CBF Tech Blog

Green pastures are on the horizon . . .

This will most likely be my final entry on the CBF Tech blog.

Over the past 10 years I have had the rare honor and distinction of being part of one of the finest organizations I have ever known, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

The committed selfless call to protect one of the nations most scenic and vital resources has played a major part in helping me to focus my life to a cause that stirs passion, debate and unadulterated love for one of Gods given gifts, the Chesapeake Bay.

The hardest part of moving on from an organization like CBF is the people.  It's a cliche and we have all heard that before but it's so true.  The people I have been privileged to support, partner and work with, not only within the organization but those who commit themselves to the Chesapeake, are what inspires that passion within to do what we do for an environmental cause which desperately needs a voice.

My passion as a technologist to further the CBF cause has led me down a path that has connected me to many within the tech industry who feel the same way.  We want to be evangelists of our specialty to not just be techies but harness the enthusiasm of the people we support in using the advances technology has to offer.  Technology, which if done right, will further the mission.

That passion has led me to connect with the National Wildlife Federation where starting in mid April I begin a new career as their lead technologist.  I found in NWF that same level of enthusiasm, passion and commitment I desire to be part of but coupled with a much broader approach to how they integrate technology into their programs.  Along with playing at the national level, NWF provides for me a feeling of excitement and enthusiasm which I pray my 10 years at CBF has prepared me for.

So while this is "so long" to CBF and all the fine staff, volunteers, activists, students . . . it's not "good-by". 

For those who wish to still follow my ramblings, have no fear - my personal blog will now be brought to you by Blogger - at least until my good friend and queen of all social networking Danielle Brigida gets me going at NWF's blog.

Of course there has always been Twitter, the "in place" to be.  I have been micro-blogging at Twitter for some time - twitter.com/michaelsola

I close with one of my fave questions I use when interviewing, it is from James Lipton's Inside the Actors Studio "Pivot's use of a Proust Questionnaire" :

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?  My answer would be "An Evangelist, promoting the use of technology to share your passion."   I've never considered myself to be a professional techy, it's what I do, not what I am.

So with that, I end my CBF blog with this line because, well because I believe it sums up our technical struggles in how we approach the use of technology in this medium:

Specialization without integration is fragmentation - Peter Forbes

Michael Sola for the past 10 years is Director of IT at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation - his comments observations and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of CBF.  Your comments are most welcomed. http://twitter.com/michaelsola

Welcome to the team Mr. . . . . . Blackberry?

eMail Overload has been called this generations new anxiety disorder and some would argue that the Blackberry hasn't helped - recent studies show typical office workers checks or processes email at a minimum 50 times per day having an impact on productivity that some believe cost business to the tune of $650 Billion per year

"Getting things done" time management consultant David Allen on a recent news interview had some simple tips that we all can take to heart when it comes to email: if you can deal with it in under 2 min, do it.  Categorize and prioritize - use folders, make it, move it - delete it - decide quickly.  Delete the inbox insanity.

Have a personal email account, use it for purchasing, or online stuff that asks for an email to avoid work spam.  We block over 85% of inbound mail per week as it's all spam, and from looking at the sources most of it is advertisements and rather explicit offers that we all know but don't want to talk about.

There is a bright spot in all this email madness - my personal messaging is down, way down and it's not because I have less friends, indeed my list of contacts continues to grow.  However, the means in which I now communicate with them has changed.  I made a comment to a few co-workers that every morning it seems to be a tie as to which program I will fire up first - Outlook or Twitter.  No joke.

Since I now follow many of my new sources on Twitter and have a wide range of contacts on the service I stay in touch a whole lot differently then before with just email via Outlook.  My means of communications has changed as the technology has changed, as it should.

I don't think Outlook and Exchange are going anywhere, of course I say this because we have a strong Microsoft based infrastructure.  Not everybody is that lucky and it takes skill and resources to maintain that. 

If you don't believe me, my friend Peter Campbell wrote an excellent piece about the options for messaging in an organization.  There are options but it depends on your environment, size and how many features you need to operate as there are pluses and minuses no matter the choice.

We have just completed our migration to the Exchange 2007 platform and I am very excited for all the new features - thank the technical Gods for the small miracle of completion.  It took long enough but we had some major infrastructure that needed to be upgraded before we could even start. 

For instances:  none of the domain controllers in any of my state offices would function as Exchange required all domain controllers have to be Server 2003 or above.  and if that wasn't enough:

• The Blackberry server needed to be upgraded in order to synchronize. 
• The back up software needed an upgrade. 
• The StoreVault LUNs management software didn't like the new 64 bit platform Server 2003 or the Exchange 07 Enterprise which is also 64 bit - more consultation and down time.

