Technology

Posts of a geekier nature

Three Ways To Make Sure that Your Next Big Software Project Is A Success

This post also appeared on the Cloud for Good Blog in April of 2014. Buying a new fundraising CRM or replacing your finance and HR systems are big investments with critical outcomes. These are the types of projects can have a huge impact on your ability to accomplish your mission. Poorly planned, chosen and deployed, they will do the opposite. If you’re grasping for a cautionary tale, just look at the recent Healthcare.gov rollout, or the worse related stories in Maryland and Oregon. But successful implementations happen every day as well, they just don’t grab as many headlines. How can you make sure that big software… Read More »Three Ways To Make Sure that Your Next Big Software Project Is A Success

Career Reflections: My Biggest Data Fail

This article was published on the NTEN Blog in February of 2014.  It originally appeared in the eBook “Collected Voices: Data-informed Nonprofits“. Peter Campbell of Legal Services Corporation shares his biggest data fail, and what he’d do differently now. This case study was originally published along with a dozen others in our free e-book, Collected Voices: Data-Informed Nonprofits. You can download the e-book here. Note: names and dates have been omitted to protect the innocent.  Years ago, I was hired at an organization that had a major database that everyone hated. My research revealed a case study in itself: how not to roll out a… Read More »Career Reflections: My Biggest Data Fail

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

Making Your Website More Useful For More People

This post was originally published on the LSC Technology Blog in January of 2014. LSC is Legal Services Corporation, my employer. At LSC, we’ve been taking a critical look at our web site, to see if we can make it a more useful web site by factoring in all of the ways that people might want to view or use our information. In these days of big data and small screens, we realize that we have to be much more attentive to the ways that we present data than we have in the past. Identifying the different visitors who frequently use our site, we took a closer look… Read More »Making Your Website More Useful For More People

Finding Aid To Improve Find Legal Aid

This post was originally published on the LSC Technology Blog in January of 2014. LSC is Legal Services Corporation, my employer. Hands down, the most popular feature on LSC’s website is our Find Legal Aid lookup, which directs you to the LSC-funded legal services provider in your service area. I’m happy to announce that we’ve given this lookup a refresh while simplifying its use. But we didn’t do it alone, and the story of how we got this project going is one that I really want to share with our community. As I’ve blogged about before, our service areas are a unique geography that doesn’t lend… Read More »Finding Aid To Improve Find Legal Aid

Trello: A Swiss Army Knife For Tasks, Prioritizing And Project Planning

This post was originally published on the LSC Technology Blog in May of 2013. Note that “LSC” is Legal services Corporation, my current employer. One of the great services available to the legal aid tech community (lstech) is LSNTAP’s series of webinars on tech tools.  I’ve somehow managed to miss every one of these webinars, but I’m a big fan of sharing the tools and strategies that allow us to more effectively get things done. In that spirit, I wanted to talk about my new favorite free online tool, Trello. Trello is an online Kanban board.  If you’re unfamiliar with that term, you are still likely familiar with the… Read More »Trello: A Swiss Army Knife For Tasks, Prioritizing And Project Planning

My Tips For Planning Successful NTEN Tech Sessions

NTEN needs good tech sessions at the 2014 conference. Submissions are open.  Here’s a pitch for any tech-savvy NTENdees to dive in and present, followed by my lessons learned (from 20+ sessions at eight NTCs) for successfully presenting technical topics to the diverse audience that shows up at NTC.  Simply put, there are ways to do great sessions that meet the needs of staff from large and small, advanced and tech-challenged nonprofits in attendance. I’ll outline the ones that have worked for me below. The IT Staff track is the place to submit the infrastructure-related sessions. The other tracks receive a lot more submissions than… Read More »My Tips For Planning Successful NTEN Tech Sessions

TIG Takeaways: First Impressions Of The Legal Aid Tech Community

Last week I attended two events sponsored by my new employer, Legal Services Corporation (LSC). The first was a two day Technology Summit, where a group of 50 thought leaders gathered to develop a plan for addressing the demand for legal aid more dramatically by making strategic use of technology. That was followed by the three day Technology Initiative Grants (TIG) conference.

Best Of 2012: Nonprofit Technology Grows Up

This article was first published on the NTEN Blog in December of 2012. I think that the best thing that happened in 2012 was that some of the 2010-2011 “bleeding edge” conceptual technologies stood up and proved they weren’t fads. By Peter Campbell Nonprofit Technologist, Techcafeteria When NTEN asked me to write a “best tech of 2012” post, I struggled a bit. I could tell you about the great new iPads and Nexus tablets; the rise of the really big phones; the ascendency of Salesforce; and the boundary-breaking, non-gaming uses of MicroSoft’s Kinect. These are all significant product developments, but I think that the David Pogues and Walter Mossberg’s out there will have them covered.… Read More »Best Of 2012: Nonprofit Technology Grows Up

NTC Wrap-up

NTEN hosted a record breaking 2000 people looking to be more effective in their use of technology to support good causes in D.C. last week. I wasn’t one of them.

So, why the wrap-up? Because the NTC (Nonprofit Technology Conference) is such a big event in my life that, even if I skip it, it doesn’t necessarily skip me. 🙂