Pulling my hair out!

Been a while since the last post, since then I've:

• moved.
• started telecommuting.
• enrolled the kids in year-round school.
• been enjoying the community pool.

I was living in Northern Virginia, commuting into DC everyday via metro (1.25 hours each way, on a good day), spending no time with the kids, worrying about their education.

Turns out my worrying was not without merit. Kids have been in school for nearly 4 weeks now. Middle One has been struggling. I've been in contact with the teacher several times. She performed at or above grade level in NoVa last year, but is below grade level in the new suburb of large southern city school district. We're putting in some extra study time each night. We're going to pull through but it's going to be tough few months.

Other than school issues, life is fantastic now that I'm back in the South... as long as that 10 second commute to the office doesn't do me in!

Since I'm no longer in DC, I've changed my header (bye, bye, DC skyline!) and tagline. Expect to see some changes in layout/design while I find something I like.

I found out this week that our organization has planned to develop two additional "microsites" within our main website. Each will be devoted to two of our projects. Each project has a different owner within the organization. Each owner has a different vision.

Apparently the ED and directors and involved parties just got together over coffee and scones and said "These projects have a lot of interesting information. Let's give them their own websites." As the new master (and I use that word very lightly) of the web, I am very befuddled that they didn't come to me with this sooner. I heard about it at an all staff meeting and then got the "oh we need to talk to you about this."

The problem is we use a CSS template with Kintera. We are locked into using the layout of the main site of all the pages.... some navigational menus, same top graphic, etc. When I broke this news to them, they were a little upset. Now we all know that I don't like my org's website. It has lots of issues and I hope that once I get a chance I can make some adjustments. But I can't fix our current site making it adaptable for the new project sites and build the two new sites by a September deadline. Maybe someone with a little more experience could, but I'm learning as I go along. And, I think (I need to call and confirm this...) that Kintera will charge us to change the template.

So, what to do? I suggested that we could purchase domain names for each of the new sites and using a service like WordPress or pbwiki publish the project site independently of our main site. They seemed a little skeptical about that.

So, loyal readers, what would you do? Any suggestions?

The PTB have given the go-ahead for a blog. Things move rather slowly around here, so I'm expecting us to actually be submitting posts by, say, um... December.  But that gives me time to figure out how it's gonna work.

I'm researching our options for creating a blog that's integrated with our website. Our Kintera guy said it could be done with their software using a workaround.  I'm not too sure about going that route. The word "workaround" doesn't have a very good connotation. The standard/non-workaround things in Kintera don't work like they should -- or rather like I feel they should.

So, I'm leaning towards using WordPress and customizing it to look like our site.  I know a bit of HTML, but fairly inexperienced with CSS and PHP.  But I'm a quick study so if I hop on it now, by December, I'll be good to go.

Meanwhile I found the following resources:

Jonathan Wold - WordPress Projects

Blogger Forum

Trying to get back in the game, I stepped onto the blackbus tonight....  390 unread messages since my last login in early May. Wow! Yous guys been busy!!

Peter Gulka has done a great job building the blackbus community and making Blackbaud take notice. Big shout to you, Peter. This is definitely an excellent example of grassroots organization and viral marketing. 

I don't post too often on the bus, but I am (usually) a regular reader.  I'm always impressed with how smart and quick everyone is. Those Crystal Report writers scare me. I can create a very neat list in Crystal and that's about it.  When they start talking code and junk, my eyes glaze over and I'm lost.  Another shout to those Blackbaud users who participate and made Peter's vision a success.

Edited 6/6/07:  Changed blackbus link to blackbus.org, not blackbaud.org. My bad, guess I had Blackbaud on the brain!  Thanks for pointing out my error, Peter!

My pet project right now at work is an organizational wiki.  I'm developing it as our intranet -- to make announcements, publish policies and procedures, FAQs, organizational forms. 

As I mentioned a while back, writing our internal policies manuals is something I have been struggling with.  I can write just fine (but I don't have to tell you guys that ;o).  It's just the idea of sitting down and writing page after page of documentation in a Word document.  While with the wiki, I still have to write, it's somehow different.  Maybe it's because I'm not scrolling through pages.  It kind of breaks it down into manageable tasks -- writing a page at a time.

My hope is that staff will consult the wiki for answers to their questions, rather than peppering me with them all day long.  I'm selling it as our organization's Google.  Got a question?  Ask the wiki.  Need to find the expense reimbursement form?  Search the wiki.

Folks know how to use the internet, know how to search for items, know how to navigate.  I'm hoping they will embrace the wiki in the same manner, that they will go to the wiki before walking into my office.  After all, searching for terms is easier than scrolling through pages of documentation and by the time they type up an email, they could have already searched the wiki. 

Plus we'll save some trees by not printing everything twenty-five times over (# of people on staff) plus reprinting for updates.

