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
Today I took the bus to Brixton and spent the morning talking about two of my favourite subjects — risk management and iterative and incremental development — with the web team at CAFOD!
Branislava (pictured below, sorting index cards) and her team are about to undertake a couple of very large projects and invited me over to talk about how they might manage the associated risks by delivering each project incrementally (i.e. bit by bit) and iteratively (i.e. with time set aside to revise and improve the bits).
Sure — all projects involve risk (i.e. uncertain events or conditions that, should they occur, will have a positive or negative effect on the project's objectives), but the days of developing an entire system (or systems) with "big bang" integration testing at the end are OVER, right? Well they should be.
Thanks for having me, CAFOD!
agile, CAFOD, importantprojects, incrementaldevelopment, iterativedevelopment, nptech, projectmanagement, riskmanagement, scrum, training
Last week I took the train to Machynlleth, Wales to spend two days talking about Scrum with Tincan, a conscious business specialising in the design, development and hosting of websites for not-for-profit arts organisations (like the National Theatre). They're also the makers of PHPList!
Tincan have offices in the UK and in Argentina and invited me to talk with them about how they might make their already-Agile development practices more effective by using Scrum on some of their larger and/or more product-based projects. Because their office in Machynlleth is at the southern end of Snowdonia National Park, Francesca came with me so we could spend the weekend hiking in the hills there — highly recommended if you're ever in the area :)
Thanks for having me, Tincan!
agile, importantprojects, nptech, projectmanagement, scrum, tincan, training
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
Concern FAST is an annual fundraising campaign run by Concern Worldwide involving thousands of people and hundreds of schools in Ireland. Participants register to fast for a day and their friends and families to sponsor them to do so — Concern then uses the money (more than €1,000,000.00 is raised every year) to help people living in extreme poverty in some of the poorest countries in the world.
The Concern FAST 2008 campaign is up and running now! Concern hopes to raise €1,300,000.00 between now and January 31st (the actual day of fasting is December 4th) and this year, they're running the online component of the campaign on open source software — I worked with Concern and Enable Interactive to build http://concernfast.org in Drupal and CiviCRM using Scrum!
If you live in Ireland and want to help Concern fight hunger and poverty in the developing world, take part!
blogactionday, blogactionday2008, concern, concernfast2008, civicrm, drupal, enableinteractive, importantprojects, hunger, malnutrition, nptech, opensource, poverty, projectmanagement, scrum, softwaredevelopment, starvation
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
Last Friday I travelled to Woodstock, Oxfordshire to spend the morning talking about Scrum with a dozen or so representatives of OLM Group, the UK's largest independent supplier of social care products and services (including Bettercaring, which I believe my friends at Enable originally built — nice one, fellas).
One of the divisions of OLM Group is already using Scrum, so the morning was really an opportunity for me to acknowledge the good work that group is already doing, honor their courage for undertaking such a cultural/paradigmatic change, and to reinforce the organisational/business value Scrum can help teams deliver by agreeing to follow just a few simple rules (i.e. make everything visible, frequently inspect outcomes and adapt the process as necessary).
I love simple rules because as chaordic visionary Dee Hock once said:
Thanks for having me, OLM!
agile, importantprojects, nptech, olmgroup, projectmanagement, scrum, training
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
Last Thursday I took the train to Charlbury and spent the day talking about SMART objectives and Scrum with the project managers and account directors at Torchbox, a 25-or-so person conscious business specialising in the design and development of websites and Internet software for socially and environmentally progressive organisations. They've built a few Drupal sites in the last little while as well and are extremely lovely people to boot!
Thanks for having me, Torchbox — I had a fantastic time meeting and speaking with you and hope to see you all again soon! Hopefully tomorrow at the second installment of Drupal for NGOs ;-)
agile, importantprojects, torchbox, nptech, projectmanagement, scrum, smart, training
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
Check out the justice: Tom MacWright and Eric Gundersen of Development Seed have contributed a logo we can use to promote Drupal for NGOs. Thanks so much for this, guys!
