<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><!-- generator="WordPress/2.9.2" -->
<rss version="0.92">
<channel>
	<title>Technology for your Mission</title>
	<link>http://blog.schenkin.com</link>
	<description>Sam's musings on technology in the zany nonprofit world</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Thu, 13 May 2010 19:32:16 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<docs>http://backend.userland.com/rss092</docs>
	<language>en</language>
	
	<item>
		<title>An Overview of Non-Profit Technology</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve written a great deal about various aspects of non-profit technology. As a result, I was surprised at the difficulty I had writing a more comprehensive article. In the end, I discovered that I needed to spend most of my time defining the non-profit and its mission. In fact, 80% of the article dealt with [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://blog.schenkin.com/2010/05/an-overview-of-non-profit-technology/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Being a Systems Analyst</title>
		<description><![CDATA[These days at NPower I&#8217;m known as a Systems Analyst. I&#8217;m not really sure what that means (and I picked the title!). Let&#8217;s see what the internet has to say&#8230;
Princeton word net says it&#8217;s &#8220;a person skilled at systems analysis.&#8221; Well, that&#8217;s helpful, let&#8217;s try again&#8230;
Wikipedia says it&#8217;s &#8220;dealing with analysis of sets of interacting [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://blog.schenkin.com/2010/04/being-a-systems-analyst/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Domain Languages</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Today I read a very long &#8212; and unnecessarily academically dense &#8212; literature review on Pattern Languages in HCI. HCI stands for Human Computer Interaction, and PatternLanguages are sets of linked design patterns (kind of a blueprint for good design). While pattern languages themselves aren&#8217;t likely to be very useful for me in my work, the paper [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://blog.schenkin.com/2010/02/domain-languages/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The Micro-Community Revolution</title>
		<description><![CDATA[From a paper I wrote recently:
The Online Micro-Community is the next generation of web-based technology. Building upon the implementations and lessons of the broad-spectrum Online Social Network (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc), this technology focuses the enormous energy and power of geographically and temporally dispersed communication towards a specific goal or interest.
While the true ripples of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://blog.schenkin.com/2009/09/the-micro-community-revolution/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>When does &#8220;Not Best Practice&#8221; become &#8220;I can&#8217;t help you?&#8221;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Getting a nonprofit organization to spend more than 1% of their annual budget on IT is like pulling teeth. It&#8217;s up to us professionals to help them understand their IT Infrastructure in terms of their mission, perhaps encouraging them to make the right decision.
But what about the nonprofit organizations that are actually poor &#8212; that [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://blog.schenkin.com/2009/08/not-best-practice/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>User Centric IT</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Well, it&#8217;s been a while since I posted. The for-profit version of the Pennsylvania Governor&#8217;s School of Excellence for Information, Society, and Technology (PGSIST) is in full swing and that plus work has kept me pretty busy.
Last night I attended a talk hosted by phillyCHI that inspired me to actually write something down. Jared Spool, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://blog.schenkin.com/2009/07/user-centric-it/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The Holistic Approach to Technology</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I like to take a holistic approach to technology. Technology isn&#8217;t just the servers and desktops &#8212; it&#8217;s the software, it&#8217;s the databases, the website, the people, the processes, the training, and so on. This isn&#8217;t exactly a new idea, but it is one I&#8217;ve taken to heart.
Actually looking at technology in this way is [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://blog.schenkin.com/2009/06/holistic-approach/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Thoughts from HigherEdCamp Philly</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Yesterday I attended HigherEdCamp Philly. This unconference (structured as a bar camp) brought individuals together to talk about technology in education. The primary focus was, not surprisingly, Web 2.0 (a term I am somewhat tired of hearing).
I attended for two reasons. The first is that institutes of higher learning often face the same issues that [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://blog.schenkin.com/2009/06/thoughts-from-higheredcamp-philly/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Fundraising in a Software as a Service World</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Fundraising for technology really isn&#8217;t such a mystery. Follow a few simple rules and you are likely to succeed:

Relate it to your mission
Talk about the project in client-centric ways
Have a clear plan for implementation
Set aside money for long term maintenance
Get recommendations from a professional
State it as a capital investment

This last is the subject of today&#8217;s [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://blog.schenkin.com/2009/06/fundraising-in-a-saas-world/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The Deliverable or the Process?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A coworker of mine likes to say that clients pay consultants to tell them what they already know. I would agree, with one small change. Clients pay us to help them understand what they already know.
Our clients already know they need a new server. They already know their database isn&#8217;t tracking the data they need. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://blog.schenkin.com/2009/06/the-deliverable-or-the-process/</link>
			</item>
</channel>
</rss>
