The singalong you missed at TechNow

Last Thursday was the Bayer Center’s annual TechNow conference.  This year, it featured terrific breakout sessions on everything from thin client computing and greening your IT to how to make oneself over from accidental techie to intentional techie.  Also, there was plenty of networking.  Some participants won fabulous prizes including a 32″ plasma TV.  Also, Ami Dar from idealist.org gave a keynote speech that managed a rare feat: it was both practical and inspiring.

As if all that weren’t enough, this year’s conference featured a musical number that turned into a sing along.  See the “studio version” on the conference web site or the live performance below.  And save the date:  next year’s TechNow is tentatively scheduled for October 28, 2010.

 

Why I (Heart) TechNow and Why You Should Be There…

I know I can sound like a broken record when it comes to our TechNow conference (“come to TechNow, come to TechNow!”) but it is heartfelt and not just promotional marketing.

I was a TechNow attendee before I started working at the Bayer Center.  It was my first technology conference and it opened my eyes to the fact that I wasn’t alone in my “nptech” endeavors.  I used to be the mostly one-person IT shop at my old nonprofit, and TechNow helped me to expand my support network, meet some new vendors, and to think about the possibilities.  It can be difficult to be innovative when you deal with the same grind day-in and day-out, without taking time out to sharpen the saw and to think and dream about “what could be” rather than what is.

I’m also excited about this year because our keynote speaker is Ami Dar from Idealist.org.  Ami is amazing, in my opinion, because he has been all over the world, is self-made (see below for details), and is truly innovative in his thinking.  I’ve read and watched interviews and speeches by Ami, and I know he’s going to bring us all something great to stretch our minds and challenge our paradigms.

I recently asked Ami to complete a list that I used in a promotional email.  His answers were pretty neat, so I’m going to repeat it here for anyone who hasn’t seen it:

10 Facts We Bet You Didn’t Know About TechNow 2009 Keynote Speaker, Ami Dar

1. He was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Peru and in Mexico, and lives in New York.
2. He dropped out of high school and didn’t go to college.
3. He can’t drive.
4. Thirty years ago he was a paratrooper in the Israeli army.
5. There is a classic video game that shares his name: “Amidar,” released in the 80’s by Atari.
6. He started Idealist in his apartment with $3,500.
7. He loves playing backgammon.
8. He eats everything except eggplant and spinach.
9. He gets annoyed by conference organizers who call themselves “curators.”
10. Many people who meet him online think he is a woman.

Fascinating guy, eh?  I personally can’t wait to hear what he has to say!  And now it’s time for one last shameless plug…

There’s still time to register and hear Ami speak at the TechNow 2009 nonprofit technology conference, which will happen at Robert Morris University’s Sewall Center on Thursday, October 29!

Visit http://technow2009.wordpress.com for more details and registration information.

 

Top Ten Reasons to Attend the TechNow 2009 Conference

Note:  The early bird registration deadline for the TechNow 2009 conference is this Thursday, October 8!  Register at http://www.rmu.edu/bayercenterregistration to take advantage of the discounted fee.

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Presenting Sponsor: TowerCare Technologies

Summer draws to an end, the kids go back to school, and leaves start changing colors.  That means it’s nearly time for TechNow!

TechNow is the Bayer Center’s annual conference devoted to the new and important technology trends and resources for nonprofits.  Since TechNow affects virtually every area of a nonprofit’s mission, it is beneficial for non-techies as well as techies to attend.  We promise you’ll learn a lot, network with like-minded people, and…have fun!

For more info on the conference, including breakout session, keynote info, and scholarship/payment options, visit the conference website at http://technow2009.wordpress.com.

Here is this year’s list of the top ten reasons you should attend TechNow:

10.  Cream pies are back!!

9.  Your friends will be there.  If you don’t know anyone into nonprofit tech, you will have new friends by the time you leave…we guarantee it.

8.  The exhibitor who gave away the widescreen TV last year has hinted about bringing another fantastic give-away.  They won’t say what it is, so we’re all left to guess at it.  (The Bayer Center has a few fantastic give-aways of its own stashed and ready.)

7.  If you’re getting stimulus money (or federal funding of any kind), your website must be compliant with Section 508 web accessibility guidelines.  There will be a breakout session where you can find out what that means.

