NABUUR in Social ActionsI think I first met Peter Deitz at Web of Change, talking about his work as micro-philanthropy consultant, and his idea to mash up the actionable opportunities on all the platforms for social change. That became Social Actions, a platform where you can find things to do: join an event, sign a petition, donate to a cause, give out a loan, volunteer.

Those things you can do come from a variety of sources, like Care2, GlobalGiving, Kiva, Idealist.org, and starting this week, also from NABUUR, the online volunteer network.

I've finally made to switch: my desktop now is open source! I've pushed back for quite some time, had too many programs that still required Windows, and generally just wasn't ready. But now I did it. My laptop needed a fresh install, and I tried out the latest Ubuntu (going under names like 8.04 and Hardy and Hardy Heron). And decided to stay with it, after trying out things for several weeks. Why?

NetSquared already has started. Sitting next to again an impressive cake, the room is buzzing while I write my intro. Rolf Kleef, from Amsterdam, here to enjoy San Francisco for some three weeks, and doing the last little bits with Roshani and Mike of Oneworld US to be ready for two rollercoaster days!

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Crossposting from my blog at NetSquared

Many NGOs are good at forming strategic alliances to achieve their objectives (they're usually also good at competing each other nearly to death, often at the same time, but I'll keep that for a different post maybe). Yet, at the level of web technology, this usually seems to be limited to the level of exchanging tips and tricks, perhaps some RSS feeds, and referring each other to providers and vendors.

Two major developments are changing that situation now:

1. Many organisations are investing in Drupal for their web platforms. This creates an eco-system where it's easier to exchange actual technology, and to talk about it on a higher level of abstraction of artefacts and concepts.
2. There's an exploding interest in the NGO world to align strategies and investments in technology. The "Tool Pool" discussion revived at the Ecampaigning Forum, and the NetSquared conference next week brings this closer as well. Not to mention to emergence of more and more BarCamps like Social Innovation Camp.

First post here after a long silence... maybe too busy with twitter, Nabuur, WebEnq, Ecampaigning Forum, NetSquared. And now preparing my short intro into "open everything" to set the stage for Thursday's meetup of the E-collaboration group.

Within a smaller group, we had some discussions about "open", and about how choosing technology for your campaign or organisation is also a political, cultural, and ethical choice. Features and price often dominate, and lots of stuff on the internet is for free. But there's no such thing as a free lunch: there are many lessons we learned in development aid that equally apply when your organisation gets such "free" web development aid. Lets not spend decades to learn them again.

So while on the one hand, people are trail-blazing the concept of "open everything", there are, on the other hand, many people working in international cooperation who are just starting to look at why all this "open" matters, and how it can help them achieve their mission.

In my third year coming to NetSquared, I find myself in a new role: as one of 21 designated "project leads" who will be trying to connect the featured projects with the developers ready to work on an NGO project.