Quickbooks is a very popular accounting package, often used by organisations that have graduated from using spreadsheets but who don't need the full power of Sage.
Given its popularity it's interesting to see 12 out of 12 stinking reviews on Amazon, including one that simply says 'Whatever you do don't upgrade to Quickbooks Pro 2008'. Take a look at the reviews to see why not.
Amazon.co.uk: QuickBooks Pro 2008: Software
Floss Manuals is a great website that lets you build manuals for a wide range of free software. You can pick and choose which software you want to know about and it will build a manual that you can download as a pdf.
There are loads of free open source tools out there that can do the same thing as software you can pay for - free software available online you can download and use without paying a license fee. So far so good, but, unlike Microsoft and other standard suppliers, it can sometimes be hard to find user-friendly information about how to use it.
It's all very well installing a free copy of Open Office if you're confident about learning new software skills, but it's a lot harder for people who aren't happy clicking about trying to make it work. And there aren't that yet Dummies' Guides for even the most popular open source products.
That's why Floss Manuals is a great idea. It's a well-designed website that let's you select the products you want to know about and download pdfs of the manuals. Follow the link to see how it helps you get the most from OpenOffice, which is a free alternative to the suite of Microsoft Office applications including Word, Excel and PowerPoint. OpenOffice manuals
Do you need to run online surveys? There are lots of free tools for building surveys on websites but one of the easiest to use and most popular is Survey Monkey. It's now been certified as fully accessible, which means it can be used by people who use screen readers, such as blind people. It has a lot of free features that can be used for smaller surveys or it can be rented cheaply by the month when you need to build bigger surveys.
SurveyMonkey.com is accessible
The Big Lottery Fund has announced £190m of funding to create new spaces for young people. Looks like a great new initiative but it will be interesting to see in what ways computers, the internet and other technologies feature in the projects that are funded.
It's often assumed that young people know everything about technology and that us adults are lagging far behind. My experience, however, is that many young people do not have access to laptops, wifi or home computers. They cannot afford them, or they can only use them at school, where they may be face all sorts of restrictions in their use.
They may be evolving massively muscular thumbs but beyond the social aspects of texting, mobiles phones and Instant Messaging there can be a distinct lack of opportunities for more meaningful use of new technology. They may also be short of teachers, parents or carers with enough confidence or creative skills to help them.
I did some work many years ago in Brighton Young People's Centre. They have had an IT suite for many years - originally ste up with UK Online funding - and recognise that although many kids have Playstations very few will have had a chance to 'play' with creative tools like video, music or the web.
The young people I worked with wanted to work together on a video project, or learn about music technology and make songs with their friends. What they needed was a space where they could access cameras, keyboards and editing software, which is those days was not available in schools.
More importantly they were lucky enough to be in a space where the youth workers considered these activities to be an important part of their work. They recognised that it help gives them confidence, build relationships and create stories which reflect their lives. It helps create the sort of buzz which draws in young people who are put off by formal education and can help tackle social exclusion.
They could build on their youth work training to learn relevant technical skills, or see when they needed to bring in experts to help with things like DJ skills, video editing or web design. In contrast to my work in schools at the time they seemed more open to these ideas than the formal education system, where technology was often seen as creating as many problems as it solved.
That was all before MySpace and bebo and IM and even texting, so the landscape has no doubt shifted enormously. There may be more ready access to the web but that brings new issues into play, such as personal safety and responsible uuse of social networks.
What hasn't changed is that young people will continue to benefit from access to high quality technology, supported by knowledgeable and supportive youth workers with relevant skills. I know there are lots of young people's projects that have seen how IT can help transform lives. Hopefully the BLF will see that and encourage applicants to think big when it comes using new technology.
myplace
Fundraising is the lifeblood of the sector, but how can the internet help? Well, it can help you with:
In the age of Google Docs, websites and wikis Microsoft Word may feel like a dinosaur to some, whilst many will be stumped by the bewildering range of functions and short cuts and menus it offers. It remains a valuable tool for many tasks, however, and not least when preparing and collaborating on long reports. You just have to put a bit of time into learning a few key tools.