Next Tuesday, June 10 at 18:00 the International Secretariat of Amnesty International will be hosting the first meeting of Drupal for NGOs — I'm so excited (and I just can't hide it).
The agenda has been set — Tracy Frauzel of Greenpeace UK will present their Drupal-powered site and talk about their future development plans, and Joel Bassuk of Oxfam International will join us live from Oxford via Skype video to talk about their Drupal project, currently underway. Nearly 30 people have said they're attending on the Upcoming event page (make sure to do the same if you're planning to be there), and the late-breaking news is that we'll also be joined by members of a local CiviCRM users group as well. Should be a good night :)
Can't wait — see you there!
amnesty, civicrm, comicrelief, concern, drupal, greenpeaceuk, importantprojects, nptech, oxfam, softwaredevelopment
Great morning on Tuesday of this week — I was invited by my good friend and colleague Dr. Dan McQuillan to deliver a half-day training on Agile Project Management to the folks at Make Your Mark here in London. It was really interesting — many of the projects going on there are non-technical and it was the first time I'd presented Agile concepts/methods to a non-technical crowd. We spent the first half of the session talking about Agile basics, principles and practices and the second half discussing how the three might be applied to Make Your Mark projects. It might be difficult for Make Your Mark to release versions of an event iteratively, but we did identify opportunities for them to "institute learning and adaptation" :)
Thanks again for having me, Make Your Mark — I had a great time meeting you and hope to see you all again sometime!
agile, importantprojects, makeyourmark, nptech, projectmanagement, training
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
Last year when I was finishing up my work with Greenpeace UK and about to begin development with Amnesty International I thought "Hey, I should really introduce the Greenpeace UK web team to the Amnesty web team — they're both going to be using Drupal and there are bound to be opportunities for knowledge sharing. Maybe even co-development!"
I'd been talking to Oxfam International at the time as well and now they're moving to Drupal (and there's Comic Relief who I know run at least one Drupal site and Concern Worldwide who I'm working with now) — there are a lot of NGOs in the UK (and nearby) who are using Drupal and who could benefit from meeting up face-to-face on a monthly or bi-monthly basis to share information and experiences.
And I'm happy to report that it now looks like this is definitely going to happen!
Some time in early June, possibly at the Amnesty office on Easton Street but definitely in London, a group of people from a number of the organisations mentioned above and myself will be hosting the first meeting of Drupal for NGOs: an approximately 2 hour get together (followed by drinks at a nearby pub) to talk about Drupal, which contributed modules we're using, what our experiences have been and, I hope, what our plans are for the future.
PLUS: it may be the case that Jeff Robbins of Lullabot will be in town at the same time and will deliver a bit of a keynote to the group following on from his "How Drupal Will Save the World" post last year.
If you're interested in attending, please comment here or send me an email. I'll create an event in Upcoming once the details have been finalised and post an official announcement here and on the Drupal UK users site.
Huzzah!
amnesty, comicrelief, concern, drupal, greenpeaceuk, importantprojects, lullabot, nptech, oxfam, softwaredevelopment
Last month when I was in New Orleans for 08NTC I got a call from Enable Interactive in Bristol asking if I wanted to co-pitch with them on a very large CMS/CRM project for Concern Worldwide. We talked about it more when I got back to London, then went for it, then won the contract — w00t!
We were in Dublin at Concern's head office on Monday for the kick-off meeting and I've just spent the last two days in Bristol getting to know the Enable team and working with the folks at Concern to define the objectives for the project (which I'll blog about in another post — I'm quite excited about the work we've done there).
We're still working out our high-level plan for the next several months, but basically we're moving all of Concern's sites to Drupal, very likely integrating with CiviCRM and then with a number of existing systems as well. And we'll being following Scrum to get it all done (and I'm currently looking for an outstanding Scrum trainer in Dublin or London to train the entire team on the framework/process — if you are one or know one please get in touch with me).
Should be fun :-)
concern, civicrm, drupal, enableinteractive, importantprojects, nptech, projectmanagement, scrum, softwaredevelopment
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
Great day on Friday last week — I was invited by my good friend and colleague Phillip Smith to deliver a project management lunch & learn to the folks at the New Internationalist communications co-operative in Oxford. Really interesting to speak with such a tight-knit, structurally-flat and financially-independent organisation beginning to think about making changes to how it operates after 30 years of producing an award-winning publication.
