Allegheny B&B – December 2009 Meeting Notes

This was our last month meeting at ACHIEVA on the South Side.  There are no Bagels & Bytes meetings in January (except for the Westmoreland group).  For the 2010 schedule, visit The Bagels & Bytes Calendar (including directions).

Here are the various resources and topics discussed during this month’s meeting:

• Google Wave beta – several of us are playing around with this new social media/communications tool
• Keeping equipment inventory
  • Built-in software if available
  • Need to get accounting involved at some point
  • Simple Access database and assign tracking tags/numbers to pieces of equipment
  • Some attempting in SharePoint
  • Might use interns
  • Have to stay on top of it
  • Spiceworks.com – has inventory & help desk functionality – free version or pay if don’t like advertisements
• DonorPro fundraising software by TowerCare Technologies
  • Several B&B people moving to it soon
  • Reasonable cost (about half the monthly cost of Razor’s Edge)
  • DonorPro does data conversion too
• Talked about NPOs’ reluctance to do cloud computing
  • Cloud computing/collaboration tools
  • Google Apps
  • Smartphones – iPhone, Google Droid, etc.
  • Openoffice.org
  • Zoho
• Email archiving
  • Sony email archiving appliance will do automatic archiving, has browser interface
  • Gmail uses Postini for archiving
• Google software/products
  • Can now set up Gmail with organization’s own domain name
  • Lots of other Google collaboration tools besides email and calendar
  • Google now has shared folders – can set permissions user-by-user
• How to track time when employees start working from home
  • Some allow exempt employees to work remotely but not non-exempt
  • Time tracking is a mgmt. and HR issue, not a tech issue
• Have to prioritize tech projects and focus on the most important first – so don’t do all of them half-ways

Our next meeting will be held at Amani International Coffee House on the North Side, on February 3, 2010.  Please note that we are now holding our meeting from 8:30 – 10 am each month.

 

Allegheny B&B – November 2009 Meeting

We met again this month at ACHIEVA on the South Side. We will be at this location for the rest of 2009.

Here are the various resources discussed during this month’s meeting:

• ADP w/Kronos on the back end for time and attendance tracking (a hosted model is available) – http://www.adp.com/solutions/employer-services/time-and-attendance.aspx
• DonorPro, which has an event management module among other things – http://www.donorpro.com
• Orange Leap, CRM software – http://www.orangeleap.com
• Postini, will back up Google email aka Gmail – http://www.google.com/postini/
• USA.net, email, MS Exchange and SharePoint hosting – http://www.usa.net/
• WebEx, for webcasts or broadcasting items such as training sessions, live meeting broadcasts, and lectures – http://www.webex.com

Our next meeting will be held at ACHIEVA on the South Side, on December 2. Please note that we are now holding our meeting from 8:30 – 10 am each month.

Join us for the Bagels & Bytes Holiday Party on Friday, December 4, from 1-4 p.m. at the Carnegie Science Center!

We will eat lunch in the cafe (each attendee pays for his or her own meal), receive a tour of RoboWorld led by our very own B&B-er Joe McLaughlin (who helped build the exhibit), and otherwise check out the rest of the exhibits and have fun!

The cost to attend is $6 per person (lunch not included) and RSVPs are required.  Call or email Cindy Leonard – 412-397-6007 or leonard@rmu.edu – to register.  Attendees from all Bagels & Bytes group are welcome to attend!

The Bagels & Bytes 2009 Calendar (including directions) is here.

 

Allegheny B&B – October 2009 Meeting Notes

We met this month at ACHIEVA on the South Side. We will be at this location for the rest of 2009.

We discussed Microsoft SharePoint quite a bit during the meeting.  We determined that:

• It is a good tool for an Intranet.
• It must be well-planned out before implementation.
• It is ideal for sharing files and forms across an organization.
• You can use it to replace paper newsletters (internal only, obviously)
• It can be connected to Exchange server.

Here are the various other resources discussed during this month’s meeting:

• Dim Dim – free web conferencing for up to 20 people – http://www.dimdim.com/
• IP Chicken – tells you your IP address – http://www.ipchicken.com/
• Office 2010 – coming soon, God help us all – http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/
• Schneider Downs – has an off-the-shelf board portal software package – http://www.schneiderdowns.com/
• Business Library – has a tech login and discounted online trainings, including certifications – http://www.bizlibrary.com/
• SpeakEasy – for clocking your Internet connection speed – http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

Our next meeting will be held at ACHIEVA on the South Side, on November 4. Please note that we are now holding our meeting from 8:30 – 10 am each month.