6.  USB drives are back.  Conference materials will be pre-loaded, so note-taking is optional.

5.  Our exhibitors are great local tech companies who “get” nonprofit organizations.

4.  If you don’t know about GIS, thin clients, user interface design, or green IT…you’ll learn all kinds of new stuff!

Our Keynote Speaker: Ami Dar, Founder & Executive Director of Idealist.org

3.  The conference has its own Twitter feed!  Follow it at http://twitter.com/TechNowConf. We will broadcast the feed on the main screen during the conference so you can give immediate feedback for sessions, locate friends and colleagues, tweet interesting session points, etc.

2.  We have scholarships available and a “Budget Impasse Payment Plan” – visit the conference website for details:  http://technow2009.wordpress.com.

1.  Ami Dar, Ami Dar, Ami Dar!  ‘Nuff said!

Register today by calling 412-397-6000 or online at:  http://www.rmu.edu/BCNMregistration. We hope to see you there!

 

What I Took Away from the Nonprofit Summit

Along with 500 of my closest colleagues, I attended the Grantmakers of Western Pennsylvania’s Nonprofit Summit last Thursday.  As usual, the event was a great chance to see old friends and hear what’s new.  The fact that it occurred in early October this year made it feel even more like homecoming; if it’s in October again next year, maybe we can have a nonprofit football game to round out the day’s events.

I wanted to share a few things that I took away from the event:

• Robert Egger of DC Central Kitchen reframed nonprofit collaboration.  I’d always thought of nonprofit collaboration – and Egger obviously thinks most of us have – as being focused on organizations coming together around mission.  Egger said we have reasons other than mission for coming together; owning our status as members of a sectore with shared strengths and issues has value in itself.  For example, he said that we never get any mainstream media coverage except for scandal and fluff.
• Scott Hudson of the Alcoa Foundation said he has three questions when it comes to grants, speaking in social venture capitalist terms:
  • What are we buying?
  • What are the chances that we’ll get it?
  • Is this the best use of the money?
• Larry Berger of the Saturday Light Brigade made a distinction that I have made before and one that I hold dear: the distinction between data and information.  One can’t have information without data, but it is possible to collect data and not turn it into information.
• Janera Solomon talked about how she had to make the hard decision to choose quality over quantity at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater.  This is a bold decision because quality is harder to evaluate objectively than is quantity, but she felt like she had to do it because the attribute her audience complained about was inconsistency.  If the Theater books fewer acts but they’re higher quality, the strategic thinking goes, the audience will build in future years.
• During the Wishart Awards ceremony, I noticed that two of the three finalists used stories as the center of their videos.  They picked a client and gave a thumbnail of their lives before and after they’d found their way to the agency’s programs.  I remember those two videos a lot more than the other one, which was no less visually appealing but lacked a story to hold it together.

 

Give a Day, Get a Day: Disney promotes volunteerism with a free day in Disney World!

When my husband Brad and I got married 7 years ago, we decided to make it priority to squirrel money away every year and make sure that our 2 weeks’ vacation is used for exactly that – vacation.  Each year since then, those two weeks have consisted of:

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1.  A week long road trip teemed with sleeping in unusually shaped hotel rooms, seeing “the world’s largest” something, and taking pictures of our stuffed alligator Terrence with as many national landmarks as possible.

2.  Going to Disney World.
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Brad and I are complete nerds for Disney World.  We ride the rides, get our pictures taken with characters – the whole nine yards.  As a matter of fact, you can ask me on any given day how many days until Disney World (today – 64) and I will be able to tell you.  In January of this year, we decided on a whim to drive down and camp in the Disney campgrounds so we could take advantage of their “get in free on your birthday” offer.  Curious to find out if they were doing that again this year, I did an internet search for “free Disney World ticket 2010” and found something pretty great.

In 2010, instead of offering free tickets to folks on their birthday, Disney World has decided to offer 1 million free tickets to anyone over the age of 6 who performs one full day of volunteer service for a nonprofit.  By partnering with the Hands On Network (which helps potential volunteers find volunteer projects and programs that align their passions within their community), Disney is making it possible for nonprofits to pay back their volunteers with something tangible – and your organization can participate!