Excuses, excuses....  I could make up some good ones about why I haven't been blogging.  Let's just leave it at things have been busy and I haven't been able to focus on any "extracurriculars."  I haven't even been reading my blog subscriptions either.

Still chugging along at the some ol' nonprofit.  There are some changes in the works that I'm excited about -- staffing changes, mostly.  Once the changes take place, things should get better here.  There's always that one negative person in the group...  you know what I'm talking about....  the one who shoots down everyone else... "we can't do that..." or "it's not going to work..."  and always seems to have the ear of the PTB.  Well, ours is stepping down, retiring her post, moving forward in her career....

If you're a nonprofit in DC and you just hired a new web developer.....  i wish you good luck...

I've gotten buy-in from my boss about doing some new things around here to engage/develop/grow our constituency.  I'll go into a little more detail in a future post.  It's going to have to wait until after the end of the fiscal year.  But come July 1, it's on!

Also, I was a little disappointed that my blog turned into such a place of gripe.  I wanted to share, but not just the bad stuff.  I vow to include positive topics, not just complaining about work and about how much Kintera (still) sucks.

So, I'm going to get caught up on my readings, try to stay active.  But I make no promises...

I was out of town all of last week.  A nice, relaxing week visiting my family in another state.  The family was great, the weather was perfect.

Every morning, I arrive at work before everyone else.  Isn't that what us nptech-ers do?  Get to work early, so we can have some time to prepare before the hounds of hell are unleashed upon us we become inundated with questions?  Even if you aren't with me, it's what I do. 

I was so looking forward to that hour this morning.  After a week gone, I knew my Inbox would be flooded.  I knew my voicemail would be blinking with frenzy.  But that hour was not to be had this morning.  Seems everyone in the office came in early expecting me to be here early so they could catch me up on what I missed last week.  Or more accurately...  to tell me what they needed me to do for them.

Ugh.

I've done everything this morning from set up a workstation for a new hire to explain to our ED for the 1000th time why we are still manually entering our online donations.

Needless to say, I'm feeling a little behind this morning.  I've accomplished precisely squat of what I need to do to get caught up for doing the "right now" tasks.  With the exception, of course, of this little, venting blog post...

Now... get back to work!

My five things I learned this week...

1. There are not enough hours in the day. How do you work full-time, raise a family, maintain a household, and keep up with your social networking? That's not a rhetorical question. Seriously, if anyone has the answers, I'm all ears.

2.  The grass isn't always greener. A friend/co-worker recently left our office for a job at a bigger nonprofit.  We hated to see her go. I heard from her earlier this week and she's already looking to leave the new job. She's an RE expert... quick, smart, very detail-oriented, client-focused. All she's been doing is address changes.  This would be the equivalent of using Deep Blue to add 1+1.  When she made recommendations about how to use RE more efficiently (short cuts, batch templates, etc) they just blow her off.  She feels very uncomfortable. It's a shame. She was a stellar employee for us and could be for this other org. Too bad they won't give her the opportunity.

3. Kintera sucks.  Okay, I already knew this, but it was confirmed this week.  Absolutely impossible to integrate with RE.  Why would they make it possible to import certain fields, but not export them? Only in, no out. And I needed to fill a spot because it was a slow week in the learning arena.

4. Outlook will not handle sending 400 5MB messages at once.  Why, oh, why do I know this?  Because one of our employees did it. Four-hundred emails with three attachments each. Our exchange server was at a standstill for hours. I had to send out a message relaying proper email ettiquette, including not sending unexpecting recipients large attachments. I've been dubbed the "email nazi." 

5. I could wiki the dreaded P&P project. I've been working on this project for a while, if you consider dreading it "working."  Testing in progress, but I think it's going to work! 

I'm tasked with writing up our policies and procedures for RE, FE, Kintera, and general in-house procedures.  Sounds like total fun, eh?

So, I'm thinking about doing it as a wiki.  Easily accessible, searchable, and editable.  Totally better than pages upon pages of Word docs.

I'm going to test out a few free wikis.  Talk to TPTB about it.  And see how it goes.

I just started this to test the waters. I'm open to suggestions, comments, ideas.  Love to hear from someone who's done P & P this way before.

I'm writing up a proposal of sorts telling my ED how we can utilize web 2.0 to benefit our organization.

So far I'm proposing the following (in short bullets, more detailed, of course, in the real document):

• Myspace page and group
  
• Blogging on our website (I'm checking into adding to our web site. I think Kintera has our site locked down.  If that's the case, we'll do it from Myspace or link out to another site.  Still working on the details here...)
  
• Using RSS feeds to find incoming news that we can respond to (press release) and see if anyone is blogging about us
  
• Sending press releases to bloggers with interests similar to our mission

Thanks to everyone out there for the great info!