The Bagels & Bytes 2009 Calendar (including directions) is here.

 

Downtown B&B – September 2009 Meeting Notes

Once again, we met at the Bayer Center office in the Regional Enterprise Tower in downtown Pittsburgh. Here are the wealth of resources that were discussed during our meeting:

• Malware Bytes – free anti-malware program
  http://www.malwarebytes.org/
• Super Anti-spyware – free anti-spyware program
  http://www.superantispyware.com/
• Sophos AV – very good anti-virus software
  http://www.sophos.com/
• Avira AV – free anti-virus software
  http://www.free-av.com/
• Netbooks – mini laptops w/enough functionality to get online
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netbook
• Kindle Reader – proprietary book and news reader for Amazon.com downloads
  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00154JDAI/ref=sv_kinc_0
• Sony Book Reader - nonproprietary book and news reader
  http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921665245739
• Book: “What Would Google Do?”
  http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061709715/What_Would_Google_Do/index.aspx
• JARTE - free alternative word processor w/simple interface and ability to save in Word format
  http://www.jarte.com/
• PrimoPDF – free PDF converter similar to Acrobat
  http://www.primopdf.com.
• Zoho – web-based office apps suite
  http://www.zoho.com/
• Revo Uninstaller – does cleaner uninstalls, allows you to delete registry entries during uninstall at your discretion
  http://www.revouninstaller.com/

Many thanks to Norm Mast of Lutheran Service Society (who has more freeware in his brain’s memory cells than is probably healthy for any one person for many of the items on this list!

ONE LAST THING…

The Allegheny group came up with the idea of having our December holiday party B&B meeting at a fun place – ROBOWORLD!  All B&B groups will be invited to this session.  I will be working with Joe McLaughlin, who worked on the exhibit there, to see about making this happen!

Our next meeting will be held at the Bayer Center’s downtown office, on October 8.  Please note that we are now holding our meeting from 8:30 – 10 am each month.

 

The Bagels & Bytes 2009 Calendar (including directions) is here.

 

Allegheny B&B – September 2009 Meeting Notes

This was our second and last meeting for this year at Easter Seals Western Pennsylvania in the Strip District. 

Our discussion centered around strategic technology planning.  Some items of interest from our discussion:

• Focus is critical when creating a technology plan – keeping things that are actually tech-related in the plans and other things out of it.
• Recommended scope for a tech plan is 1-3 years.
• Difficulty can be caused by the length and timing of the tech planning process vs. the strategic planning process.  If strategic planning not done first, the tech plan writer can end up generalizing and guessing.
• A tech plan should be a living document, subject to updating revision between formal planning sessions.
• Staff training is generally overlooked in tech plans, but should be included.
• Cost codes (financial) are frequently not assigned within a agency for technology items, so tech tends to get lumped into administrative costs.  (We need to work on this issue!)
• An online resource is the National Center for Technology Planning:  http://www.nctp.com.

We also discussed time management for techies in nonprofits. Here are some of the ways we get our multi-faceted jobs done:

• Outsourcing / vendor-based tech support or consultants
• Make sacrifices – you can’t do everything!
• Do what you can do, even if not everyone is happy about it
• Automate as much as you can
• Deflect work that isn’t tech-related
• Learn to say “no”
• Track help requests (a resources for this is the help desk feature in http://www.spiceworks.com)

In addition, we noted that we should pay as much attention to our “up” time as we do our “down” time.  Too frequently we (and other staff) only notice when the computers aren’t working.  We should acknowledge and celebrate the amount of time that the computers are working as well!

ONE LAST THING…

We discussed having our December holiday party B&B meeting at a fun place – ROBOWORLD!  I will be working with Joe McLaughlin, who worked on the exhibit there, to see about making this happen!

 

Our next meeting will be held at ACHIEVA on the South Side, on October 7.  Please note that we are now holding our meeting from 8:30 – 10 am each month.

The Bagels & Bytes 2009 Calendar (including directions) is here.