Do I have to go on?  Yes I will, and then the virus protection software started blocking all outbound mail, that was fun - port blocking is my friend, but not on an exchange server, lost a weekend figuring that one out.  Not really a whole weekend . . . I was watching playoff games while remotely troubleshooting which was very inconvenient.  Let's not even talk about DNS and public changes to the host records.

The other real plus from the move to Exchange 07 was how easy it is to fully integrate all the Windows Mobile devices, even iPhones are now connecting to not just email but calendars and contacts.  So besides the Blackberry services this means there are more ways for staff to be better connected then ever before. 

Managing the InBox has gotten easier, or at least it should be. 

Upcoming topics for discussion will be on "moat digging, zero based budgeting" and my favorite topic "if you got it, use it - put away the check book".

Specialization without integration is fragmentation - Peter Forbes

Michael Sola for the past 9 years is Director of IT at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation - his comments observations and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of CBF.  Your comments are most welcomed. http://twitter.com/michaelsola

Poverty, Technology and the Environment . . . how to get along

Today is national Blog Action Day - making the connection between Poverty and taking an environmental stand is not an easy one.  Typically one takes precedent over the other.  Trying to put technology into the mix just complicates matters.

We as an organization cover a huge range of people that hits upon all levels of prosperity.  We tend to focus on that economic group that supports and connects with our mission, as we all do.  Organizations like CBF need to pay the bills and we always build into our programs that fund raising aspects which is needed to survive.  Our education and restoration programs however speaks to a wider economic audience which includes inner city and those who are hurting and living in poverty.   I know from what I have read, watched and studied it's hard to make a connection to environmental issues when for some their entire world is a 2 city block environment.  Thinking green typically is focused on surviving financially, not environmentally. 

For most of these people who live in this impoverished environment they wouldn't know the Bay from the Ocean.  This is where the Internet and technology can really have an impact, this is where programs that put technology into the hands of those who are impoverished can further the rally to be environmentally aware.

We try to donate our older equipment to groups like Turtle Wings http://www.turtlewings.com for that very purpose, getting technology out to those who can't afford it.  If anything is accomplished during Blog Action Day I hope we all make a connection to groups like Turtle Wings who are helping those who are without. 

I'm reminded of a scene in the movie Clueless ( you thought I was going to say Star Trek, admit it! ) 

Near the end the main character, Cher, has decided to join a volunteer group that is collecting items for a relief fund.  She's dragging out a pair of skis and sporting goods when her father asks what shes doing and why skis - I'm paraphrasing here but her response was "these people lost everything, even sporting goods." 

I think the same concepts can be applied to our inner cities and those who are living in poverty,  technology deprived communities means they are disconnected and in today's world none of us can afford to be disconnected.

Happy Blog Action day.

Specialization without integration is fragmentation - Peter Forbes

Michael Sola for the past 9 years is Director of IT at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation - his comments observations and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of CBF.  Your comments are most welcomed.

I'm hearing voices . . . not drug induced, promise

A few weeks ago an Administration Department task force was brought together with the purpose of communicating - in a fun way, some of the issues, projects and programs we have going on or are rolling out at our Merrill Center "Community". 

For those that don't know - at CBF, the Administration Department consists of Office Operations, Fleet and Facilities, Contract services and IT - we sometimes call ourselves the "step children" of the organization because our individual programs are so different then the other more unified mission based programs.  Being lumped together makes it a challenge to find common projects to work on, until this came around.

I digress . . . so this interdepartmental / Admin team was formed to come up with an idea on how to present to staff at the fall full staff meeting the happening at the Merrill Center building and how the new education program that now operates from one of the greenest buildings in the world was having an impact.  yep - that's us, one of the greenest buildings in the whole wide world, and that includes windows that open and close, go figure!

Along with that came a challenge from our executive management team (EMT) to come up with a means to provide staff an opportunity to voice concerns, share ideas and hear feedback related to the Merrill Center. This concept has the potential to go beyond the Merrill Center but for now that was the focus. 

Luckily the technical Gods were shining that day, I had just finished browsing this very interesting service that Blackbaud had set up to solicit feedback for the NetCommunity product - they were calling it an Idea Bank which for a software developer makes a whole lot of sense, what better way to get feedback and suggestions? 

This had a twist - it also adds a little social networking into the mix, has your base write in and then comment on a feature or idea that others have suggested. 

