Technology for your Mission

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 this technology are yet to be realized, there is no doubt that it has and will continue to make very real changes to our society. It is already changing the way in which we tackle problems – connecting the few individuals who have a vested interest in a niche concern and changing the way society as a whole deals with its problems. Micro-Communities have begun to educate and empower consumers, beginning the “open sourcing” of information and helping to alleviate some of the worst effects of a highly specialized society. Finally, Micro-Communities are providing vast new marketing resources for companies, and are likely to shift clients from passive receivers of services to active participants.

Of course, this positive change is not without its challenges. Many of the issues inherent in modern online communication mediums are made more potent by the social interactions of Online Micro-Communities. Lack of credibility and the possibilities of legal repercussions for contributed content will shape the use of these websites. Moreover, the increasing collaboration allowed by Micro-Communities has the potential to increase conflict between factions of society, a threat that will be difficult to address.

All of these impacts and challenges reflect a fundamental change to our society, one already in motion but likely perpetuated and strengthened by the rise of the Online Micro-Community. Society is becoming more collaborative. TV, radio, and print – all critical technologies in the progress of humanity – have one crucial flaw; they are passive communication mediums. Because of their inherent lack of collaboration, these technologies lack all but a vanishingly small portion of the World Wide Web’s Potentia. Online Micro-Communities are the most recent, and the most promising, manifestation of this potential.

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 non-profits do. They can be slow to change, and often have an institutionalized fear of new technologies. They are also mission focused and dedicated to helping their clients (students). The second reason is that I have toyed with entering higher education at some point later in life. Either by getting my Ph.D. and teaching or by entering the administration and staff.

I’ll be writing more about what I learned at the conference, but I wanted to share a few of the things that really stood out to me. I’m copying these straight from my notebook — they are unstructured, inconsistent, and may make no sense to anyone else. However, I still think a few of them are interesting and sometimes raw ideas are the most thought provoking.

• What can IT/Infrastructure learn from web design? 
  • EX
  • user-centric
  • cyclical design
  • flexible / innovative

• What can web learn from IT/Infrastructure?
  • Formalized process
  • Excelent project management processes
  • Well established metrics

• Top down doesn’t work. It may be inefficient but buyin starts from the bottom.

• Don’t just support the mission — empower the individual

• Technology is working to mitigate specialization of labor through information accessibility — everyone can be an expert. Maybe not enough to do the work, but enough to take professionals off their pedestal and help consumers engadge.

• The switch to a service based economy is a metaphor for open source software — the tools and raw material are available to everyone, but you still have to pay for the expertise to put it all together into something useful. OSS developers sell a service not a product.

• Technology is allowing us to achieve the better teaching methods (problem-based learning, etc) psychologists have been telling us about for year. We need to harness it better.

• It’s impossible to really test huge systems that transform the very way we interact (example: blackboard, facebook) in any quantifiable way. Instead we need to find really subject-specific applications and test them with hard metrics. Do this a couple hundred times, generalize common results, and apply the lessons learned to the system as a whole. This could apply to large infrastructure projects too.

• Education is now similar to open source. Everyone has access to the raw materials and information, but we still need the experts to facilitate the process and teach us how to do something with it.

Free is great. As a member of the nonprofit community, I realize that every dollar not spent on software and support services can be redirected to helping clients. I realize that money is always tight. It’s great that there are innumerable free, open source, and donated tools to help organizations work more efficiently. Google docs, salesforce, google adwords, comparison shopping sites, techsoup, AVG, it’s all there. You can probably find an adequate free solution for just about every issue. So, what’s the problem?

 
You have to find it
This might be the biggest issue. Google, Microsoft, and large companies seem to think that every single nonprofit has someone on staff with technical aptitude and lots of free time. Someone that reads the right blogs. Someone that knows how to search for things.

This is, frankly, not even close to accurate. Non-profits, by and large, are not the young hip organizations that everyone in corporate has romanticized. Many nonprofits are staffed by older, less technically included individuals. Even nonprofits with “young and hip” staff usually don’t have the time to wander around the Internet looking for cool tools.

 
You have to learn to use it
Free isn’t really free. Most of these tools are poorly designed, complicated, or both. That means time — lots of time — installing, configuring, and learning. This is assuming that you can figure it out. Again, many nonprofits just dont’ have the technical aptitude to pull it off. Despite what google seems to think, everyone and their mother can’t learn css, javascript, and mysql in an afternoon.

 
You have to maintain it
Most of these tools — especially the really helpful ones — require periodic monitoring and adjustment. Google adwords campaigns aren’t successful if you don’t update them. Databases need to be updated every time your business processes change or you add a new field for reporting. Ongoing costs, even if they are measured in the man-hours of a salaried individual, can be brutal and unpredictable.

I’m not saying these tools aren’t useful. They absolutely are. But throwing free at the problem usually doesn’t solve anything. Most of these tools should be implemented with the help of a professional and care should be taken to budget for long term maintenance.

Today I read an article in Wired, The New Socialism. While it has a misguided perception of Socialism as a historical movement — basically equating it to communism — it makes a powerful statement about the empowering force of technology. The article speaks of a world of open source software, of information freedom. Frankly, I feel that this OSS utopia is unrealistic, and I’m a little tired of hearing about it, but the fact remains that technology has blurred lines. It has opened information, giving rise to an particular brand of information socialism. Information is no longer just the purview of the elite, it is owned by everyone and created by everyone. At least everyone with enough money for a computer and an Internet connection.

It is important that the nonprofit world recognizes this change. The role of nonprofits as the single point of information and aid is dwindling. Instead, nonprofits need to shift to information brokers. We need to help our constituents communicate with each other. Our job is increasingly to facilitate communication — between individuals and the government, between individuals and other organizations, and particularly between individuals — and less to be content providers in our own right.

Obviously nonprofits must adapt their use of technology to meet this changing world, but the change must go deeper than that. Nonprofits must fundamentally change the way they think about their organization, their mission, and their clients. We must think about communication, marketing, outreach in an entirely new light. Technology isn’t the tool we need to use, it is the way we need to think. In today’s age, there is no difference between technology and communication, the Internet and outreach. 

Well, that was all a little (maybe more than a little) melodramatic. The world isn’t going to change overnight. Nonprofits still provide and will continue to provide very real and very needed services — homes need to be heated, children need an education, everyone needs to eat. Our prominent place in this nation’s social safety net isn’t going to change. But the approach is changing,  and we need to pay attention.

For further reading on the topic I recommend Here Comes Everyone, by Clay Shirkey.