've been twice before — once in 2004 and then again in 2005. Totally excited to go back :)
This year I'll be leading a session called Values-based Project Management where I'm hoping participants will be as keen as I am to:
I'm also hoping to have some time in the day-and-a-bit leading up to the conference to post an update on Project IMPACT! Things are going well there but I've been too heads down to write about it. More on that ASAP :)
importantprojects, nptech, projectmanagement, values, webofchange, webofchange2007, woc2007
Next week I get to present at SANGONeT's third annual "ICTs for Civil Society" conference in Johannesburg, South Africa!
I was scheduled to be in Johannesburg to deliver my Project Management for NGOs training for the African members of the APC later the same week, Matthew de Gale of SANGONeT was looking for someone to present on how NGOs can benefit from using RSS, someone from the APC mentioned me and I'm in! And my good friend Katrin Verclas of NTEN will be there as well! Magic. I'll be sure to report back with my photos and learnings :)
africa, apc, ICTs, importantprojects, johannesburg, nptech, rss, sangonet, southafrica, training
Just this past Sunday, the Web Activist Collective and GreenNet put on Reclaim the Web at the Development House in London — a free Web 2.0 conference (and vegan potluck) designed specifically for NGO volunteers (i.e. those working for social change but who haven't necessarily received training in the use of social software/Web 2.0 tools).
Just like Take Back the Web last October, the day combined practical workshops for online activism with open space discussions around emerging technologies and social change, and just like last October, a group of really amazing people showed up (like the inimitable Mamading, pictured above) — the best thing about organising these events for me by far is the people I get to work with and meet, so thank you WAC, thank you Anna and GreenNet, and thank you everyone who came out on a beautiful Sunday to spend the day (mostly) indoors to take part :)
activism, conference, grassroots, importantprojects, NGO, nptech, reclaimtheweb, training, web2.0
There's an interesting event happening on May 9 in London called Participation 2007: Who's Leading Who? It will explore the state of ecampaigning and feature a few of the people at the forefront of this important and rapidly emerging area (i.e. people from Avaaz, Oxfam, Greenpeace, BBC World Service Trust, and FairSay).
You can learn more and register here!
ecampaigning, ECF, fairsay, importantprojects, participation
My (new) friends at NMK have just asked me to sit on a panel with Steven Buckley of PressureWorks and Tim Malbon of Interesource (the people who built DoggySnaps) for Beers & Innovation 9: Goodness 2.0 — Tuesday, April 10 at the CC Club (see the upcoming.org event listing here for details). If you're in the neighbourhood, drop by and say hello! It starts at 6:00pm :)
From the NMK website:
beers&innovation, ecampaigning, importantprojects, nmk, nptech, socialchange, tools&techniques, web2.0
Thanks to everyone who came out for Take Back the Web yesterday at the Friends' Meeting House in Brighton! I hope you got as much out of the day as I did :)
A big thanks as well to veteran blogger Dave Walsh for his workshop on blogging (and for describing what it was like to blog on his most recent expedition aboard the Greenpeace Esperanza), to conference co-organiser Chris Anderson for his workshops on wikis and podcasting, to Francis Irving for presenting on the many powerful tools that mySociety has developed and made available for others to use through open APIs, the participants of my workshop on RSS for putting up with the references to grease, vaseline and all things lubricatory, and to EVERYONE for contributing to the amazing vegan feast we enjoyed — sharing (and mashing up) the dishes we all brought really added something to the event, don't you think?
I hope that people will continue to add their notes to and benefit from the conference wiki, and it'd be great if people could share their photos by adding them to the Take Back the Web Flickr group! I see Jeremy Keith has uploaded and tagged a few photos "takebacktheweb" — if other people have more, please add them to the pool!
And finally, thank you, Chris, Helen, Sara and Tim for being so easy and fun to work with this on this event. Let's do it again some time :)
activism, blogging, brighton, conference, grassroots, importantprojects, NGO, nptech, podcasting, RSS, takebacktheweb, tbtw, training, vegan, web2.0, wikis
Just back from DrupalCon in Brussels. Great time, really good to meet a bunch of Drupal folks I'd only exchanged email or Skyped with before, and very exciting to hear about the plans for version 5.0. Highlights of the conference for me were Steven Wittens's presentation on jQuery, meeting Alex, Eric and Ian of Development Seed and oh — Tracy Frauzel and I got to give an impromptu presentation on the requirements prioritisation process we followed on the Greenpeace UK CMS project which I never get tired of talking about (and which I think people were into as well). Let's keep in touch, people!
brussels, bryght, cms, conference, developmentseed, drupal, drupalconbrussels2006, NGO, nptech, open source
Back in May at Web 2.0 for Good I met Chris Anderson of Animal Aid and Tim Street of Campaign Against Arms Trade, two great guys who enjoyed the conference but were hoping for something slightly different (*cough* more activists, less suits). We kept in touch, joined forces with Helen Close of War on Want, and are now announcing Take Back The Web, an open space (+ practical workshops) Web 2.0 conference for grassroots activists — Saturday, October 28, at the Friends Meeting House in Brighton.
