SaaS and Security

SaaS and Security

May 13, 2009 Peter Campbell
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NPTech, Technology

My esteemed colleague Michelle Murrain lobbed the first volley in our debate over whether tis safer to host all of your data at home, or to trust a third party with it. The debate is focused on Software as a Service (SaaS) as a computing option for small to mid-sized nonprofits with little internal IT expertise. This would be a lot more fun if Michelle was dead-on against the SaaS concept, and if I was telling you to damn the torpedos and go full speed ahead with it. But we're all about the rational analysis here at Idealware, so, while I'm a SaaS advocate and Michelle urges caution, there's plenty of give and take on both sides. Michelle makes a lot of sound points, focusing on the very apt one that a lack of organizational technology expertise will be just as risky a thing in an outsourced arrangement as it is in-house. But I only partially agree.

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Technology and Risk: Are you Gathering Dust?

Technology and Risk: Are you Gathering Dust?

May 7, 2009 Peter Campbell
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NPTech

Last week I had the thrill of visiting a normally closed-to-the-public Science Building at UC Berkeley, and getting a tour of the lab where they examine interstellar space dust collected from the far side of Mars. NASA spent five or six years, using some of the best minds on the planet and $300,000,000, to develop the probe that went out past Mars to zip (at 400 miles a second) through comet tails and whatever else is out there, gathering dust. The most likely result of the project was that the probe would crash into an asteroid and drift out there until it wasted away. But it didn't, and the scientists that I met on Saturday are now using these samples to learn things about our universe that are only speculative fiction today. So, what does NASA know that we don't about the benefits of taking risks?

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The ROI on Flexibility

The ROI on Flexibility

April 21, 2009 Peter Campbell
1 Comment
NPTech, Recommended Posts, Technology

Non Profit social media maven Beth Kanter blogged recently about starting up a residency at a large foundation, and finding herself in a stark transition from a consultant's home office to a corporate network. This sounds like a great opportunity for corporate culture shock. When your job is to download many of the latest tools and try new things on the web that might inform your strategy or make a good topic for your blog, encountering locked-down desktops and web filtering can be, well, annoying is probably way to soft a word. Beth reports that the IT Team was ready for her, guessing that they'd be installing at least 72 things for her during her nine month stay. My question to Beth was, "That's great - but are they just as accommodating to their full-time staff, or is flexibility reserved for visiting nptech dignitaries?"

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Now that Mom’s on Facebook…

Now that Mom’s on Facebook…

March 17, 2009 Peter Campbell
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Social Media

...here's what I want to write on her wall:

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The Death of Email (is being prematurely reported)

The Death of Email (is being prematurely reported)

January 23, 2009 Peter Campbell
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Social Media, Technology

Friends of mine who are active on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are fond of proclaiming that email is dead. And, certainly, those of us who are active on these networks send less email to each other than we used to. I'm much more likely to direct message, tweet, or write on someone's wall if I have a quick question, comment or information referral for someone, the latter two if it's a question or info that I might benefit from having other people in my online community see.

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Help for the Helpers

Help for the Helpers

January 20, 2009 Peter Campbell
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NPTech, Recommended Posts, Technology

If you're in a job that involves supporting technology in any fashion, from web designer to CIO, then the odds are that you do help desk. Formally or not, people come to you with the questions, the "how do I attach a file to my email?", the "what can I do? My screen is frozen", the "I saved my document but I don't know where". Rank doesn't spare you; openly admitting that you can do anything well with computers is equivalent to lifetime membership in the tech support club.

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The Myth of KISS

The Myth of KISS

January 13, 2009 Peter Campbell
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Social Media, Technology

Keep It Simple, Someone*! If there ever was a common man's rallying plea relative to technology, this is the one. How many people do you know who got an iPod for XMas, only to learn that, before they could use it, they would have to learn how to rip their CD collection to disk? And upgrade the hard drive, or buy additional storage? All of which is a piece of cake, when compared to setting up a wireless network or removing persistent spyware. The most frequent request that I get from the people I support as an IT Director? "I just want it to turn on and work!". I can relate. Which is why I'm here to tell you that keeping it simple can be a questionable goal, at best.

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Filling the Communication Gaps

Filling the Communication Gaps

January 2, 2009 Peter Campbell
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Social Media, Technology

We've come a long way since the Pony Express. It's hard to imagine living in a time when your options for communication were limited to face-to-face, sllooowww mail, and, perhaps, carrier pigeon. Today, we have the opposite problem: there are so many mediums to choose from that a key communication skill is to gleam the method that the person you want to reach prefers.

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Keys to the Kingdom

Keys to the Kingdom

December 17, 2008 Peter Campbell
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NPTech, Recommended Posts

Being a career nonprofit IT type, I've repeatedly had the unpleasant experience of walking into a new job, only to find that critical information, such as software licenses and server passwords, are nowhere to be found. So before I can start to manage a new network, I have to hack it. This sort of thing happens in other industries as well, but it strikes me as something that plagues nonprofits.

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Why We Tweet

Why We Tweet

December 12, 2008 Peter Campbell
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NPTech, Social Media

Skeptics take note - I agree with you that Twitter, the "microblogging" service that your friends are pressuring you to join, appears to be the ultimate synthesis of vanity and wasted time. All of that potential is there, and, worse, the service seems to advertise those traits as its raison d'etre. But I'm going to ask you to bear with me as I offer some arguments for the service.

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