If it ain't broke don't fix it, sure — but when endeavoring to do something new, something you haven't done before, something involving risk by definition, it makes good sense to set SMART objectives, explicitly assign roles and responsibilities (even — especially? — in flat organisations; see The Tyranny of Structurelessness for more on this), define requirements and formally communicate with all team members on a regular basis (i.e. consciously and intentionally manage the project).
Thanks again for having me, NI — I had a great time meeting you all and hope to see you all again sometime :)
communitybandwidth, importantprojects, newinternationalist, nptech, phillipsmith, projectmanagement, 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
A couple weeks back I got to speak with Laura S. Quinn of idealware (w00t!) about an article she was writing for the good people at TechSoup called Six Views of Project Management Software (and thanks, Heather Gardner-Madras, for making the connection there).
The article provides a really nice overview of the kinds of things not-for-profit project managers and teams might need software tools to help them do and is up on TechSoup now — check it out!
article, heathergardnermadras, idealware, importantprojects, laurasquinnnptech, projectmanagement, softwaretechsoup, tools
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
Yesterday I got to deliver another installment of Project Management for NGOs for members of the APC — this time at a European regional staff meeting in Barcelona, Spain. About 10 of us spent the day talking through some basic project management theory and practice, working through a couple of group exercises and discussing the ways in which all of the above could be appropriately applied to projects undertaken by APC member organisations (i.e. small NGOs). I had a great time — thanks again to everyone involved in making it happen and to all the participants for making it fun :)
One note: with the help of the APC, I've found an open source tool for creating WBS diagrams I think is quite a bit easier to use (and more powerful) than the Draw program in OpenOffice — it's called Dia, and you can grab the latest release (for Windows) here or my new template here. Enjoy!
apc, barcelona, dia, importantprojects, nptech, open source, projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, spain, training
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
A couple of months ago I mentioned I'd been interviewed on the Listening Post about Google Bombing. Turns out they've used the segment, it's now up on YouTube, and starts at exactly 05:16 into the video:
I was pretty nervous: a lot of "um"s and some stammering. And the camera adds ten pounds ;-)
AJI, aljazeerainternational, googlebombing, importantprojects, interview, thelisteningpost, television
Just a quick note to let you know that the Greenpeace UK Drupal-powered website I've been working on will be launching sometime in the afternoon on Monday, April 16, and a bunch of us will be getting together afterwards (at approximately 6:30pm) at the Duke of Cambridge in Islington to celebrate — please join us!
If you do plan to come out, please list yourself as attending over at upcoming.org, or on the Drupal UK user group site (so we know how many tables to attempt to reserve). Hope to see you there!
greenpeace, importantprojects, launch, nptech, party, projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, website
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
Photo © 2007 Francesca Birks
Last year I did a bit of work for Moonbeam Films as they developed "The Listening Post," a weekly television program examining global media bias for Al Jazeera International. Since then they've done I think 15 shows (broadcast on Sky only, sadly), and today they had me in to their studio at the CBC in London to talk about Google bombing for an upcoming segment they're working on. I don't know a lot about Google bombing, but George (camera operator) and Sal (interviewer) promised they'd use the latest CGI and Hollywood editing techniques to ensure I don't look like an idiot :)
If the interview turns alright, is used and the show is uploaded to You Tube, I'll embed it here. Should happen in the next few weeks or so :)
AJI, aljazeerainternational, googlebombing, importantprojects, interview, thelisteningpost, television
I'm still at the Stanford Valley Guest Farm — I delivered a day of project management training and facilitated a day of workshops for the APC here over the weekend, stayed today for some follow-up meetings this morning and basically kicked back this afternoon. Tomorrow I'm heading to Cape Town to check things out there until Wednesday night when I fly back to London. Really looking forward to wrapping up the Greenpeace UK CMS project and immersing myself in Project IMPACT when I get back, but before I leave here I'm determined to swim with the penguins and climb Table Mountain :)
One of the things that came out of the training this time around was a request for a step-by-step guide to using the project management methodology I follow — a kind of HOW TO explaining which-tools-to-use- when-and-in-what-order. I've agreed to take a crack at producing something along those lines and will share it here when done :)