I'm quite excited about the day — the event is free, I've heard the venue is amazing, and lunch is a vegan potluck! (I'm thinking maybe I'll bring my vegan gado-gado but I haven't decided for sure.) The conference wiki is here (and still coming together), the upcoming.org listing is here and registration is limited to 40 people so act now!
activism, brighton, conference, grassroots, importantprojects, NGO, nptech, takebacktheweb, tbtw, training, vegan, web2.0
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
Logo compliments of Crush Design — thanks, Natalie :)
nptech, importantprojects, web2.0, web2.0forgood, W24G, ecampaigning, webofchange
A few weeks ago I attended a planning session for Web 2.0 for Good, a one day open space conference to be held on May 22, 2006 at the RSA here in London. Here's a draft description:
I'm extremely excited about this event for two reasons: first, it picks up exactly where our discussions at the eCampaigning Forum left off back in January, and second, because my colleague Juhi Shareef and I have been retained by Policy Unplugged to co-ordinate and manage the event.
I'll post more as things come together — now to reach out to my network of "Web 2.0 for Good" people back in Canada and beyond to ask for their input and advice :)
projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, nptech, importantprojects, web2.0, web2.0forgood, W24G, ecampaigning, webofchange
So I made it to the Future of Web Apps Summit last week, and although my question for the panel wasn't asked (which isn't surprising given what turned out to be the focus of the conference — not "how Web 2.0 applications are changing the way people interact online," but rather, "how to build a business around the fact that they are"), I did get the chance to speak briefly with David Hansson of 37signals about project management software (and whether they plan to build scheduling functionality into Basecamp, which they don't). It's interesting — despite feeling excluded by his definition of the open source "community" (i.e. that it is only "solutions to problems of contributors"), and although some of the slides from his presentation reminded me of 1984, I agree with a lot of what he has to say (e.g. constraints are liberating — they allow us to focus on what is to/can be done), even if he doesn't believe project baselines are necessary :)
In terms of writing up notes from the conference, Simon Willison has done an amazing job here, and rumour has it podcasts of the presentations given will be made are available on the summit site in the near future.
P.S. 37signals has announced the launch of Campfire today, their "real-time web-based group chat tool for business." I participated in some load testing of the product last week, and it's pretty awesome.
furtureofwebapps, davidhansson, 37signals, schedulingfunctionality, basecamp, 1984, constraints, baselines, open source, community, campfire, importantprojects
Next Wednesday I'll be heading to Kensington Town Hall for The Future of Web Apps — a one-day conference bringing together a panel of Web 2.0 celebrities including Joshua Schachter from del.icio.us, David Heinemeier Hansson from 37signals (creators of Basecamp), Eric Costello from Flickr, and others, to discuss how next generation web applications are changing the way people interact online. The organizers of the event have put up a wiki and are accepting questions-for-the-panel submissions from conference participants. Only one question will be chosen — here's mine:
The venue has wifi, so I may be able to blog on what I learn as the conference is going on — if not, I'll be sure to summarize things afterwards :)
For those of us just returning from the eCampaigning Forum in Oxford last week — Joel Makower has written an interesting post on Web 2.0 applications and activism worth taking a look at. In his post, Joel posits:
This reinforces a lot of what was discussed throughout the conference, and as we learned at the end of the day on Friday, is exactly what Greenpeace and a coalition of organizations campaigning against climate change are attempting to do with an open source Web 2.0 application they're developing codenamed Custard Melt.
It'll be interesting to see how things play out over the next few months :)
Tomorrow I'll be meeting up with George Irish and Rolf Kleef and heading to Oxford for eCampaigning Forum 2006. It's a 2 day event coordinated by Duane Raymond of Fairsay, hosted by Oxfam GB, supported by the Oxford Internet Institute and to be attended by over 50 participants representing Amnesty International, Greenpeace, MoveOn.org, the WWF, and many others. The goal of the conference is to make online activism more successful by connecting practitioners, sharing expertise and facilitating cooperation.
I look forward to meeting everyone!