Aside from the fact that this program gives nonprofits the opportunity to give their volunteers a tangible thank you gift that they may have never been able to afford, it also will encourage a whole new group of individuals and families who may have never done volunteer work before to serve in their community.   While we hope that people would choose to serve out of the goodness of their hearts, a free ticket to Disneyworld might be just the push some people need to open their eyes to the importance of volunteerism for the first time.   Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to recruit new volunteers!   Visit the Hands On Network’s “Give a Day, Get a Day” page to become involved.
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Pittsburgh G-20: An Eyewitness Account

I decided to venture forth last Friday, September 25, for the day of the scheduled height of G-20 activity — both sanctioned and otherwise.  Like much of downtown Pittsburgh, the Bayer Center offices were closed, and I was unsure how difficult it might be to get in.  We are located in the Regional Enterprise Tower in what was designated as a restricted access zone.  In addition, our lobby was the media welcome center.

As it turned out, access to my office was shockingly easy.  My wife dropped me off on her way to her office on the North Side, and we were able to get to within about 2 blocks of the building.  Other than a slightly circuitous walk from there,

Photo by Scott Leff

it was no problem at all — in fact, due to a lack of traffic, it was easier than on a normal work day.  I’m sure if I had to worry about parking or took a rerouted bus, it would have been a little trickier — but not much.

Upon reaching the city around 10 a.m., what I found was some limited access, some evidence of security — most strikingly in the form of mounted police whose powerful steeds completely blocked off Grant Street –

Photo by Scott Leff

and a decided lack of people.  Businesses were closed, some windows were boarded up (no apparent logic as to who boarded up and who didn’t), and just no people.  It was downright eerie.  I walked in the middle of the streets.  Pittsburgh on a Friday morning was emptier than a western ghost town selling tickets to tourists (maybe we should have tried that).

I spent some time in the office, then headed out around noon for what turned out to be a 4-hour hike.

As I walked deeper into town, there was one overwhelming impression — force.  The more I walked, the more intense it became.  Cops on every corner, Pittsburgh police, then state police, Erie police, Indianapolis police… they were brought in from all over.  And soon it wasn’t just regular police.  More

Photo by Scott Leff

mounted police, cops on motorcycles, SWAT units, humvees, and various forms of riot gear — shoulder pads and knee pads and sticks and helmets and shotguns and body armor and utility belts that would make Batman salivate.  They looked like a cross between Darth Vader’s Storm Troopers and the Michelin Man.  And let me tell you, when you see these guys up close, they are intimidating.

Photo by Scott Leff

Police in force, and police in numbers.  Riot-garbed security in groups of 100, shoulder to shoulder, moving in formation and leaving no doubts.

Eventually, I made my way as close to the Convention Center — the meeting place for the G-20 — as I could get.  I did this by passing through a security checkpoint, then walking a few blocks along Penn Avenue.  On my right were businesses, including some stores and restaurants that stayed open, although I can’t imagine they were happy about that decision.  On my left was the

10-foot steel fence, running unbroken along the curb and caging me in as completely as it caged in the roadway that was a feeder to the Convention Center.

I wandered down to the Point where a tent city was supposed to have been erected.  It was totally vacant.  Not a tent, not a sign, not a protester in sight.  Just a large lawn.  Where was everybody?

Photo by Scott Leff

It got to be time that the main body of protesters should have been reaching downtown from the start of their march in Oakland, so I headed out in search of them.  I found them at the City-County Building where they had gathered for some speeches and music.   After listening for a little while, I left to find a place on Fifth Avenue to watch their ensuing parade.

I use the word parade deliberately, for, to me, that’s largely what it was.  There was almost a partying, paradelike atmosphere as they passed by.  I found myself just past Macy’s (appropriate for a parade) at, coincidentally, my regular bus stop.  5,000 or so of them passed — drummers and costumed dancers, anarchists and

Photo by Scott Leff

socialists, those concerned with climate change and capitalism, freedom for Tibet and jobs for everyone, advocates for the Falun Gong (these were the most quietly elegant among the marchers) and for the Pittsburgh Penguins (where were the Steelers fans?).  It was a complete cacophony of issues.  And it left me feeling frustrated and a bit perplexed.

This was not 250,000 people gathered to end the war in Vietnam.  This was not 1,000,000 indignant human beings demanding civil rights for all.  It was a mishmash, a general objection to, well,

Photo by Scott Leff

just about anything that might be institutionalized or established.  To the extent that there was a unifying theme, it was the black-garbed, bandanna-faced anarchists, followed by the socialists.  Amazing to me, even the Philadelphia Democratic Socialists of America (who knew?) found their way to Pittsburgh.