It's not a new concept, forums and portals are all over the place - but what UserVoice did that was a little different was they added in the real interaction "voting" concept.  Talk about an easy sell, that's all everybody is talking about these days - voting!

I thought I was Jed Clampett on Beverly Hillbillies - I had struck oil.   UserVoice to the rescue.

Didn't take long to set up a testing area on the UserVoice service, shared it with the team and the next thing we knew the ideas on how to market the concept of an old fashion suggestion box - but in the digital age, started to flow.

What I really admired from this venture was how the cross departmental energy really blossomed and how creative yet cost effective we got in getting staff engaged.  We broke from the traditional presentation style of a staff meeting and acted almost like pied pipers - donned slogan oriented T-Shirts, teasing staff with breakfast goodies to meet in the lobby and then for 20 minutes, actually stand - not sit - during the presentation video.

A video was the vehicle we decided to use because of the complexity of the topic but we never lost the focus on the content and the need to make it entertaining yet thoughtful.  It's OK to laugh, but we all had to learn at the same time.

We had set up the night before a large screen in the middle of the lobby , portable projector, a sound system - come morning we cranked on some music and started the show.  We lowered the shades, broke out the MacBook and presented what we collectively filmed - a 15 min presentation that brought together the recent issues, new services and did it with a bit of humor.  It felt almost festive - lots of excitement, you could feel it in the air.

We opened the presentation with a brief introduction and then showed the video.  Caution:  for every minute of finished product, expect to spend an HOUR per minute to produce, edit and compile - wife was not amused as much of my personal time was spent in front of the Mac - iMovie and iDVD are now my friends, well sort of.

So we'll see how our new LOOP goes, initial comments like "incredibly funny"  "looks pretty innovative"  "how creative" "terrific job" were a good sign but the real test will be: do they use it?  The old saying "you can lead a horse to water" analogy applies.  Today is the first "Brown Bag" training session on how to use the service, hopefully a discussion will be had down the road to look at the long term potential for how it could engage our member base and partners, but for now I'm happy just to hear from staff. 

Talking to our field educators who are brimming with ideas and always out and about, they are excited that this service could be a real useful tool for their program.  Having a portal available to them which not only brings their remote training programs together while allowing those of us that support those efforts into the LOOP - it's pure Texas T, liquid gold!  Wonder if I could use that to power my car?

Specialization without integration is fragmentation - Peter Forbes

Michael Sola for the past 9 years is Director of IT at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation - his comments observations and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of CBF.  Your comments are most welcomed.

The learning never, ever stops . . .

Ok, here it comes - I'm in my late 40's, tail end of the boomers - trying hard to be an X'er wishing I was a Y - still with me?

If you follow how to market and message the current purchasing power of the nation then you are all over this.  I went to a free Blackbaud Delivers workshop last week that focused on Donor Retention - from a tech perspective it was a bit of a reach attending but nobody else was available to go and I'm a firm believer in teaching old dogs new tricks - I've watched Cesar Millan - the Dog Whispererrrrr rules!

I was actually blown away at the "delivers" session which was well attended and had a large mix of NPO's in attendence - I had never really considered the demographic of age before and just how vital that data is in the selection of not just the medium to use, but the actual message content, the "ask", the offer / prize - all of sudden the segmentation light was shining bright and the first thing I did was break out the Crackberrry, message Kristin my Data Services guru to find out how many of our 400,000 plus records we had ages on.  heart palpitations, shortage of breath . . . serious, less then 1/4 - yuk. 

I won't spend time in promoting the virtues of why it's important to know the age of your member base, you'll have to learn that for yourself.  David K. Foot wrote Boom, Bust & Echo: Profiting from the Demographic Shift in the 21st Century - a must read to get a handle on the thinking and trends of these three very distinct groups.

I did note in my last post the generational divide that exists in the use of the technology and how it's used to market.  Now I see we need to make some fundamental changes in what data we start collecting, how we collect it and then what we do with it.  So how do we do that?

• Contracting with some data demographic services that could match up the birth dates of our member base may be the first step -
• collecting information via forms -
• via web pages -
• surveys and polls -
• re-tooling -

All of that seems to be in order.  But will that really work?  The organization as a whole needs to be focused on this concept, in fact how we make that first, second and third contact needs to be on the minds of all staff of every organization.

