Life

Posts about my family and personal interests and pursuits

New Gig, Same Job

Career update! I’ve moved my CIO services and tech consulting practice to a new home. As of February 4th, 2019 I’m the CIO for Hire at Raffa, Marcum’s Social Sector and Nonprofit Group. This doesn’t change what I do for a living, it just gives me a team to work with and a steadier paycheck. As always, my focus is on helping nonprofits use technology to further their missions, not frustrate them, and I believe that one way to do that is to keep technology expertise at the table, even if you can’t afford to hire it in full-time. You can find me at Raffa,… Read More »New Gig, Same Job

Experienced Technologist For Hire (Specialty – Nonprofits)

Once again, I’ve left a steady paycheck and I’m open for consulting and fractional CIO work. I am officially available to help out organizations with technology management and strategy. As always, my preference is to work with organizations that help people and/or the planet. Here are some of the ways that I can do that: Act as a CIO: serve as your Chief Technologist  on a part-time and/or interim basis. This can be helpful for an org that is either just setting out to implement technology strategy and/or infrastructure, or needs to reassess what they have in place, but doesn’t want to commit to hiring… Read More »Experienced Technologist For Hire (Specialty – Nonprofits)

Peter Does Not Approve

Last week, at the Nonprofit Technology Conference, I co-led a session on “Leading in Uncertain Times” with my friend Dahna Goldstein. At one point, while discussing layoffs, an attendee asked a question that I heard as “Aren’t layoffs a good opportunity to lose the organizational dead weight?” and before I had time to edit my reaction, I just blurted out “I don’t approve!”, getting quite a laugh from the room – a good feat when one is discussing layoffs. On Monday, my nptech doppelganger, Steve Heye, blogged about the conference and included the meme to your left, leaving me to conclude that there is no… Read More »Peter Does Not Approve

Year-end Reflections

This post was originally published on the NTEN Blog on December 24th, 2015. As years go, 2015 was a significant one in my career. The work of a CIO, or IT Director, or whatever title you give the person primarily responsible for IT strategy and implementation, is (ideally) two parts planning and one part doing. So in 2015—my third year at Legal Services Corporation—we did a couple of the big things that we’d been planning in 2013 and 2014. First and foremost, we (and I do mean we—I play my part, but I get things done with an awesome staff and coworkers) rolled out the… Read More »Year-end Reflections

Happy 10th Anniversary!

Just a quick post to commemorate ten years of blogging here at Techcafeteria.  That’s 268 entries, averaging to 22 posts per year, or damn close to two posts a month, which is not too shabby for a guy with a family and a demanding day job. The most popular stuff all now lives in my Recommended Posts section. The goal here has never been much more than to share what I hope is useful and insightful knowledge on how nonprofits can make good use of technology, peppered with the occasional political commentary or rant, but I try to restrain myself from posting too many of… Read More »Happy 10th Anniversary!

A Healthy Skepticism About Medicine Shouldn’t Deter You From Vaccines

We interrupt this blog for a public service announcement.   Here’s what I get — the 21st century U.S. medical establishment is not all that trustworthy. HMO’s sometimes limit testing and doctors prescribe unnecessary drugs. I am not a doctor, or any kind of expert, but I have read enough doctors’ opinions to have a healthy skepticism that the number of ADHD and anti-depression prescriptions being written seriously outpaces the actual instances. I think they are over-medicating and misdiagnosing regularly. True, funny story: one of my son’s school’s staff asked my wife what medications he was on. When she said “none”, they were visibly shocked. We… Read More »A Healthy Skepticism About Medicine Shouldn’t Deter You From Vaccines

Career Management In The Social Media Era

If you believe that your current job is your last job — the one that you will retire from — raise your hand.  You can stop reading. Now that those two people are gone, let’s talk about managing our careers. Because its a whole new discipline these days. Gone are the days when submitting a resume was sufficient.  Good jobs go to people who are referred in, not to those with no one to vouch for them. Per the ERE recruiter network, between 28% and 40% of all positions in 2012 were given to candidates that were referred in, but only 7% of all candidates were… Read More »Career Management In The Social Media Era

NTC Summary 2014 Edition

I’m back from the 2014 Nonprofit Technology Conference.  This one had some real high points for me, and a few things that made me a little sad, but I think I might have learned more than I do most years and I had a simply great time with old and new friends. Here’s a  summary of highs, lows, and links: This was my longest conference (of the nine I’ve attended): I met up for breakfast with some good friends at 8:00 am  on Wednesday, and I was one of the last people at the hotel at 6:00 pm on Saturday. The IT Leader’s Roundtable that… Read More »NTC Summary 2014 Edition

Where I’ll Be At The 2014 NTC

NTEN‘s annual, awesome Nonprofit Technology Conference is (obviously) my favorite annual event.  No failure on the part of other cool annual events, like LSC‘s Technology Innovation Grants conference, Halloween and my birthday; they’re great events as well, but they don’t have over 2000 attendees; four days of jam-packed networking, collaboration and education; and the inspired antics of Steve Heye. If you read this blog regularly, there’s a good possibly that you’re already booked for the event, and I look forward to seeing you there. Here’s where you’ll be able to find me: Wednesday, 3/12: From 1:00 to 4:00 I’ll be leading the IT Leaders Roundtable… Read More »Where I’ll Be At The 2014 NTC

Notes From Here And There

Long time no blog, but I have good excuses.  Moving cross-country, even with a modest family of three, is no picnic, and we are now, over 13 months since I was offered the job in DC, starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Since summer, I’ve been frantically house hunting and, since December, busy relocating (for the third time) to our new, tree-laden home in Reston. This, however, doesn’t mean that I haven’t been writing or totally neglecting my nptech duties. So here are some things to look forward to: #ntcbeer. First and foremost. The annual Nonproft Technology Conference runs here… Read More »Notes From Here And There