Socialsource gathers support from nonprofits

Today's Socialsource event promoting the use of Open Source Software in UK voluntary and community organisations provided a chance to check how far nonprofits are moving beyond essential office applications towards blogging and other uses of networky, social software. I think that's going to be particularly important because of the complex partnerships nonprofits have to form, and the need to engage more conversationally with their members, supporters and clients. My conclusion - it's early days, but the enthusiasts are gathering.
I was invited to run a small workshop because I was chatting to one of the organisers, Adrian De Luca, about some experiments my son Dan and I are doing in setting up Drupal, Wordpress, Pmwiki, Mailman and other applications using a Mac Mini as a low cost server. He kindly found us a slot in a crowded programme that showed how far the Socialsource project has come since its first meeting last year.
Dan's got everything installed, and we are working through configuring and developing a common look and feel - but as others in our workshop confirmed, the challenge lies in making it all easy to use, and joined up ... so you don't have to do too much logging in and out between the different applications.
We want a place to experiment, and eventually show clients what different applications can do so they can test for themselves what might work best.
Otherwise the danger is you go..."we need to spend some time really thinking about your needs, user preferences and so on, but when all's said and done what you need is !!! ""(!!! equals whatever you happen to be enthused by at present).
Only a few people in our workshop were already using blogs or other social software, so in retrospect we should perhaps have spent more time on that ratherthan the challenges of setting up particular OSS versions. As a number of people confirmed, the best route to adoption is finding people's passions or problems then following those, rather than pushing particular applications.
However, over lunch I did find at least half a dozen people working on OSS social software projects, so I think a small group will form. I had to leave early, but on the basis of the people I met I'm optimistic that the collaborative spirit of open source will lead to plenty of sharing of ideas and solutions. I think we should give ourselves the challenge of using some open source social software to do that.

Comments

[kris olsen]

David - I came across this post and was wondering if any 'critical mass' is starting to form around use of social software in the not-for-profit arena as a result of the SocialSource event.

I write a blog promoting usage of wikis in the non-technical arena and I'm starting to focus more and more on opportunities in the nonprofit space (any more time spent in the enterprise arena just makes my head throb).

[David Wilcox]

Kris - I wish I could say yes, nonprofits are using wikis and social software extensively. Unfortunately I don't see much evidence yet. There's some discussion about the barriers at the ICT Foresight blog. It may be possible within an organisation with strong leadership and support, but it doesn't seem to work around project teams and ad hoc groups. It's difficult enough to get people to use simple editable pages like Writeboard or indeed anything beyond simple web and email. Frustrating - but as with most things, people will use when there is a compelling reason, and it is easy. Not quite there yet.

[kris olsen]

David - thanks for the ICT Foresight link - it'll be a valuable reference for something I have in mind.

I appreciate your disappointment (but optimism) at the slow adoption of social software tools in the civic/volunteer space. That's pretty typical everywhere except in the tech/developer arena, it seems.

But I am also an optimist - above and beyond altruistic ambitions, I think there also needs to be a profit motive to get participants involved (I'm working on that angle).