As I'm running a course about report-writing next week I've been brushing up on a few of the basics - many of which I use all the time when compiling reports. Because of a background in desk top publishing I'm particularly keen on style sheets and all the automated functionality that flows from them - saving time and effort and bringing a professional-looking consistency to how your report is presented. Whichever function you favour you may need a bit of work to get it to do what you want, but once you do you'll never look back.
I've complied my top ten tips below, but along the way I found a very nice site that explains style sheets and other functions in a jargon-free way that is useful to beginners and experts alike.
My Top Ten Tips for Getting the Most from Word when Writing Reports
I've just stumbled across a wonderful example of how tools such as Powerpoint and graphs and charts can be a tool for powerful and highly effective communications. I urge you to watch it through to the end to remind you just what makes a great presentation work - and also because it's about world poverty and raises all sorts of questions about its causes and effects.
I'm preparing notes for a workshop on presentations, which will combine a session I run on the use of powerpoint with a workshop that someone else delivers that focuses on body language and confidence-building. We're taking the best bits from each to produce a two-day course for staff and volunteers from community and voluntary organisations in Brighton & Hove.
Whilst Powerpoint may be a staple tool of business there are many people in the voluntary sector who do not use it, and in fact are often anti-Powerpoint. This may be because they don't have access to the tools, or often because they feel an aversion to it - having suffered too many times at the hands of a poor quality presentation made worse by awful slideshows.
The availability of cheaper laptops and projectors means it is now becoming more common for people to use them - we hire them out at SCIP and have seen a massive change in the numbers being borrowed in the past few years. Today a new laptop plus projector may cost no more than about £700 , and it's a great tool for community work and outreach.
But, instead of being liberated by the opportunity to prepare and share information in such a flexible way there is still an underlying assumption that Powerpoint = boring, and an antipathy towards its use. Mainly this is because too many people have suffered as people use all the gadgets at their disposal without any consideration about how it helps tell their story. Rather than embrace the technology and use it as a tool it has become someting you have to apologise for.
I think this video shows how we need to look beyond the technology to see that it is the story and the storyteller that matter - but also how they can use the tools available to help you listen, learn and respond. It subtly underlines that you need to be in control of your tools - this is a master craftsman cleverly combining highly technical skills to make an incredibly powerful point.
TED | Talks | Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty and life around the world (video)
News from the ICT Champion in Yorkshire and Humberside of an announcement by Microsoft of donations to UK Online Centres. It includes a full suite of software and up to 50 user licenses, free of charge. Follow the link for more details.
Microsoft donations programme extended to non-charity UKonline Centres
It's all change at the top as a new set of national services start to roll out across the land, bringing a new range of support to the voluntary sector and the people who support it. It's intended to herald a new way of doing things after the first few years of ChangeUp, and includes the work of the existing regional ICT Champions. like me [hello].
Improving Support is a new CapacityBuilders-funded website that provides information about the nine National Support Services that replace the six Hubs. It only has basic information on it so far, as most of the services are only due to start up in earnest this summer, so there's not much about what they're going to do or how they're going to work. Some strands provide an overview of what they'll do over three years. Some have listed activities for the first year.
For example Volunteering will be led by Volunteering England, whose activities start with "research to identify the practical support that frontline organisations need." And the Collaboration workstream is led by bassac, which starts its activities by "developing the reference/advisory structures". Which is similar to ACEVO's first step, which is "Researching and scoping current provision to avoid re-inventing the wheel - and adding value to existing programme."
There is a sense of babies being lost with bath water if this sort of information is not available after the past few years of needs assessments, consortium development plans and seemingly endless surveys. But these are early days and there is also a lot of detail there about ambitions for new services and more targeted support than the Hubs provided.
So let's hope that this first phase is no more than a short initial scoping exercise. What we're waiting for is a coherent, dynamic, participative roll-out, with an army of eager beavers working across all nine workstreams, knitting together the work of over 20 national agencies to help deliver another round of change in the second tier.
Meanwhile the ICT Champions have started building a plan for the next three years. This will be based more or less on business as usual at a regional level but we hope to create a more coherent national plan and share information and ideas in a more focused way.