apc, capetown, importantprojects, nptech, projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, southafrica, training
Landed in Cape Town this morning, caught a ride out to the Stanford Valley Guest Farm this afternoon and am in complete awe this place is so beautiful. Tomorrow I deliver my "Project Management for NGOs" training to a group of 20 or so APC staff, on Sunday I facilitate a more advanced "Tools & Techniques" workshop for a slightly larger group, and although my plan was to go immediately back to Cape Town first thing Monday morning, I'm thinking now I might stay here for an extra day or so if possible. It's just such an unbelievable place — I'm uploading my photos as quickly as I can :)
apc, capetown, importantprojects, nptech, projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, southafrica, training
Photo by the Kalense Kid, March 2006
In early February I get to deliver another installment of Project Management for NGOs for the APC — this time at a regional staff meeting about an hour outside of Cape Town, South Africa at the Stanford Valley Guest Farm. There'll be a number of APC folks at the meeting who received the same training last year, so I'll get to spend a day with them as well, talking through their experiences as they've applied the processes and tools covered in the training to their actual project work, and about how those processes and tools might be "integrated" into the project management tool the APC is currently building in Plone.
Needless to say I'm giddy with excitement once again!
More on my return :)
apc, capetown, importantprojects, nptech, projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, southafrica, training
My friends at the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation (CBCF) are looking for a brilliant individual or outstanding small team in Toronto to manage the user acceptance testing, training and roll-out of a grants management system I helped them define the requirements for a little while back.
This is a dream job — from the attached RFP (emphasis mine):
The RFP: 
CBCF Project Manager (45 KB)
The deadline for response is Friday, February 2 at 5:00pm EST and the rest of the submission details are in the document. This is a hugely exciting opportunity — I'll be very interested to follow the progress made :)
cbcf, consultation, grantsmanagement, importantprojects, nptech, nptechjobs, projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, training, uat
Been back from Montevideo since Tuesday and it's taken me until now to blog on the trip (went straight into a day-long Drupal training with EchoDitto and Greenpeace UK on Wednesday and spent the rest of the week teaching at the university and chatting with various people about very exciting potential work for next year).
Delayed blog entry notwithstanding, the trip was awesome: Montevideo is beautiful, the Latin American APC members I met are lovely, and the project management training I was there to deliver — translated in real time from English to Spanish and back again — was a totally new and mind-blowing experience for me (two translators sat in a box at the back of the room, those of us who required translation wore headphones and spoke into microphones, the translators translated and presto! we all understood each other).
Thank you once again, Anriette and Estelle, for the opportunity; Valeria, Vanessa and Vivienne, for coordinating everything; and the fabulous Danilo (pictured above), for being such an amazing co-facilitator — you are all a pleasure to work with :)
Oh — and as I mentioned previously, the APC very kindly had my presentations and templates translated into Spanish, which you can now grab along with the English versions here or directly here:
Materiales Españoles (465 KB)
Enjoy!
apc, importantprojects, montevideo, nptech, projectmanagement, training, uruguay
Photo by Libertinus, October 2006
Two weeks from today I'm flying to Montevideo, Uruguay to deliver a repeat of the Project Management for NGOs training I gave in Prague in September, this time at an APC regional meeting and this time in Spanish! Once again, the APC folks have been amazing to work with, arranging to have my training materials translated and for translation services on the day. I'll be co-facilitating the training with APC member Danilo Lujambio, whom I met in Prague and who has generously offered to work with me to adapt the structure and content of the training to ensure its cultural relevance for the South American APC members taking part — thank you for all your help thus far, Danilo :)
Stay tuned for photos of my own (thanks for the unrequested use the one above, Libertinus), and for a complete set of Español templates and presentation materials!
apc, importantprojects, montevideo, nptech, projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, training, uruguay
Photo © 2006 Dave Walsh
Amazing day yesterday at the I Count march and demonstration in Trafalgar Square — 25,000 people turned up to call for action against climate change (see the press release here). I worked as one of the Greenpeace UK stewards and I'm not kidding — the event really filled me with hope :)
Please head over to the I Count site, sign up, discover the power of OFF and start using energy-saving light bulbs already!