Photo by Scott Leff

“Down with everything!  Up with anything else!” was the message of the streets.  This is not to diminish the fact that there were many passionate, principled, committed people in this crowd.  But with no focus, what were they accomplishing?  Who, that mattered, was really listening… or, for that matter, could even if they wanted to?  When there is so much noise — both figurative and literal — how can your voice be heard?  This was protesting in the internet age, when all voices are equally loud and fragmentation of micro-interests is global.  The protesting equivalent of Twitter – tweating by marching.

On the flip side, I found the whole experience to be rather inspirational.  This was truly democracy at work.

Photo by Scott Leff

Corny as this may be, I am proud to live in a country where this kind of dissent is possible.  This was also a remarkably harmonious event.  The protesters were self-controlled and peaceful, the security phalanxes were restrained.  Were there problems in some of the outlying neighborhoods, notably in Oakland where student density is high?  Sure.  But, given the scale of the event, they were minor.  Were mistakes made?  Of course.

With so much hype and so many people, mistakes are inevitable.  Yes, I know that Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann will have much to complain about.  Yes, I know that the Thomas Merton Center alleges mistreatment of protesters and, I’m sure, there are police who are outraged by things that were “tolerated.”  Both the NRA and the ACLU may feel the need to weigh in.  But, let me tell you, I was here, and it was remarkable.

Some have suggested that the show of force was excessive.  Well, maybe, but I think the proof is in the pudding.  Pittsburgh did not

Photo by Scott Leff

end up like Seattle.  Pittsburgh did not end up like London.  And we did not end up like Kent State.  I respect and admire the restraint of the police.  I respect and admire the restraint of the protesters. When a protester marched down Fifth Avenue jabbing his finger at the face of each cop he passed, hissing, “Fascist!  Nazi!”, the police remained stoic.  When the young man riding his bike down Fifth Avenue did not move off the street as quickly as the police wanted and they grabbed his arm and he fell over, the crowd groused, but that was all.  No one was harmed, the cops weren’t rushed, the young man was fine, bricks didn’t fly.  And the marchers continued to march.

I was a skeptic, but I’m impressed.  I think we accomplished something for Pittsburgh (a city I appreciate more and more the longer that I live here).  My hat is off to the protesters for how they behaved.  My hat is off to the police for how they behaved.  And my hat is off to the planners of this event for a remarkable job.

Photo by Scott Leff

 

The Law of Subtraction

Every year thousands of executives and senior level managers spend millions of dollars trying to answer the question: how do I better run my organization? To accommodate this demand, a plethora of management books, tools, workshops, and lecture circuits are annually launched. Fortunately, every so often, a management book is written that presents a novel approach or unique solution – and Matthew May’s In Pursuit of Elegance is one such book.

While May’s book focuses on the creative process of crafting “elegant” solutions, yet another salient idea that surfaces from the novel is what he calls the “Law of Subtraction.” The Law of Subtraction says that an organization should seek to continuously improve the quality, cost, and delivery speed of its product/service (value-adding).

Summoning the lessons from his nearly ten years of work experience with the Toyota Motor Corporation, May suggest that well run organizations (value-adding) do this by focusing on eliminating to the best of their abilities the things that hurt quality, raise costs, and slow things down. To repeat: great organizations achieve their goal of continuous improvement by eliminating the things that negatively impact quality, costs, and time.

A simple case study will illustrate this point: Fortune magazine in March 2008 named Apple “America’s Most Admired Company,” as well as “Most Admired for Innovation,” honors stemming from the launch of its hugely successful iPhone. However, this market-changing innovation occurred as a result of Apple’s stop-doing strategy – or its implementation of the Law of Subtraction. As CEO Steve Jobs put it:

“We tend to focus much more. People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done.”

In practice, the Law of Subtraction suggests that your organization’s leadership team carefully define what mission-related product/service it excels at delivering and then begin the process of allocating resources in a “subtractive” manner. In the case of May’s old employer, Toyota, this approach (called the practice of Kaizen) decreased employee stress levels; led to higher and more consistent job performance; and reduced the wasteful use of organizational resources.