 

Allegheny B&B – August 2009 Meeting Notes

This was our first of two months at Easter Seals Western Pennsylvania in the Strip District.  We used their lovely (albeit rather large!) board room for our meeting.

Our discussion centered around online donation tools and fundraising software.  We found that the two frequently cross each other and might be had as a complete package.  Here are some resources from the meeting and a few I’ve found since then:

• Online software donation comparison matrix by Affinity Resources.
• Comparison chart from the Grassroots Fundraising Journal.
• “Four Principles of Choosing Donor Management Software” article on Idealware.org.

In addition we discussed the impact of the upcoming G20 Summit (not a tech topic, but on everyone’s minds nonetheless).  Randy Strothman has created a a semi-permanent page on his company’s blog on which he will post relevant Summit updates as they are made available. (Love the page title, Randy! lol!)

Our next meeting will be held at the same location, Easter Seals Western Pennsylvania, on September 2.  Please note that we are meeting from 8:30 – 10 am starting this month.

The Bagels & Bytes 2009 Calendar (including directions) is here.

 

Bagels & Bytes on a Boat – June 2009 Meeting

Ahoy! We had a great time this month at Bagels & Bytes on a Boat!  RiverQuest’s new boat Explorer is everything we hoped it would be.

Talkin' Tech at B&B on a Boat

A big “thank you” to the RiverQuest staff and crew who were so helpful and gracious before and during our meeting.

We held a drawing for two tech-related books at our meeting.  Rose McKee from the Benedum Foundation won “Momentum” by Allison Fine and Mike Papas from Three Rivers Youth won “Wired for Good” by Joni Podolsky.

Speaking of the book “Wired for Good” – I can get this for $10 per copy, but have to order at least five at a time.  Please email me at leonard@rmu.edu if you are interested in being added to a list.

Regardless of the setting, you can’t stop NP techies from talking about tech!  Here are some of the resources discussed during our meeting:

• Giveawayoftheday.com (http://www.giveawayoftheday.com) – a new, free software package each day for download
• Grants Management Software – A free comparison report from Solpath.com is available here – http://www.solpath.org/results.html
• Harmony Information Services (http://www.harmonyis.com/) – human services database software
• Stimulus funding information – http://www.recovery.gov/

One last tidbit from the meeting…Sandy S. brought her little tech guy-to-be along for us to meet.  This little dude attended Bagels & Bytes in utero all last year and we finally got to meet him!

Our Bagels & Bytes Baby!

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Next Bagels & Bytes Meetings

Note:  There are no B&B meetings in July.

• Allegheny group – Wednesday, August 5 at Easter Seals in the Strip District, 8 am – 9:30 am.
• Downtown group – Thursday, August 6 at the Bayer Center office in the Regional Enterprise Tower, 8 am – 9:30 am.

I know we discussed changing the meeting start times to 8:30 am.  Since the Bayer Center calendar and course catalog have been published and widely distributed through August, let’s keep the original start time through that month.  I’ll change it in our fall course catalog and we’ll give an 8:30 am start time a try for a few months.

2009 Bagels & Bytes Calendar is here

 

Allegheny & Downtown – May 2009 Meetings

We had some small (but good) groups this month!  Everyone must be in recovery from doing their taxes. 

The Downtown group viewed a demo of OpenOffice software.  A big thanks to Joe Allen from PULSE for guiding us through this with ease!  Learn more and download this free productivity software package at http://www.openoffice.org.

The Allegheny group discussed Keeping Up with Trends.  Here are a bunch of ideas and resources:

Books

• The Accidental Techie, by Sue Bennett
• Wired for Good, by Joni Podolsky  (I can probably get this for you for $10 per copy – let me know if interested.)
• Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission, edited by Holly Ross, multiple authors

Email subscriptions

• Techsoup.org
• NPT Technobuzz
• NTEN Connect
• TechNotes (Bayer Center)
• Idealist.org
• Grassroots.org
• Various vendors (Microsoft, Adobe, etc.)

Memberships/groups

• Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN.org) ($85 for individual, $60-300 for entire org based on budget)

Web 2.0

• NTEN blog
• Beth’s Blog: How NPs can use Social Media
• Facebook – NTEN group and “All the NP Techies” group
• John Kenyon’s blog
• BCNM blog (My articles are normally about tech stuff.)
• We Are Media
• Twitter – network with other np techies and follow NPtech group
• Frogloop Blog
• Idealware Blog

Listservs

• Yahoo groups – information_systems_forum &
• Careernptechies wiki
• Google group – ctcnet-listserv

Other

• Google Alerts – try “nonprofit technology”
• Women Who Tech

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Next Meeting:  Bagels & Bytes on a BOAT!

