Stories, software and strategies to help nonprofits do the social web
I spent much of the week at the NetSquared N2Y4 conference in Silicon Valley. NetSquared brings together social entrepreneurs, whose tech projects compete for funds. Last year the projects were mashups. This year’s theme was mobile. To see the sort of work the competition inspired, take a look at the 14 featured projects that made it to the finals, or see my notes about the projects that presented on Wednesday. Want some cooperation with that competition? But what best illustrates the spirit of cooperation that...
May, 29 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
Here’s a quick summary of the projects presented at NetSquared N2Y4 this morning. The complete list ofFeatured Projects is on NetSquared’s site. Cell Alert Cell Alert: SMS information to developing countries. Pilot projects in Pakistan and El Salvador. Preparing to expand in Sudan, Gabon and Sri Lanka. Uses Frontline SMS as an SMS gateway. Information could be used for everything from security/crisis alerting to telework job opportunities. N2Y4 project description See Click Fix Community reporting of...
May, 27 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
@febbraro and I presented our work hosting Drupal on Amazon AWS at Drupalcon last night. Thanks to everybody who could make it. Slides below for download. We talked about scaling challenges we face doing nonprofit campaigns for the Case Foundation. These are typically limited-time campaigns, with press releases or other promotion. Our challenge has been supporting relatively high loads for a short time — without going broke. Amazon’s EC2 servers-on-demand have been great for this. Here’s how we use AWS, and architectural...
March, 6 2009 • 0 Comments • 1 Faves
At NTEN, the nonprofit tech conference, last year I met a developer who was really exited. One of the vendors on the floor was giving away Pentium 3 processors, and he had a box that could use an extra boost. Me, I never touch hardware anymore. In fact, I don’t really know how many servers we’ve got — or where they are. Amazon knows. About six months ago we switched all our production servers to Amazon’s EC2 cloud infrastructure. As for how we moved to Amazon — and why we did it — check out this set of slides...
December, 3 2008 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
Tim O’Reilly’s keynote this morning at the Web 2.0 Expo NY was inspired and inspiring. To be in New York this week, with markets crazy and the Feds bailing out Wall Street icons — and talking web 2.0. That’s not an enviable spot. And Tim handled it by going to the heart — musing on what it means for the web to meet the world. From an engineering perspective, that means sensors and opening up the data they capture. But O’Reilly also talked about lasting values: Follow your heart Work on the the problems that...
September, 18 2008 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
I sent a letter to our CIO the other day asking for OpenID for the office. Strikes me that OpenID is one place where traditional interests of IT (ensuring users have access to what they need, compliance) jibe with those of Web 2.0 service users. Anyway, I thought I’d share my letter because many of you may have need of the same arguments. I mention Active Directory by name because that’s what our IT folks know. Substitute LDAP if it makes you more comfortable. Our office is going Web 2.0. We are all using a bunch...
June, 28 2008 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
A friend’s client wanted to help Ghana. Microlending seemed to be a good way to do it. The client would collect money in the US, and fund small loans to farmers and entrepreneurs in Ghana. The web might even make the first half of this — collecting money and telling the stories of who was helped — easy. My friend was all set to start writing code. That’s his business, after all. But did code needed writing? I could think of lots of options for helping Ghana — and finding like-minded people — with sites already...
February, 20 2008 • 1 Comment • 0 Faves
Startup thinking for the social sector. Code to help nonprofits do the social web. Plus photography.
(And reading aloud.)
More about Eric Johnson.
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