• what are the pros and cons of web based services like Google Apps?
• why Google Apps?
• what’s the difference between the various versions of Google Apps?
• how can Google Apps work for small to medium sized non-profits?
• thinking of switching from Microsoft Office and Exchange Server?
• case studies?

About London Riders
If you’re an accidental techie, a circuit rider or someone who supports the technology of non-profit and voluntary sector organisations  - this is the network event for you to connect with others in the field.  It’s FREE and everyone’s welcome – but please confirm your place to give us an idea of numbers, etc.

If you know of colleagues who’d also be interested in coming along – please pass this invite on to them.

http://londonriders.eventbrite.com

More information at London ICT Champion blog.

**Getting There**
Tube and train: Aldgate East or Aldgate
Bus: Whitechapel

**Anything else?**
As with the previous network event, we’ll be continuing the networking at a local hostelry, so please join us afterwards.

**About Third Sector IT**
Third Sector IT is a non-profit organisation seeking to bring the benefits of Cloud Computing to charities and social enterprises in the UK

Digital Britain logo

Published yesterday, Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report gives more details about how the government aims to provide universal access to a minimum 2Mb broadband connection.

An estimated 2.75m homes, about 11% of UK households, today have no access to a connection at this speed. The report says 1.5m households might get access to next-generation broadband as a result of the commitment.

The report also looks at dealing with online piracy, the BBC licence fee and funding for Channel 4. Download the summary or the full report.

Discuss this issue over on Lasa’s ICT Cafe forum.

THA would like to identify what telephony experience already exists within the community of IT circuit riders, and is looking to establish an informal network of volunteers with a knowledge of telephony, whether it’s fixed or mobile, traditional or IP-based.

If you would be interested in helping the sector through the jungle that contains (among other things) ISDN, non-geographic numbers, ACD routing, auto-attendant, queueing systems, teleconferencing, textphones, Typetalk, Skype and SIP, please drop Mark McClean a line at mark.mclean@helplines.org.uk or call 0151 641 9746 or markmclean1 at Skype.

On this blog, we’ve previously talked about web 2.0 or software as a service – the ability to run web based services like Ebay, Amazon or Google Mail with nothing more than a computer and a broadband Internet connection – and the positive impact it could have on freeing organisations from the cost and complexity of maintaining their own IT systems.

BBC Radio’s 4 In Business looks at how businesses are using software as a service to reduce their dependency on internal IT and instead focus on delivering to their customers. Andrew Johnson of San Francisco Bay Area Paediatric reckons that moving to Google Apps – cost $50/£25 per user per year – has saved his business thousands of dollars on maintenance, hardware and software licensing that can be reinvested in staff.

However, as we’ve also pointed out before, there are still security and privacy implications to be weighed up, and these are well discussed by Brad Templeton of Electronic Frontier Federation.

Download it:
The show can be downloaded as a podcast (29 minutes) from BBC Radio 4 and features contributions from some of the biggest names in the software as a service world:

Marc Benioff,
Chairman & CEO Salesforce.com.

Richard Wetenhall,
Head of Corporate Development, Celerant

Matthew Glotzbach,
Director of Product Management, Google Enterprise

Andrew Johnson,
Chief Operating Officer, San Francisco Bay Paediatric

Brad Templeton,
Chairman of Electronic Frontier Federation

Ricky Reemer,
Chief Exec of Unicorn IT Solutions

Steve Prentice,
Chief of Research at Gartner

Thanks to Michele Martin for enlightening me to the wonderful world of ‘We Blog Cartoons‘  by Dave Walker .

Screen-sharing allows users to share the contents of their screen with anyone else in real-time, and has interesting implications for us in the voluntary/non-profit sector in that it has the potential to make the holy grail of ‘online collaboration’ and ‘e-learning‘ that we all talk about much easier. For example, screen-sharing could make it easier for circuit riders to deliver online tech support to smal groups, guiding the end user through various steps to a solution.

If you want to read up some more on screen-sharing, check out Infoworld lead analyst and Test Center blogger in chief, Jon Udell , who recently complained about screen sharing tools being too complicated and feature-rich. His request was for new tools to do one thing only while doing it very well.

My usual coda applies:
Does anyone out there use screen-sharing? And if so, which product do you use and how useful has screen-sharing been in your work?

In his book, Flipping the Funnel, Seth Grodin, describes a  process whereby Web 2.0 tools might be used to empower your service users – and turn them into fans and supporters of your organisation.

Seth tends to use some marketing jargon that may not be familiar to UK readers, but nonetheless, he has a message worth hearing: that the people using your services are potentially you’re biggest supporters – and that the new tools make it easier than ever to include them in your promotion to funders.
One way or another, Web 2.0 will make organisations more accountable – not just to traditional funders and supporters, but also to service users – and this is an area that the NCVO ICT Foresight panel is looking at in relation to the UK voluntary sector.
As I’ve said before, if organisations want to survive and prosper, they will need to understand and embrace new technology.  Try Seth’s book and let me know what you think.

Watchers of voluntary sector ICT issues in the UK will no doubt be familiar with Dot Organize’s findings, since ICT problems tend to be fairly universal:

To grossly summarise, the report also finds that:

• Most organizations, whether three-person start-ups or 3 million-person coalitions, are struggling to keep their constituent databases in order, and as a result have difficulty embracing new and emerging technologies (such as, blogs, social networking, SMS/text messaging, GIS mapping, and wikis).

• 59% report being frustrated or really struggling with the complexity of technology.

• Many lack the capacity to use some of the most basic online organising techniques; 39% do not use email newsletters and 47% do not accept online donations.

• Regardless of the organisation’s size, money (57%), time (45%) and staff expertise (34%) prevent their organisation from fully exploiting databases and online tools.

• Inadequate data management emerged as a major impediment to effective organizing. More than half the respondents report using slips of paper, Excel spreadsheets, and personal address books to manage organizational data.

• Organisations across the budget spectrum experienced a similar lack of data integration in their systems. The ability to share data across platforms and between applications, such as contact databases and Web content management systems, reduces data duplication and errors, as well as time spent on manual data entry and manually synching data repositories. Only 7% of respondents reported that their current systems share data easily.

• Organisers also stress the significance of data integration in their daily operations. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 representing the importance of data integration to their work, nearly 70% of respondents chose ratings between 7-10, signifying that a vast majority consider integration to be both a key obstacle and solution.

As London ICT Champion, what I’m really interested in here is the similar struggle of the UK VCS (voluntary & community sector) to fully exploit existing technology and embrace new tools.

I’m seeing some early promoters of new technology – RuralNet’s I-See_T project which is exploring ICT for collaboration, and the Media Trust’s seminars on the benefits and ease of deploying a Blog or a Wiki to raise the profile of your charity – and the approach here is very much the ‘show and tell’ model I talked about in an earlier post. As ever, if you have a project looking into new technology, let me know as it’s good to share.

The Dot Organize report compiles insights from more than 400 US social change groups, technology providers, and nonprofit technology capacity builders, examining the needs of organisers working to utilize new technologies, and offering recommendations for how to meet those needs more effectively.

You can download the report from here.

The Organizer’s Tool Crib is a project of the folks at dot Organize.

I know we have the UKRiders email list and Volresource – which both function as useful repositories of information on technology used by the sector – but could a model like the Organizer’s Tool Crib work in the UK as a vehicle for exploring and promoting new technology?

But mobile phones can also be used to mobilise support and raise awareness of issues your organisations campaigns for.

See MobileActive, a global network of activists and campaigners using mobile phones for civic action and engagement.