Salsa Scoop

SF Office InAction

 Tomorrow, American Rights at Work is marching in Washington for the Employee Free Choice Act. Since we're over here in the SF office, Jory and I are participating in the photo march. Take a photo and join the march! Read more...

04:39 PM Jun 18, 2007 - 1 comments permalink

The Theory of the YouTube Class: ObamaGirl and the Web2.0 Aesthetic

 Someone could have dined well on my dime by wagering me on the proposition that this now-renowned "ObamaGirl" video would be -- well -- renowned. I guess I'm a fogey. When I saw this thing Thursday morning it registered a big "meh." Three days later, the needle hasn't budged. Actually, the citizen media that caught my eye that day came via the UK-based nfp2.0 blog -- a spot of guerrilla marketing. [I know you want the SILF t-shirt] This charismatic piece hit me as an interesting juxtaposition to last summer's viral-marketing Hindenberg, the Agency.com Subway pitch which went viral for its cover-your-eyes awfulness. (All the original's video links seem to be pulled, but the below is the piece plus smartass subtitling.) Despite my mixed reactions, and despite the contrasting purposes at play, there's a kinship between the first two of these videos that's wanting in the third. What is this quicksilver "genuineness" that decodes a piece's meaning and foretells its prospects as citizen media?  

Read more...

02:15 AM Jun 18, 2007 - 3 comments permalink

DIA Opens San Francisco Office

 We've gone low-key with the launch, just sort of easing into things, but the rumors are out there and it's time to cop to them. DIA San Francisco is here. As many know, DIA was born in Washington D.C. (it's good of you not to hold that against us). It's been obvious from day one, though, that a lot of the best things in the space hail, like all good-hearted people, from points west, and we've long had our eye on opening up in the crucible of progressive nonprofit action that is the Bay Area. It'll enable us to offer a local support, training and networking presence, and further to the last of these, Californians should save July 13, when we'll be celebrating our opening along with the first anniversary of the San Francisco Nonprofit Technology Center on whose futons we're crashing. There'll be more communications about (and from) San Fran going ahead, and west coast clients especially should keep 'em peeled for accessing later support hours. And just to step out on a proper leave-em-hangin' conclusion: it's not the last new DIA local you'll be hearing about this summer. 

Read more...

01:44 PM Jun 13, 2007 - 0 comments permalink

In the Market for Web Conference Tools

 DemocracyInAction is back to hunting inexpensive webinar/online conferencing tools. A few weeks ago, our our existing provider sent us an e-mail announcing:
We have decided to significantly change our company's focus, thereby exiting the web conferencing business completely. Because of this business decision, we have stopped renewing existing subscriptions and have ceased selling new subscriptions for our ASAP products.
Since "Convoq is an innovative provider of SaaS integrated online meeting and live chat systems", that must have been one heck of a business decision. All the same, in our two-plus years using Convoq's ASAP tool, we've had great results, so we bid our erstwhile collaborators fair tidings on their journey which we hope does not necessitate harbor in a capitalized and numbered Chapter. What it certainly does is thrust DIA back into the market for online meeting tools.  

Read more...

12:15 PM Jun 08, 2007 - 5 comments permalink

It's the Use, Not the Tech

 Our resident programming recluse emerged yesterday to pronounce upon the peculiarities of elevating a format into a standard. Seems it's another one of those problems which upon scrutiny dissolve from the technical to the social. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our code. Tangentially, Chris' ruminations reminded me of a book review in the month's backlog of New Yorkers awaiting my return from vacation last week. Subtitled "How uses, not innovations, drive human technology", it surveys the "use history" of technology -- the relationships people form with tools, and perseverance of old technologies amid new, the ultimate centrality of human experience and society vis-a-vis gizmos and "futurism".
no one is very good at predicting technological futures; new and old technologies coexist; and technological significance and technological novelty are rarely the same ... Above all, [David] Edgerton says that we are wrong to associate technology solely with invention, and that we should think of it, rather, as evolving through use. A "history of technology-in-use," he writes, yields "a radically different picture of technology, and indeed of invention and innovation."
I hadn't seen it remarked upon in my scan through the nptech chatter of recent weeks, but that sounds like a description anyone who's worked at a nonprofit -- or taken a support call from one -- can readily identify with.  

Read more...

03:33 PM Jun 07, 2007 - 0 comments permalink

Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190