As you begin to think about your own nonprofit organization, and how the Law of Subtraction might apply, start by asking a classic Peter Drucker question: If you weren’t already in a particular program, would you start it today? If the answer is no, May’s Law of Subtraction suggest you may have found a jumping-off point.

 

Empty Ballot

*Note: to our knowledge, there is no Allegheny County Anarchists Association.  This is an anarchists nonprofit governance joke.

 

Unsung She-Roes

My paternal grandma passed away this past Sunday.  I went looking for her obituary online this morning and could only find a one-liner in The Daily News.  No listing in the Trib or the Post-Gazette at all.

Now this may be the fault of the funeral home, but I think my grandmother rates more than a one-line note in the local paper.  Patrick Swayze, god rest his soul, got an entire article and he’s not even from this area.

We’ve talked a lot on this blog about She-Roes, women who are admirable, courageous, and strong.  I’d like to tell you a bit about my grandma, who is one of my She-Roes.

My grandma, born in 1919, was the daughter of Irish immigrants who spoke English as a second language.  She became pregnant at an early age and was, to hear family members tell it, basically party to a shotgun wedding.  This would have been in the midst of the 1930’s, while America was coping with the Great Depression.  Not an ideal time to start a family.

She proceeded to have 14 kids over the next 25 years, each pregnancy around 2 years apart.  One was a set of twins that were miscarried (or stillborn – not sure on my memory for that one), so she raised 12 kids total.  Obviously birth control wasn’t a common thing back then, and in Irish farming families, the more kids you had, the more free labor you had available to you.  My grandparents weren’t farmers – I’m simply pointing out that it was not unheard of to have that many kids.  If she were attempting this today, she would have probably been given a reality TV show.

As if having 12 children weren’t enough to bear, she had married a man with some anger management issues.  Back then, spousal abuse wasn’t discussed, unskilled women and mothers didn’t leave their husbands, and people didn’t have the wonderful nonprofit resources available like we do today.  From what I understand, she dealt with regular physical and mental abuse from my grandfather until he got heart disease and died in the early 1970s.

Who knows what my grandma might have done in this life if she hadn’t been in these circumstances?  Her entire life, to me, seems to be a series of unfortunate events with no real choices to be had.  What I admire about her is, I’ve never heard her complain or whine about her life.  Until she got dementia around 10 years ago and more recently, cancer, she seemed to be happy enough.  I remember that she used to love to go shopping and to church – loved trinkets, knickknacks, and small things like that.  She was not difficult to please in the least – she was grateful for the smallest item or kindness.

She was also tough, in her own way…a survivor and a fighter.  When she got cancer a year or so ago, she must have gone into the hospital three or four times for internal bleeding and other issues.  Each time, the family was called in and told that she was ready to go.  Each time, until this last, she bounced back and was released.  I recall one time, about a year ago, she was in the hospital and looked white as a sheet when I visited her – I thought for sure that was it.  Two days later, my dad called me to say he had to stop her from pulling the IV out of her arms, and that she was ready to go home.

She died this past Sunday at age 90.  I can only hope that, in my own life, I will have half the courage and strength that she had.  When I think about the way her life went, it makes me incredibly grateful for my own adversities (which seem minor compared to hers) and thankful that we have such a variety of nonprofits that educate people about birth control, provide abuse shelters, send single moms to college, and otherwise help people today who have it like my grandma did.

Rest in peace, grandma…you’ve earned it.

 

If you haven’t read the book, see the movie

A few months back, I reviewed Garr Reynolds very helpful book Presentation Zen.  Imagine my delight when I discovered that there’s a DVD version.

It’s good.  The book doesn’t take that long to read, but the DVD can be digested in just 50 minutes.   What’s more, it solves a tricky problem with sharing Reynolds’s material: his examples of slides that are broken and then fixed are so perfect in the book that you’ll wish you had them in PowerPoint as a teaching tool.  The DVD provides you with a terrific visual tool that contains the before and after solutions Reynolds proposes.  The chapter menu helpfully breaks the DVD down into sections on preparation, design and delivery.  That way, each section can be shared and discussed on its own if 50 minutes is too much time to block out.

I’d still recommend getting the book, but the movie is, as always, a decent shortcut.  Most offices have microwave popcorn somewhere.

Here’s a link to the trailer: http://www.peachpit.com/promotions/promotion.aspx?promo=137017