As the dust settles from the past few months of uncertainty we're expecting to sit in amongst this network of support and activity, translating and connecting between consortium-level organisations and the national support services. Any ideas and suggestions welcome.
improvingsupport.org.uk / welcome
Good article in the Guardian about how to reach the 30% of people who don't have regular access to broadband or related digital technologies. Some don't want it of course, but many are prevented from having it through cost or lack of access.
The Digital Inclusion conference last week highlighted growing Government action in this field, linked to recent research activities funded through UK Online looking at the social and economic impact of digital inclusion projects. As the author of the article Michael Crossnotes it's not about giving things away to the poor and needy but tackling market failure in a service area which is entirely privately owned and run.
And as well as getting suppliers to play fair it's about a bit more joined up thinking about grant funding to actually get people in front of PCs and getting the help they need in their local communities.
At ground level SCIP works with many community groups who have suites of computers paid for by funders eager to hand over capital, but whose doors are shut because they can't get grants for the costs of keeping them running. Stuff like insurance, broadband connections, materials, let alone salaries and trainers' fees.
New UK Online funding was announced this week and seems to be headed in the right direction ie revenue funding and reasonable sized grants of up to £10k. Let's hope this is a sign that Government is realising what makes a difference at community level, as well as getting the big telecoms providers to put their weight behind solving the big problems.
Digital inclusion isn't just about playing Santa Claus | Technology | The Guardian
Do you ever have to organise meetings for lots of different people, and end up playing diary matching games by email for days on end? Some people use Outlook to find available dates, but more and more people are using the elegant Doodle.
To use Doodle just go to www.doodle.ch, post up a list of possible dates and invite people to visit the page you create. They can then indicate which dates and times they can make, without needing to log in. As people add their details the page notifies you which dates are the most popular.
It's free of charge, it's very simple and as well as scheduling meetings you can use it for other polls.
According to the New York Times [1] the makers of The Sims have now sold 100 million copies of what has become an iconic computer game. This is a game which is more popular with girls than boys and, according to its makers, is now being included in therapy sessions.
As the Head of the Sims Studio says in the NYT, many adults use the game like a diary, building an electronic version of the world based on their on own lives. "You get to tap into this wonderful childhood imaginary game, which is ‘What if I could create my own little world and all the people in it and watch them go through their business and jump in and change things when I want?’ That is a pretty personal fantasy.”
With the boom in Second Life and other avatar-based virtual worlds people are increasingly immersing themselves in versions of shared reality, which in some way reflect their frustrations with their real lives. According to the article, however, The Sims has failed to move online because people want to keep these fantasies to themselves.
This isn't a huge community-based environment but 100 million different worlds. Perhaps that's a better reflection for our fragmented communities and self-centred lifestyles? And maybe we're all set to become self-medicating therapists?
Swicki is a new collaborative search engine, with one or two features that I like a lot, although it is still not the perfect customisable search engine for me.
Firstly it lets you select which websites it is searching. Rather than the whole web you can select up to 50 sites to get your results form - helping to focus on specific information, as well as helping to weed out the spammers and other search engines which can clog up search results.
Unfortunately it doesn't only bring results from your selection - it drops other results from the web beneath the first ten or so from your selections.
It is highly collaborative because anyone who uses the search engine can rank the results they get - and the higher ranking results start to move up the results for the next people who use the search engine. With many searches you can find too many similar references appearing - but using this ranking system can help sift through multiple results using other people's knowledge and preferences.
You can also add comments, which appear with the results. This is a good way of adding signposting to areas of particular interest, or warning of resources which don't deliver what it says on the box.
I've used it to make a search engine to help people from the voluntary and community sector find useful information about ICT. It searches key resources such as the ICT Hub Knowledgebase, TechSoup and similar sites. You can view it at http://community-ict-swicki.eurekster.com/
Not only does it work on it's own page but I've also added it to my blog - take a look on the right hand menu.
It's not the perfect customisable search engine yet. Ideally it would search only the sites you include, rather than the whole web as well. And it doesn't seem to have any keyword matching function which helps deliver specific results to match key words. But the comments and ranking features are very nicely done and show the way ahead for the next generation of knowledge management style search tools.