:)
action, campaign, climatechange, coalition, demonstration, icount, stopclimatechaos, trafalgarsquare
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
The Stop Climate Chaos coalition has launched the I Count campaign! Check it out, sign up, get involved, take action and be sure to make it out to I Count in the Square on Saturday, November 4th!
See you there :)
action, campaign, climatechange, coalition, demonstration, icount, stopclimatechaos, trafalgarsquare
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
I was in Prague last week for the first time — amazing place, highly recommended (photos here). I was there to deliver project management training to a group of 20 APC managers, staff and board members, which happened, was well received, and may be repeated in other APC member countries as part of a larger capacity-building programme already in progress across the organisation. I'm extremely excited about the prospect of continuing work with the APC, and also of having the templates and other training materials I use translated into other languages (which I could/would then post as resources here).
And incidentally, I'm working on two things as a result of the training last week:
More on both of these points very soon!
apc, importantprojects, nptech, prague, projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, training
Great week for the Greenpeace UK CMS project this week — Cristen Perks, Michael Silberman and Tom Lee of EchoDitto were here in London to take us through 2 intense days of strategic planning meetings which IMHO went really, really well and got all of us excited about the phases of work we're about to begin.
For me, our most interesting discussions were around the idea of trusted networks; that people trust their friends first, experts second and celebrities third. With this in mind, and with Drupal as our platform, how should we redesign the site; what tools can we provide Greenpeace UK supporters that would allow them to leverage their trusted networks to help Greenpeace UK achieve its goals?
We came up with some interesting ideas — more later as things progress :)
drupal, echoditto, greenpeace, importantprojects, nptech, projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, strategy, tactics, technology
Alright — Phillip, Rolf and I have been having a conversation about whether personal time management training is more important for not-for-profits than project management training, given that (to quote Phillip):
Initially, I thought we were debating this in terms of whether not-for-profits could or should put (to quote Phillip again) "traditional, top-down project management processes into practice." Red herring! Turns out we're debating whether personal time management training is more important than project management training for not-for-profits given that (again, says Phillip) "...many people don't have an accurate picture of their available time." Ahem. Alright, then!
I agree that understanding available time is critical to getting things done, especially when you're working on a number of things at once (and as not-for-profit staff always are). And I do recommend looking at David Allen's book — at the very least, his time-management-as-martial-art metaphors are very cool ;-)
The point I'll make in this post is this: very often, when folks working for not-for-profits are overextended and/or unable to manage their time effectively, the root cause is organisational (i.e. cultural), not individual. Culturally, not-for-profit organisations need to understand and value the concepts fundamental to good project management before individual staff are even in a position to manage their time effectively. It's ironic, but many not-for-profit organisations working for sustainability often do so in a very unsustainable way.
An example: when work is planned, effort estimates for individual tasks should be provided by the people who are going to perform those tasks, and not by the individuals/ teams/sponsors who may need the work done.
projectmanagement, timemanagement, training, nptech, importantprojects, community bandwidth, phillipsmith, rolfkleef, webofchange
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
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
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
Some time ago, I was commissioned by Katrin Verclas of Aspiration to write an article on collaborative software projects, using two (partially) failed projects as examples of what not to do. It's been a long time coming, and in the end, involved collaborating with Important Projects ally Phil Dwyer to complete, but here it is, what I hope will be the first in a series of HOW TO articles published on this site under a Creative Commons license:
HOW TO Manage Collaborative Software Projects (148 KB)
Recommendations made in the article for the successful management of collaborative software projects:
Enjoy! Very interested in any feedback you might have as well :)
projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, collaboration, nptech, howto, importantprojects
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 :)
As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm currently working with Leda Dederich at ScoutSeven to develop the project plan for dotOrganize, a collaborative software development and strategic support project undertaken to get better organizing tools and strategies into the hands of grassroots organizers. While we work on documenting the plan, we're also working to gather requirements, and to that end, a request from Leda:
http://www.scoutseven.com/survey
So yes, please take a few minutes to help us help you. Much appreciated :)
UPDATE: the survey is now closed. Over 400 responses were received and the results are now being aggregated; stay tuned to http://www.scoutseven.com/dotorganize for the published findings!