I was invited to participate in a recent podcast where I had the distinct honor of chatting with Danielle Brigada from the National Wildlife Federation and Jonathon Coleman from The Nature Conservancy : both can be followed on Twitter.  Danielle and Jonathon are pushing all sorts of boundaries and are seriously looking at the demographics and looking at them very hard.   Having to respond to constant ROI requests, demographics becomes a critical measuring tools for these rather large and well respected organizations.  While they seem to be struggling with a consolidated data sources they are no strangers to experimentation and testing of markets - trying to find that one message, that one group to connect with is each of their goals.

I had wondered about that before when I was talking about the Clean Water message / mock presidential campaign we were running - are we targeting the right audience?  I don't have the answer to that but my guess is no we didn't, it's a different pay grade then what I'm tasked with to explain why - I'm just making sure the right bull horn is being selected, plugged in and is it working?  Results?  In this medium trying is the key.

One thing Jonathon said struck me as sort of funny, the successful Little Green Patch program ( read Michael Stein's blog for details ) TNC started he stated had raised " . . . only $50 K . . . a small drop."  It occurred to me that for some of us NPO's $50 K could fund that other body maybe even two bodies that we need to "try".   The roles and amount of work required to not only do the work but report out on the results and then research to make additional attempts, test markets, try and try again - that all takes time and as we all know, Time = Money.  The old saying us boomers have always heard - you need to spend money to make money - seems like it holds true no matter the generation gap.

It's good to keep learning, the more you learn the more you know.  My brain is starting to go into divide over flow mode - oh no, reboot and try again.

Specialization without integration is fragmentation - Peter Forbes

Michael Sola for the past 9 years is Director of IT at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation - his comments observations and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of CBF.  Your comments are most welcomed.

The "I'm confused" Post . . .

I sat here staring at the blank page far too long, stuck on the title - not a good way to start this thing, trying to make sense of this past week and draw from one of the many events I wanted to share.  I feel bad I haven't kept up with this blog and the numbers are showing what happens when you skip town and leave the planet, you loose favor as well as an audience.

Last week I finally got around to showing my mug at one of our weekly "votethebay" strategy sessions where we were discussing why it was so hard to attract our loyal two hundred thousand members to sign what should be a no brain'er, a petition to raise attention on the need for clean air and clean water during the Presidential campaigns.  Can it be that hard to raise a few thousand signatures?

Evidently so - in looking at the numbers we can see potentially where the problems are,

for one thing our membership is simply not engaged in this medium or perhaps the topic isn't resonnating with our members or maybe we tied our hands a bit too much by taking the character way to seriously. 

I don't know the answer but it was clear that some within our ranks aren't feeling the love for the messenger and that could also be a factor.  Not everybody knows who Captain John Smith is  - do you?  Have you ever seen Jay Leno do his street interviews on the Tonight Show?  Let's face it, history is not the strong suite of the majority of Americans.

So if our members won't engage and don't recognize who Smith is in trying to bring home the need for Clean Water and Clean Air  during this very important election year, then perhaps it's time to reach out beyond our base and try something new and go after a different audience. 

I think its amusing to see peoples comfort zone and what they're willing to do based on the medium available to them.  Take my kids for instance, now bear with me . . . a few weeks back we lost our cable for the day while I was at work

- the world had come to a grinding halt at Casa Sola, at least as far as my kids were concerned, no cable TV, no phone, but worst, NO INTERNET.  It's OK, don't call social services - they did manage to find alternate forms of entertainment, these are after all teenagers we're talking about.

As the day progressed and I became aware of this horrifying condition I called their cell phones as the main phone was also out - ahhh the power of cable -  basically to let them know I was working late and give them the green light to eat their number one nutritional food group - Pizza.  Yes, Pizza is it's own food group at Casa Sola, so here goes the chain of events . . .

• "Go ahead and order a pizza for delivery and I'll be home by nine." 
• Hang up
• A few minutes later my phone rings, "we can't order the pizza" - "why not? " I ask . . .
• "Dad, the internet is down" . . . long pause, VERY long pause
• "use the phone" I say
• "the phone's not working" - hello????  "use your cell phone" - I respond, I was starting to feel my head pound
• "but the number is programmed in the phone and we typically order and pay over the Internet" - the world may actual stop spinning I thought to myself
• "it's called Information" I say "and use your credit card" ( this is my college bound computer wiz son I'm having this conversation with ) -
• long sigh ( God forbid he actually pays for anything ) - "ok" - he finally says and I can hear it in his voice, not a happy camper. 
• Hang up. 
• A few minutes later - my phone rings, it's my other son, the freakishly tall but younger one who has now been delegated the task of ordering the pizza, I actually admired that move, my oldest son delegated . . . very nice -
• "which Papa Johns do we use" he asks . . . longer pause on my part - "where do we live?" - I ask -
• "oh, right and how do I pay for this because we usually use the internet and I have no money."
• I'm now banging my head on the desk - "there's cash in an envelope by the phone with a twenty dollar bill in it, use that" I say . . .
• "Oh, ok - but the pizza only costs twelve what about the difference? and how do I tip him - we usually use the internet you know." . . . more banging of my head. 

