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
Thanks, everybody :)
Cake recipe. Icing recipe. Party details.
anniversary, birthday, importantprojects, nptech, projectmanagement, 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