Take a look at other uses in the Swicki directory Swicki Directory
TB Alert is a charity based in the same building as SCIP. We had an open day here yesterday, with loads of people roaming around chatting to the 40 or so charities and voluntary organisations based here. We also had a film show all afternoon featuring various videos and films made by and about people from the building.
Two of the TB Alert staff are out in India at the moment so they broadcast their greetings via YouTube - a bit like This is Your Life. This was a great way of particpating in the day as well as teaching people more about their work.
Sadly the only technical glitch of the whole day happened when YouTube went down at the critical moment, leaving people here to use good old fashioned face-to-face presentation to fill the gap...
YouTube - TBAlert's Channel
This upcoming event from NCVO and Microsoft UK is free to registered charities - registration opens next week. Workshop 1: Costing and Funding ICT in your organisation Workshop 2: Managing finances effectively using new technology Workshop 3: Tips and tricks for setting up and managing an online community Workshop 4: Managing a remote team - How technology can bring you together Workshop 5: Finding your niche - how new media options can help you stand out to your supporters
Improving your productivity through technology
Opportunities for the voluntary and community sector
10th June, London
NCVO and Microsoft UK are hosting an interactive conference combining case studies, workshops and keynote speakers to explore the potential of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) for small and medium sized charities.
Understanding that complexity, resources and finances can hold technology development back, Microsoft and NCVO aim to introduce you to ways of accessing the latest technology through the help of a special donations scheme, enabling your organisation to achieve more.
The conference will include case studies from charitable organisations that demonstrate how they are already reaping the benefits from using the latest technology. The event will close with an informative session on ICT funding and how you can access technology donations through Microsoft UK.
This full day event is free of charge to all charity employees on a first come first served basis.
Workshops include:
Online registration will be open from 23rd April 2008 at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032376570&Culture=en-GB <http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032376570&Culture=en-GB>
Louise Brown
How can faith groups use ICT to support their work? this workshop is aimed at people who are active as staff, volunteers or trustees in any faith-based group form the south east.
FREE WORKSHOP: Faith groups and ICT
Brighton, Friday 28 April 2008, 2-5pm
Venue: Community Base,Queens Road, Brighton BN1 3XG
HOW CAN ICT HELP FAITH GROUPS?
This free workshop is aimed at staff and volunteers who work as part of a faith-based organisation. It is not a technical session but is aimed at managers and decision-makers who want to know more about how computers and the internet can help their work.
The session will be delivered by Mark Walker and Lucian Borcanescu, who are the ICT Champions for the South East of England.
It will include:
- How can ICT help faith groups?
- Where to get help with ICT
- Budgeting and fundraising for ICT
For bookings please contact either Mark on 01273 234049 or by email at mark.walker@scip.org.uk or Lucian at Lucian@clusterit.co.uk
I ran workshop last week for museum staff and trustees about how they can use the web. As well as being a way of sharing their collections every one of them saw it as a way of increasing visitors to their museum and wanted to know how to use it in their marketing activities. The pressentation is posted below.
The museums ranged from small independents, run for free entirely by volunteers, to a large visitor attraction which houses one of the largest collections of vintage cars in the world. The people attending ranged in age from 17 to 70 with a mix of Trustee, manager and student volunteer.
The general position was that the people in the room felt very little control over what was on the site or what it looked like, felt confused by how to update it and were at the mercy of techies about what they could and couldn't do on their website.
Having discussed the advent of the content management system we looked at everyone's sites - screengrabs in the presentation.
This revealed the usual ragbag of designs and styles. Some were more elegant than others, some were more complete or up to date than others. One was designed by the Chairman's son, whilst another cost about £20k, including a first version rejected at the last minute which had cost £10k!
Everyone had an excuse for something not being right on their site, or what they wanted improved, but few felt confident enough to comment on anyone else's site. I was happy to roll through, making positive and negative comments, and suggesting improvements, but it was a far from particpative part of the session.
I realised that many people feel alienated from the web as a medium - they were all regular users of it but lack a language with which to interact fully with it. These are people who have adopted to pseudo-business language of the current voluntary scetor - happy to talk about outputs and objectives and mission - but are feel unable to say that a site looks 'old-fashioned' or is 'basically okay but needs a few more pictures'.