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!
The third session of the LEF Project Management for Foreign-Trained IT Professionals program wrapped up today — a hearty congratulations to all participants on a job well done!
In this session, 2 more open source technology projects were successfully completed for 2 more Toronto-based not-for-profits — a PmWiki implementation for the Metro Toronto Movement for Literacy, and a Drupal CMS implementation for Flemingdon Neighbourhood Services. So again, not only did the program help participants develop their English language proficiency and cultural skills, prepare for project management certification through the Project Management Institute, and obtain direct, North American workplace experience, it exposed them to the importance of the voluntary sector by pairing their teams with not-for-profits for the practicum component of the program :)
I want to take this opportunity to thank LEF, ITAC, Ajilon Consulting and Outset Consulting for putting together such an amazing program, Margarida Almeida and Shawn McArthur for being so fun to work with, and most of all, the class — it was fantastic getting to know you all and I wish you the best in your personal lives and on your future projects.
Keep in touch!
I'm very happy to report that Important Projects has been selected by ScoutSeven to help develop the project plan for dotOrganize, a collaborative software development and strategic support project that plans to provide social change groups with a robust and affordable online organizing and database management platform. I'll be working with Leda Dederich on this one, another amazing person I met at Web of Change this year, along with a whole host of other people doing interesting work and who I'm excited to meet.
The project will be governed by four core principles, as follows:
Again, I'm very excited to be working with you on this, Leda! I'll post more on the project here as things progress :)
I spent some quality time on Friday afternoon at the Bryght offices in Vancouver, chatting with Boris Mann, Kris Krug and André Charland about the current state of web-based project management tools and the as-of-yet unmet needs of the not-for-profit sector. Web-based tools like Basecamp, Tasks Pro, Airset and even Remember the Milk all provide decent task management functionality, but where do not-for-profit project managers go when they need actual project scheduling functionality on the web? Or are we simply not building realistically achievable (i.e. resource- leveled) schedules, because tools like Microsoft Project are too difficult to use, too expensive, and don't run on Macs?
Do you currently build resource-leveled schedules, save baselines and track progress against them? If so, are you using a web-based tool to do this? And if so, which tool are you using? What's working well for you and what isn't (and why)?
I spent the afternoon today with Kat Dodds, founder of Good Company Communications, talking about her involvement in the upcoming Habitat Jam, her plans for the redesign of Hello Cool World, the suite of products and services Good Company offers and/or has plans to offer, and the important role project management will play in making it all happen. Kat's great because even though she's had huge successes with projects like The Corporation, The Take, and, most recently, Scared Sacred, she still actively solicits input and advice from friends and colleagues.
You rock, Kat!
I met Phillip Djwa of Djwa Strategies at Web of Change this year — we got to know each other a little bit, he attended the workshop I delivered with Rolf and Shannon, and we got to talking about the possibility putting on a project management workshop for not-for-profits in Vancouver at some point after the conference. I'm very excited to report that this workshop is now officially a go — the date has been set for December 8 (9:30am — 4:00pm), the location is SFU Harbour Centre (515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver), it will be part of a larger lecture series designed for not-for-profits, and the rest of the details are to follow shortly :)
Phillip and the good people at Dwja Strategies plan to have a site up promoting the event/series in the next few days or so — as soon as it's live, I'll let you know :)
UPDATE: the site is live; register now at The Knowledge Green.
The third session of LEF's Project Management for Foreign-Trained IT Professionals is now underway. I've been asked to continue supporting program participants and LEF staff for this session, which I'm very happy to do :)
The last session was a huge success — of the 23 students who completed the program, 2 have received PMP certification through the Project Management Institute (and several more are currently studying for the exam), and 50% have since found jobs in their fields. Congratulations, people!
