Project management consulting and training for social change organisations.
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 (that's Maxigas participating in a WBS workshop above) 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