How did this happen?  I wondered. Two grown boys, don't know how to call information, can't order a pizza without the use of a web site and have no clue how to ask for change or initiate a tip using cash?  What has technology done?

On one hand I have a current member base who can't or perhaps won't use the technology to engage with us.  There is only a very small percentage of that 200,000 base we can rely on when it comes to full time engagement at the technology level and the message better resonate when they do engage.  Then on the other hand, I have two children who represent our future member base who don't know how to function without technology - interesting dynamics, ehh?

I'm thinking my title isn't half bad now because I'm so confused . . .

Specialization without integration is fragmentation - Peter Forbes

Michael Sola for the past 9 years is Director of IT at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation - his comments observations and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of CBF.  Your comments are most welcomed.

Shouting from the mountain . . . literally

I started writing this from Upstate New York, literally nestled in the mountains of Delaware County, where I'm borrowing ISP service from my friend Russ and Cara's country home which we are now calling MacValley's Edge clicking away on our Mac's while waiting for the bacon to finish sizzling - hmmmmm, bacon.

Cara is an ATT guru who spends 100% of her time teleworking and I love talking geek with her - Russ is my best friend who I have known since my high school days and I'd rather he not talk too much about my "Fidel Castro" look back in the day especially when playing Tennis or my lousy backhand and dish washing skills.

Last week ended with a rather high note in that we participated in a "mini tech" conference sponsored by our Annapolis friends the US Navy Alumni Association.  I love these guys / gals - I really do.  They have such a sense of team and family that is hard to find in the tech industry and something I strive for and am drawn to. 

Besides our platforms and similar software infrastructure where we have commonality is our struggles to impart what we do as technologist to those we support who don't always "get" or comprehend how the tech can help them not only do their jobs, but do it better.

This concept came up several times and during my 30 min presentation when I was being my animated self - I am after all part Italian, if you tied up my hands I most likely would stop talking - I was explaining how over the past two years IT had partnered with the Communications Web team in educating the organization and the steps we had taken to get to a point of acceptance with the use of Web 2.0 tools yet continued to see resistance or rather a struggle to connect in seeing how these tools can benefit CBF.

It was at this point I got tagged by Skid Hayworth the VP of Communications with the Navy Alumni as to why I was leading the presentation about how social networking was being implemented at CBF and not someone from the Communications team.  Evidently I had stepped into what was a sensitive internal struggle and I honestly stated as the head technologist it was my job to not only test the waters but find the right solutions to work.  Luckily I was not alone in this assessment as my partner in crime Maria Shook, who was also present, immediatly chimed in about our partnership and the team approach we have taken - plus Maria is less animated!

I relayed to Skid that while it's Communications job to shout from the mountain top I had to make sure they were using the right sized bull horn.  At which point my fellow IT dwellers also chimed in and relayed how the role of IT is to not only engage and educate our clients on technology but to also inspire them to use these tools. 

After a hearty lunch with Skid and more conversations with the various members of the conference the effort must have worked because by the end of the day I had a new Facebook Friend request . . . from Skid. 

So along with many rounds of thanks from those at the session we also managed to hook up with the CEO of FreeCause Matt Adkisson making the session a rousing success.  I can't wait to see what happens with FreeCause as the CBF roadmap continues to evolve and given the integration available along with their product and our infrastructure, this could be something very exciting - perhaps the next Lil Green Crab? 

It's not about keeping up with the Jones it's about knowing where the Jones are, evaluting what is out there, and just in case we need to hop on board and climb the mountain we know the route and what to use to get there.  Has anybody seen my GPS?  I may need to change the gender or perhaps the accent, it keeps yelling at me to make a U-Turn.

Specialization without integration is fragmentation - Peter Forbes

Michael Sola for the past 9 years is Director of IT at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation - his comments observations and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of CBF.  Your comments are most welcomed.

Superstar . . . nahhhhh

I'm not gloating, really I'm not.  I got called a "Superstar" this week and trust me it wasn't my evaluation but from my favorite PR / Media Goddess from Blackbaud the adorable Melanie Milonas who called me that I think to butter me up but it was after the fact. I swear it didn't go to my head but it sounded nice and after the past few rough weeks, was a much needed compliment.