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?
The winners of the 2005 Showcase Ontario Voluntary Sector Awards have been announced. Congratulations!
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 :)
The project management training participants I've been working with at the LEF are in the middle of their 6 week practicums right now — 7 teams have been paired with 7 not-for-profit organizations to manage 7 different technology projects, 4 of which are open source content management system implementations. Because the 4 CMS teams are doing all of this for the first time, and because their timelines are as tight as they are, they've all decided to use the same CMS so they can share learnings and divide up work where possible.
The teams have chosen Drupal as the CMS to standardize on, and this morning, we brought in Derek Laventure of the Annares Working Group, a worker co-operative providing open source software development and training services to not-for-profits and NGOs, to take them through a 3 hour tour of Drupal and get them started. Derek presented a really well defined set of step-by-step instructions for configuring Drupal, modifying themes, installing contributed modules and performing advanced customizations. Highly recommended if you need to take a group through Drupal training yourself!
Back in February of this year, I was invited to sit on the advisory committee for a program developed by the Learning Enrichment Foundation (in partnership with the Information Technology Association of Canada, Ajilon Consulting and Outset Consulting) to provide project management training for foreign-trained IT professionals. It's an amazing program — designed to help participants develop their English language proficiency and cultural skills, prepare for project management certification through the Project Management Institute, and obtain direct, North American workplace experience, the program also exposes participants to the importance of the voluntary sector — following a six week classroom-based course in project management, participants are placed within not-for-profit organizations and given the opportunity to apply their training to the management of open source software development projects.
For the second session of the program, I've been asked to provide coaching and support to students of the program as well as LEF staff — today was the first day, and it was great.
I'm very excited to be working with you, Margarida and Shawn, and with each of the 23 program participants :)
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?
I met with Phillip Smith today — Phillip runs Community Bandwidth, a consulting practice working with not-for-profit, social justice, community organizations, cultural organizations and individuals to examine the ways in which Internet technologies can be used to build organizational capacity, support community engagement, facilitate group collaboration and create successful online campaigns, always with the goal of demystifying and simplifying technology in the process. Phillip is an excellent facilitator — I met him first at a Social Tech meeting, where he facilitated a large group discussion around the social applications of wikis.
Community Bandwidth operates out of the 215 Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto, and frequently works on projects with both the Commons Group and Co-op Tools. I really enjoyed meeting Phillip and learning more about Community Bandwidth, and hope to work with his organization on projects in the near future.
Today I met with Peter Foley and Phillip King of Artez Interactive. Artez is an ASP (Application Service Provider) for the not-for-profit sector. They've developed a number of software applications they offer to their clients as managed services — applications designed to manage interactions between fundraisers and donors, event managers and participants, organizations and their constituents. Their software has been used to raise millions of dollars in the fight against breast cancer, to process donations to the September 11th Fund, to raise money for the United Way, and more. Important work, to say the least :)
It was great to meet Peter and Phillip — we've agreed to look for ways to combine our services where possible.
I met with Paul Bubelis of the Sustainability Network today — his organization helps environmental not-for-profits strengthen their organizational management, leadership, planning and fundraising skills, which in turn serves to strengthen the environmental community (which, coincidentally, is similar to the mission of Important Projects, with the important addition of specific environmental sector domain expertise). The Sustainability Network just moved into the 215 Centre for Social Innovation, where Paul et al will be sharing space with a number of other organizations involved in equally important work.
Thanks for your time, Paul — it was great to meet you. I look forward to attending your upcoming events :)
I met Jason Diceman tonight — Jason runs a small business called Co-op Tools, a technology and consulting practice focused exclusively on helping co-operative organizations with their group communication needs.
It was really interesting to talk with him — his goal with Co-op Tools is to provide his clients with technologies and techniques that make real democracy (i.e. democracy based on consensus decision making) possible for co-operative organizations (i.e. organizations mandated to operate democratically by definition).
It was inspiring to meet someone who has based his professional life on his personal values and ideals — I hope to see you again soon, Jason!