The closest they got was at the start when I asked what they wanted from the day. Amongst various individual issues all agreed that their site needed a bit more 'wow' - and I soon realised that was about as articulate as they could be about what makes a website work.
It made me think we need to include similar discussions in all workshops - helping to build confidence by leading discussion as an 'expert' whilst making sure that people learn a language in which to express their ideas and begin to take control.
| ViewI'm preparing a workshop about Writing Reports for Voluntary and Community Organisations, which will combine writing skills with how to get the most from Word and Excel.
It's part of ongoing work to embed IT skills within mainstream community training courses and is based on a successful course I've run a few times about How to Draw Graphs and Charts and Include Them in your Reports combined with training run by Working Together Project about writing skills.
Along the way I found a great site called Writing for Change about writing reports, produced in a past life by Becky Faith, one of SCIP's trustees who is currently part of Tactical Tech.
It's a simple site that's easy to navigate with some great tips.
There's a really useful new article by Simon Davey on the ICT Hub website that explains how to plan your IT training programme. It suggests a step by step process for reviewing and planning your training as well as linking to some excellent free resources.
A lot of staff and volunteers struggle to get to grips with computers and new technology, which means that investment in hardware or software can take a long time to be repaid. Training is a way of investing in people instead, and empowering them to get the most from the resources available to them.
Training Action Plan: ICT Hub
Lots of people are talking about using sites such as MySpace, YouTube and Facebook as a way for charities and campaigning organisations to link up with supporters. This may be a new channel for networking with existing supporters, or a way of recruiting new supporters, through recommendations and online connections.
Such social networks are free to the user, and can be appealing as a way of reaching a new demographic mix. As with online worlds such as Second Life the yoof that supposedly lurk in such sites are the donors of tomorrow and are like gold dust.
But what does it cost and is it a good use of your time? Even if you know what you're doing you can spend hours keeping your profile up to date, adding news and chasing down new contacts.
Justin Perkins at Care2 has done some serious work on whether you can calculate the return on investment in time and effort. for many small groups it will best to find a volunteer to explore this option, but for larger charities, who are already investing heavily in online fundrasing tactics, this is a serious question, which weighs the short term costs of the time spaent against the medium and long term risks of NOT doing it.
Find out more and try the calculator at http://www.frogloop.com/social-network-calculator
Last week's workshop was a great success. Over 30 people from across the region attended the session that was held in Community Base in Brighton.
Mark Walker provided an introduction to the key issues when choosing a database, and 13 suppliers were on hand to show their products and talk to delegates about their needs.
Some of the key points made were:
One of SCIP's Directors works for Tactical Tech, an organisation based here in Brighton that provides information and support to NGOs around the globe.
It's most recent publication is a great free guide to visualising information - how to get your message across in pictures. It's not a techie guide but provides pointers and examples as the first step in preparing reports or flyers or posters.
You can download it from the Tactical Tech site
Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design | Tactical Technology Collective
Do you work with groups in a rural area? Please share this email with relevant organisations in your networks.
= = =
REMINDER:: Rural ICT Conference ::
9.30am - 3.30pm, Wednesday 5th March 2008
Lackham Countryside Centre, Lacock, Wiltshire, SN15 2NY
The one-day Rural ICT Conference will provide practical advice and information about how to get the most from computers and the internet. Topics covered workshops will include:
Antony Mayfield lives and works in Brighton and has posted a couple of examples of YouTube videos to show the ways the internet is being used in the US elections. One of them is a great Bollywood cut and paste job featuring Obama, another is a cringy mockumentary about Hillary.
I know these sorts of activities can still seem very distant when it comes to grassroots community organisations but the technology needed to produce these videos like these now sits on many people's desktop.
If the biggest political process on the planet has space for this sort of stuff then it can't be long before we see more and more examples from activists campaigning about local issues.
Open (finds, minds, conversations)...: All the TechPresidents
Flickr/brightonmarkie
Facebook/Mark Walker
Twitter/scipmark
YouTube/scipmark
Last.fm/scipmark