To back track my newly found Superstar status,

• I was the hero to my DBA team when I resolved at least two program issues - both web related, go figure
• Got my client services team focused on our new Juniper firewall system
• I got tagged for a quote in a NetCommunity 5.5 Press Release,
• Participated in my first big podcast - remotely no less
• and last but not least, the very same day was tagged to lead a 30 min presentation at the USNA mini-tech conference made up of our local peers who are all in the same proverbial tech boat struggling with how to approach the concepts of Social networking and program integration.

The two topics I will share with you this week ( yes, this week - I plan on doing two of these ) will be to focus on the podcast and the conference. 

The podcast was actually a lot of fun, brought back memories of my days doing College Radio.  I ended up managing the station during my last year at SUNY - almost became an obsession, I really got a taste for what marketing, promotion and not to mention learning how the whole broadcast biz worked.  Prepped me nicely for the IT world which I participate in but didn't exist back in the day when I went to school!

In this case I locked myself in a meeting room for 2 hours which I used to prep, test the equipment and then participate in the actual 30 min  conversation.  I ended up using the MacBook Pro which for what ever reason did not play nice with any external microphone I dug up and me like an idiot ( I know what you're thinking, Superstars can NOT possibly be idiots but alas, we are ), I ended up using the built in microphone which had a bit of an echo effect when you hear me talk. 

I totally forgot that sitting upstairs was the MAudio mixer equipment I had purchased last year just for the occasion.  Out of sight out of mind I think is the saying.  I think what threw me was that this was the first time I was using Skype to talk to the Blackbaud studios that was connecting me, Garrett from USNA Alumni, and the other BB staff down at Charleston who were participating in the discussion.

If you didn't catch the press release, Netcommunity 5.5 just went out to the public this past Friday and while we managed to get in early on the release the goal of this Baudcast ( as they call the pod cast ) was to talk about the integration and process benefits for what we as an organization were looking forward to using once we begin moving some of the web platform over to BBNC. 

It was actually my first time using Skype and I found the whole experience to be very easy and a lot simpler then I anticipated.  Chad Norman, who hosts and setup the Baudcast walked me through the whole process.  Chad's an excellent host and is a natural at this - felt very relaxed during the discussion and I think that was key, how casual the banter was, not forced at all, almost like having a chat at a pub or at a coffee house - after the second or third Americano is there a difference?

Setting up and doing a pod cast isn't as hard as you may think - and it doesn't have to be expensive.  We have invested on this front and it's just starting to get used more in some of the messaging platforms our Communications and EPR programs are doing. 

In fact the MAudio equipment got a good work out as we start pulling together our Votethebay messaging and is a great fit for any of the YouTube work we are doing.  Audio talk overs is key to a good video and having equipment that you can just plug in and use whether in the field or in a studio made the process for staff who aren't experts in this area a welcomed relief.

The one source I used when looking at equipment and guidance was from one of our Citrix Superstars Brian Madden - Brian hosts his own podcast that has been very informative and brings a nice balance to the complex world of remote access, which we at CBF rely heavily upon.

I will focus later this week on what it takes to "Shout from the mountain top" and how a little peer to peer networking, in your own backyard, is worth more then gold-pressed latinum - I linked this currency to Wikipedia in case you thought I made it up, remember:  Superstars don't make anything up, we don't have to . . . wonder what size hat I'm wearing this week?

Specialization without integration is fragmentation - Peter Forbes

Michael Sola for the past 9 years is Director of IT at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation - his comments observations and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of CBF.  Your comments are most welcomed.

Brand New Year - Happy New Years "IT thing" Budget!

Yep - we are partying like it's 1999 all over again, our new fiscal year has begun and with it . . . . well actually nothing, it seems just like it did last fiscal year, the same.  Our fiscal year started July 1 and the past few weeks have been a bit daunting closing out the year.  The good news is I was under budget for the second year in a row, which I'm not sure is a good thing.

I recall my college days when I was the station manager of the campus radio station.  It was actually called a club and as such had a budget.  I think I've mentioned that I'm part Italian and raised to be frugal - when I came in under budget my first year as opposed to rewarding me with a pat on the back instead they cut my budget on the spot.  Are you serious?

