Rootwork.org blog

It’s no wonder Dan Pallotta is so popular among the TED crowd – business leaders and wealthy technologists who can see a product in every social trend. What’s more mystifying is why he would be popular among nonprofits, activists, and social changemakers, because it’s clear he has no substantive message for them.

Tomorrow at 1PM Eastern/10AM Pacific, Johanna Bates and I will be co-hosting the monthly Nonprofit Drupal Community of Practice discussion and Q&A call. This is a free conference call, sponsored by the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) but open to anyone. Please join us!

Domain Registry of America sends the owner of a website domain an official-looking “expiration notice,” urging the owner to “act today” to prevent “loss of your online identity making it difficult for your customers and friends to locate you.” Yet Domain Registry of America vastly overcharges for domain registration – their entire business model is built on swindling people into switching their registration. Don’t let it happen to you!

As the local track chair for the frontend track, I’m posting this to encourage any last-minute session proposals bouncing around in your head to get typed out and proposed today. That’s right: Today’s the Portland Drupalcon session proposal deadline. Submit your proposal now! (And yes, nonprofit and nonprofit developer friends, there’s an NGO track too.)

Organizations concerned about the privacy of their visitors should carefully weigh whether a given social widget is worth the risk in privacy. Moreover, these organizations should absolutely provide a privacy policy that specifically lays out what’s being collected and by whom, and may also want to consider suggesting ways for those at risk to circumvent this data tracking.

While this presentation does not cover the basics of what Google Plus is and how it works, it looks at how nonprofits and activists might effectively use Google Plus and highlights its most useful tools. The presentation also discusses the effects that Google Plus’s approach to social networking might have on online activism in general.

It’s great that Google is directing money to nonprofits, and letting people decide where those donations go. But it’s frustrating how Chrome for a Cause is rooted in a scarcity model – in which organizations must compete rather than collaborate.

Now all visitors to a nonprofit’s Facebook Page will be directed to the Wall. What’s more, with tabs being de-emphasized by their move to smaller links under your profile, it’s less obvious how new visitors can find out more about your organization.

Sexism is bigger than any one person; it’s a system in which our entire society is enmeshed. Too often, such systematic discrimination as treated as discrete, individual acts, disconnected from the larger reality. What too many men miss is the reality that the system under which they face such inhumane expectations is the same one that limits the potential of women. This exists in the technology and nonprofit tech communities no less than the rest of society – and has to be faced in a systematic way, not simply by counting the number of women on a tech panel.