Our next meeting is on Riverquest’s boat “Explorer” on the second Wednesday of June (6/10/09).  The meeting is the usual time – from 8 am – 9:30 am.  Riverquest’s dock is just a little west of the Carnegie Science Center, in fact, you will park in the CSC lot ($3).

Both the Allegheny and Downtown groups’ meetings will be held in this location so we can share our annual summer outing together!  (I will also invite the Westmoreland and West groups.)

2009 Bagels & Bytes Calendar is here

 

Downtown B&B – April 2009 Meeting

We met once again at the Bayer Center’s office in the Regional Enterprise Tower. Our “starter” topic was New Features in Office 2007.

Other tools and resources discussed included:

• Article by Mark Shaw of NPower Michigan “The Purposeful Techie“
• Office 2007 Interactive Command Reference Guides
• Free speech recognition software – e-Speaking.com (it only costs if you want the ability to add/delete/customize commands)
• Sierra w/o Wires – http://www.sierrawowires.com/ - (discounted software for those who don’t qualify for TechSoup’s program)

Our starter topic for May will be OpenOffice.  The group voted to move the June 2009 meeting to Wednesday, June 10, so that we can have the meeting on the same day as the Allegheny group and partake in the “Bagels & Bytes on a Boat” event that day.

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Next Meeting:

Our next meeting is May 6 at the Bayer Center office on the 26th Floor of the Regional Enterprise Tower. If anyone has any topic suggestions or any issues you’d like to discuss at the meeting, please email them to me at leonard@rmu.edu. The meeting is, as usual, from 8 am – 9:30 am.

2009 Bagels & Bytes Calendar is here

 

Allegheny B&B – April 2009 Meeting Notes

This month, we traveled to the North Side’s warm and friendly Amani International Coffee House.  Our starter topic for the month, troubleshooting hardware and software, was extremely interesting and produced some great stories.  At one point, I laughed so hard my eyes started to tear up (over the one about the user who was hiding a key in the CD-ROM tray).

 

Here are the resources and issues we discussed during the meeting:

 

Resources 

• TrendMicro - http://us.trendmicro.com/us/home/ – good antivirus, not-so-good spam catcher
• Google Postini - http://www.google.com/postini/index.html – they filter email then forward non-spam to you
• Sonicwall Barracuda - http://www.sonicguard.com/barracuda.asp – network appliance
• EIT Store - (whoever mentioned this needs to send me the link because I can’t find this!) - discounted hardware/software based in Houston
• Data Bazaar - http://www.databazaar.com/ – inexpensive printer toner
• SmartPrint - http://smartprinttechnologiesinc.com/spt.php – will match toner prices, provides printer service free of charge if you are buying their cartridges
• Consistent Computer Bargains - http://www.ccbnonprofits.com/ – discounted hardware and software
• Sierra w/o Wires - http://www.sierrawowires.com/- local company that is a reseller for Microsoft, Adobe, et al, and has prices lower than retail, but higher than TechSoup (good if you don’t qualify for TechSoup)
• Harmony - http://www.harmonyis.com/ – a client information management system
• Spiceworks - http://www.spiceworks.com/ – network monitoring and support ticketing system
• Viewpoint software - http://www.sonicwall.com/us/support/3340.html – comes with Sonic firewall products, and has good report capabilities built in

Troubleshooting Tips

• It is important to probe the users thoroughly for information and ask the right questions.
• If you can train users to write down errors or create screenshots, that’s great too.
• Start at the lowest level, most basic level, with the simplest possible thing.  (Is it plugged in?)  Only try one thing at a time so you know what worked and what didn’t.
• A cable tester can save you a lot of time and energy. http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/tools/8510/

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Next Meeting:

• Our next meeting is May 6 at Amani International Coffeehouse on the North Side. Our starter topic will be “Keeping Up with Trends.” The meeting is, as usual, from 8 am – 9:30 am.

2009 Bagels & Bytes Calendar is here!