Rolf, Shannon and I delivered our workshop to a roomful of amazing Web of Changers yesterday afternoon here on Cortes. One of the interesting things we learned in developing the content for the workshop was that the debate I think Phillip Smith thought would be created by pairing a couple of project managers with a community development facilitation expert didn't actually happen. Instead, we agreed with each other — for Rolf, Shannon and I, project management tools and techniques, "traditional" or otherwise, can be applied to community development and/or open source projects because project management is about just that — the appropriate application of skills, knowledge, tools and techniques :)
Phillip — care to argue otherwise?
Greetings from Vancouver! I'm out here for a few days in advance of Web of Change, visiting friends and collaborating on a workshop I'll be co-facilitating at the conference with Rolf Kleef of drostan.org and Shannon Roy of Thinkhive. I lived in Vancouver for a couple of years after finishing university, and it's great to be back and spending time walking through my old neighbourhoods, eating at my old favourite restaurants, seeing old friends and meeting their new babies :)
The workshop I'm working on with Rolf and Shannon is called "Getting things done: managing software, people, and projects," and will focus on how project management tools and techniques can be applied to open source software and/or community development projects. It should be interesting — I get the sense that Phillip Smith hopes to set up a bit of a debate around whether or not what he calls "traditional project management" can be effectively applied to community/volunteer-based projects, and has put Rolf, Shannon and I together as co-facilitators for that reason. More on this as our collaboration progresses :)
Just a short note to let people know I've filed the presentation I gave at the Tools 2005 conference last week under /resources/project management in case anyone wants to download and reuse it (see "What is Project Management and Why is it Important?" under Presentations on the Project Management page).
I enjoyed the conference and look forward to participating again next year :)
I've been invited to present at Tools 2005, a one-day conference for not-for-profit organizations to be held Tuesday, May 31 at Ryerson University. My workshop is one of the morning sessions — hope to see you there!
What is Project Management and Why is it Important?
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
International Conference Centre
Ryerson University
240 Jarvis Street (north of Dundas)
9:15am — 12:15pm
Register for the conference before May 18 and save $25!
I spent the day yesterday at the first ever Penguin Day in Toronto (fourth in the world so far), an event organized to bring open source developers and not-for-profit technology support staff together to discuss the range of issues, options, challenges and opportunities we all face in using Free/Libre and Open Source Software (F/LOSS). A wiki was built for the event (provided by Co-op Tools), which allowed participants with wireless laptops to document the proceedings in real time, and which continues to allow the rest of us to update and refine site contents after the fact — see Penguin Day Toronto to view/edit the wiki in its current form.
Penguin Day was started in Philadelphia in March 2004 by Aspiration, the Nonprofit Open Source Initiative (NOSI), the LINK Project, and the Advocacy Project. For information on how to set up a Penguin Day in your city, send an email to Katrin Verclas — she'll be happy to help you help Penguin Day expand its reach.
Web of Change 2004 was fantastic — thanks and congratulations to the convenors for organizing and facilitating such an amazing and inspiring conference (I'm already looking forward to attending again next year). Thanks as well to the outstanding group of participants from Romania, Hungary, Amsterdam, the US and Canada. It was wonderful to meet you all and to learn about and be inspired by the work you're doing.
Highlights of the conference for me were the overview of social network theory provided by Gideon Rosenblatt of ONE/Northwest and Katrin Verclas of Aspiration, the (hilarious) presentation given by Andrew Boyd on the grass-roots street theatre group and media campaign Billionaires for Bush, Rex Weyler's presentation on Greenpeace, culture and the media, and the excellent sessions led by Jeff Balin on values-based leadership.
I felt very privileged, as well, to participate in the Group Council/Board of Directors sessions arranged for us at the end of the conference. In these, groups of six met to discuss our organizational challenges and to provide each other with advice and feedback. This was a really good way to end things off — I left feeling encouraged and energized. Again, thanks to the convenors for putting the conference together and to everyone involved for making it what it was.
I registered for the 2004 Web of Change conference today — a four day retreat at the Hollyhock learning centre on Cortes Island in B.C. (September 16th to the 20th). The theme this year is "Connecting Networks and Movements" — our focus will be to explore the impact technology has had/can have on social movement networks (where the health of the networks is a determining factor in the vitality and power of the movement itself — see this paper for more).
I also had lunch with Mark Surman of the Commons Group and Phillip Smith of Community Bandwidth today, two people involved in coordinating WoC, and I may get the chance to lead a WoC workshop on the need for "lightweight" project management frameworks/methodologies for use on progressive sector/social movement network projects (and if I do, I'll post my workshop materials here).
Are conventional project management tools and techniques too "heavyweight" to be useful to social movement networks, and if so, a) how so, and b) how should the projects these networks undertake be managed instead?