Being frugal comes with the territory when you're running an IT opp especially in the non profit world.  The economy and rising costs is all we hear about these days and lets face it, we are all getting hit pretty hard on the tech front to curb costs.  Consultants costs are up, service contracts are skyrocketing, utilities, software, licensing, well you know the drill.  Not counting my payroll, 80% of my operating budget is all fixed costs which doesn't leave a lot of room to wiggle or for that matter to cut.

I feel like I've just been ordained a priest and it's that time of year where I have to get up front of the congregation and talk about the annual giving drive or new building fund.  Raising funds for Tech seems like a biblical challenge for me, for the organization as a whole to be honest -

Hi brothers and sisters, Father Mike here, looking for y'all to digg down deep to help fund a hot sexy looking NetApp / Storevault SAN device with the pretty green lights that power the 4 terabyte hard drives which hold our data with the bright orange fiber cables coming out the back. It's pretty ehh?  and it costs quite a few shiny nickels.

Work boats, Oyster reefs, Tree plantings, Education outings - these are the things that easily attract funding and I'd say that's the case for a great many of us NPO's, mission based funding and grants are always the money maker / the easy sell.  I can focus on process improvement till the Clagett Cows come home but costs savings only goes so far. 

This is the first year in a long time that we couldn't allocate funds for the 1/3 desktop replacement program, instead we're gonna stretch another year out of the older ones and outfit them with RAM upgrades, provided we can get by the recent slew of power supply and system board failures.

I read with interest a blog posting that Arlene Spenser wrote in June entitled: How Your Nonprofit's Website Can Increase the Grants Your Organization Raises I liked the approach, especially on the web front, however one of the challenges I have seen is convincing the grant writers and Development officers to focus on tech funding when so much of their time has to be focused on keeping the core programs funded: Education, Restoration, Communications all the environmental projects that we are known for.

I think there is a quote on my Facebook bio where a friend of mine had stated: "If it requires electricity it must be an IT thing"  we were joking about this of course but it does raise the question of what happens when the "IT thing" stops working?  Can we still do what we do without the "IT thing"?  Shouldn't we focus on grant and tech funding programs to keep the "IT thing" functioning?

I don't have the answer to that anymore, I'd like to think that technology hasn't completely overwhelmed everything we do to promote and engage the public to take notice and act for what Captain John Smith called "our God given rights; clean water, clean air and clean food" - but my guess is we have reached that state of our civilization that shouting from the mountaintop just doesn't work without a plugged in bullhorn.  We can't seem to do without what the tech world provides in every facet of our organization, indeed in every facet of our society.

Besides, I don't think you can get Broadband signal on the top of some of these mountains, not without a booster or satellite and then don't I need electricity?  where do I plug it all in again?

Specialization without integration is fragmentation - Peter Forbes

Michael Sola for the past 9 years is Director of IT at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation - his comments observations and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of CBF.  Your comments are most welcomed.

Guilty . . . as charged

I think I should be ordered to stay home, go directly home, don't pass Go and for heavens sake - leave the 2001 90K miles, crumpled rear bumper with the very worn blue Save The Bay bumper sticker car in the driveway.  Did I use enough adjectives?

Could it be that simple?  If I want to reduce 20% of my weekly travel budget all I have to do is stay home one day a week?  Does that mean a 40% reduction is equivalent to 2 days per week?  This past week as part of the MD CIO Roundtable which I sponsored at CBF, the very timely topic of telecommuting was front and center. 

The venue was of course "spot on" the Zu coffee kicked butt and it was a healthy and environmentally friendly assortment of snacks - I had to remind the 20 or so Directors and CIO types to NOT eat the corn made plastic ware, but I think the funny part for me was doing the tour - nothing is as satisfying as when you unscrew the cap of the "clivus mulch / waste" and they actually put their noses in and take a whiff!

Where was I?  Oh yeah, I've been banished to home - but here's why - because I've been guilty of a misconception over telecommuting.  A friend of mine was interviewing with a federal government role and it was a panel of three people, at the Q&A part she asked about telecommuting.  Oh, no said the first two - we don't allow it, you must be here.  The third looked sheepishly down and started quoting the "policy" that neither of the others even knew existed and then started to question the policy during the interview.  This runs true for many government agencies - the mind set that if "I can't see you then you must not be working."  I'm also guilty of thinking that telecommuting workers need to be held to a higher standard.  Well thats bunk, as I recently learned.

At this months session we were introduced to a gentleman that presented the concepts of telecommuting and the challenges we can expect from the technical side of the house.  Chuck Wilsker is the President and CEO of the Telework Coalition (TelCoa), a not forprofit association headquartered in Washington, DC.

