Is technology a source of creativity or frustration?
Anil Patel’s presentation theme was titled “Do You Feel Technology Is a Source of Frustration or Creativity for Your Organization?” This was one terrific presentation. It was terrific because I learned more about using social media tools to increase your capacity to network, collaborate, manage, monitor, build and sustain your organization or in my case my business.
This theme is especially relevant to me as it captures most accurately the dividing line between staying put and doing nothing or embracing new technologies to do your work more effectively and efficiently. The prevailing or default answer for many non profit managers is stay put. The journey into new strategies and tools and thinking about relationships enhanced through social technologies is just too much – on top of an already impossible load. I spend a lot of time on this subject so I was eager to hear his story.
Anil’s organization called Framework Foundation and his Timeraiser project were used to illustrate how he has successfully implemented cloud computing to better focus on their mission and collaborate with their many stakeholders. This transition to cloud computing has led to tripling their productivity and improved fundraising and volunteer management capabilities.
It’s very difficult to walk readers through his demonstration of integrating these tools to meet his goals. What worked very well was his use of a consistent framework that he used to discuss each of the tools.
The framework looked like this:
- Key challenge
- What it will allow us to do
- Pros, Cons & Cost
SalesForce.com – constituent relationship manager (CRM)
Box.net – an online file storage and file transfer platform (FTP)
Google Apps – especially spreadsheets, docs and more
Skype – video – free telephone and video functions, sharing computer screens
Echosign – electronic signing of critical documents
Anil presented a mock program that showed how the details of the program can be worked on by multiple people simultaneously and then embeds into a web site. It was very impressive. One of the organization’s staff was off site collaborating on the program and it was something else to have the video live feed enabled and see them discussing what changes needed to be made.
To see how well these online apps worked together was just a ground breaking experience for me. I’ve used the tools before but never in such an integrated fashion. I really understood for the first time the power and capacity available to your program and projects when you use these tools.
This was truly a hands on, visible, inter-active and fascinating experience. The promises made in the workshop overview were met hands down. As a reminder, here they are:
Attendees Will Walk Away With:
- Project Management – ideas on how your team can collaborates on social media projects
- Knowledge Management – ideas on how your team can stay on top of technology trends
- Fundraising Management – ideas on how your team can collaborate on Fundraising
- Board Management – ideas on how we organize information for your board
- Volunteer Management – ideas on to track volunteer time and participation
Anil left us with access to his support site where he documents and shares his organization’s journey into cloud computing. The links to the support site and all his resources will be well worth reviewing.
