Tag Archives: APIs

Report from Nonprofit Technology Conference & Penguin Day

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Spent most of last week joining over 1,000 nonprofit techies from across the US as well as other countries at the annual Nonprofit Technology Conference in Washington DC.  I also spent the following day at Penguin Day, a celebration of open source software.

As usual, the educational sessions at NTC were great.  Despite the large crowd, the many sessions planned concurrently helped keep the crowd size small – but made it harder to select which session to attend.  Some takeaways:

  • much to my surprise, many sessions focused on the challenges of data integration and using APIs.  I have joined NTen’s affinity group to help further these efforts
  • an interesting summary of how web 2.0 tools (e.g. blogs, wikis, SecondLife etc.) have been ‘smuggled’ in to organizations that originally resisted them
  • a ‘nonprofit soapbox’ that allows nonprofits to take full advantage of open source content management with some technical assistance
  • importance of the IA (information architecture) in web project management
  • open source software has become more mature – and is even more of an attraction for nonprofits, although having a relationship with a consultant or other support network is essential.

I also moderated a session on online registration tools.  Thanks to Mark Becker (Event 360), Cary McQueen Morrow (Center for Arts Management & Technology) & Eric Leland (Leland Design) for joining the panel.

Should nonprofits use hosted software?

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I participated in an interesting discussion recently on NTen‘s discussion group about how much nonprofit organizations should take advantage of hosted software applications.  I’ve been a proponent of ASPs / on demand software for quite a while now;  the only major application I haven’t switched over is email, which I continue to download to my local PC using Thunderbird.  But my main CRM (SalesForce) and calendar (Google) is web based;  I still can’t understand why my wife (and many others) insist on relying on Outlook where this information is stored locally where it is subject to computer / backup failure AND can only be accessed from that one location (or through remote access).

Nonprofits usually have limited technical resources, if any at all.  Using hosted applications reduces the need for a home grown networking infrastructure;  the main concern becomes having a reliable Internet connection.  But this doesnot mean that no tech savvy staff are needed.  The technical skills to support online applications are different from what is required to maintain local applications since it puts a heavier reliance on choosing stable vendors and maintaining these relationships.

As is the case with local software, choosing packages that play well with other vendors is important, so it’s helpful to investigate APIs and whether or not the vendors have previously developed links to other systems.

Nonprofits can of course get discounted (mostly local) software through services such as Tech Soup,  but in the long run hosted applications will win out.  It’s also fascinating that some nonprofits still insist on custom applications when there are so many web based programs that can do so much ‘out of the box.’

Nten’s annual conference kicks off next week, so I’m sure this topic will be debated anew.

Convio & GetActive Speak, New Integration Report on APIs

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Listened to an NTen sponsored call today with Sheeraz Haji and Tom Krackeler of GetActive and Gene Austin and Dave Crooke of Convio.  Both companies seemed very optimistic about their planned merger which will aim to take the best from both companies, e.g. online fundraising from Convio and advocacy / CMS from GetActive.  Time will tell how things will play out as current customers learn more about migration.

Meanwhile, the issue of how to connect data in different systems was squarely addressed in a comprehensive report on Open APIs by Michelle Murrain and Katrin Verclas, available free from NTen.  At my current organization, we’re struggling with two separate integration projects, one which involves two products from the same company.  Open APIs are important because then you don’t necessarily have to get everything from the same vendor.  While Convio & GetActive will make a good try, it’s hard for any one company to offer the best of breed for many different applications.