TelCoa works to enable the advancement of Virtual, Mobile, and Distributed Work through Research, Education, Technology, and Legislation. His interests include both promoting the benefits of Telework as a means of providing employment opportunities for disabled workers, including service disabled veterans, older workers, and rural workers, and its use as a critical part of disaster avoidance and business continuity programs.  Promoting the bottom line business benefits of telework is also a primary initiative.

So let's be clear, telecommuting or working from home was not the true topic, it was about working anywhere BUT in a typical office environment.  It was a very engaging conversation and fit in nicel especially as CBF has been known to testify and promote the concepts of telecommuting . . . . sorry, Teleworking, and how it can benefit the environment - I wish however we did more internally with Teleworking and perhaps this is an opportunity to try to promote many of Chuck's concepts and extend our program, especially given that last weeks full staff meetings many of the teams informed me that IT was the topic of conversation and we needed to be more mobile.

I happened by chance to have a "hallway" conversation with our Chief of Staff about the topic and he brought up yet another point that we had factored in as a "con" to the concepts of Teleworking - and that was the very impromptu one on one chance meeting you have with a staff member that won't happen if you are remote, very much like the one we were having at that very moment.  That same night I had attended this garden party at Homestead Gardens sponsored by one of my tech partners and relayed this conversation. 

Interesting response: in a nut shell, we look at the one on one face to conversation as the norm, but in the new world of tech that's no longer the norm.  Instant Messaging, Web Cam, smart phones, texting - these are the next generations tools which will replace the face to face.  The tool shed is changing.

I look at how many of our services now are hosted externally which makes "access from anywhere" fairly simple.  In fact the concensus from the group was that technically, we are already there - web based apps, IM, Citrix for secure access, smart phones, broadband wireless laptops - it's all there and in fact even at CBF we have much of this infrastructure in place.  What we don't have and what most of the folks who were sitting around the table don't have is clear defined guidelines and buy-in that allows more staff to participate in this opportunity.

Chuck Wilsker called it P to the 3rd power - Process, Program, Policy - I think I got that right.  You need a process that allows for the deployment and identifiable benefit to have a more mobile work force.  Putting in place Programs that clearly measure performance is also critical or you can't validate the work force whether they are in or out of the office.  Staff need to be held accountable if they are in the office working or working mobile but they should not be singled out or given additional work because they are not actually being seen.  This is what feeds into the policy part - a uniformed policy that all departments and all areas of the organization follows. 

I think that's the part which I sometimes stuggle with, in our case Teleworking is at the discretion of each departments VP - that concept needs to be explored and I'm thinking that we in the tech field need to work a little harder to champion that change. 

Let's be honest, we aren't talking about less work for IT - in fact having more staff working remotely puts more burden on us as now we have more relying on remote access points and less control over that process.  Think about it - are we going to now provide laptops for EVERYBODY?  What about Cable / DSL high speed ISP access?  Wireless broadband?  How about something as simple as Virus and Firewall protection licensing?  How do I know that Kate's kids aren't going to jump on her PC while she's taking a break and surf some site and download a trojan or spyware?

Everything changes the more staff start operating in a mobile fashion and all of that needs to be carefully weighed, discussed and mapped out.   Don't get me wrong, I am all in favor of having a true mobile work force, it falls very nicely into disaster preparedness plans, has a positive impact to those offices that need to rent or purchase smaller space with which to operate, less utility costs - and let's get real here - less supplies.  I'd be very happy running down to Staples and buying a $3 ream of paper that will last me 6 months then put another $8 of gas in the aging inefficient vehicle sitting in my driveway to cover one days worth of travel.  For that matter I'm betting if I had to buy my own supplies I'd be more frugal in using them because that is the bottom line for me, out of pocket costs.

That was one of many topics we discussed, the reimbursement aspects.  Hello?  Am I really going to nickle and dime CBF for a ream of paper and some print cartridges if I'm not having to go broke filling up the gas tank and I get to wear my pink bunny slippers all day?  or the fact that I'm now recouping 90 min of my life because I'm no longer sitting in traffic?  or how about the fact that I'm now doing more to lessen my carbon emissions?  I don't want my employer to pay me to travel to work, I want to work efficiently and maybe that means more time at home.

You know what?  Sign me up and while we're at it - I'll take two reams of paper, I'd rather stay stocked for the whole year.

Specialization without integration is fragmentation - Peter Forbes

Michael Sola for the past 9 years is Director of IT at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation - his comments observations and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of CBF.  Your comments are most welcomed.