Free and Open Source Software

There are a million ways to make a website, but my personal favorite – and arguably the most popular – is WordPress. Because of its ease of use, price ($0.00!), and community, WordPress has been my Content Management System (CMS) of choice for every client – including nonprofits, small business, and university departments – I have worked with as a freelance web designer.

Dear fellow FOSS researchers,

You are cordially invited to participate in Free and Open Source Software for Sustainable Development in Africa or FOSSDeva survey. The FOSSDeva survey is part of the FOSSINA project which employs a number of methodologies and tools to investigate the potential impact of FOSS technologies and services in public and private sectors in developing countries in general and Sub-Sahara Africa, in particular.

To participate in the FOSSDeva survey, please follow the url:

http://servnet.ias.unu.edu/limesurvey/index.php?sid=86668&newtest=Y〈=en

Yesterday I signed up for an account at SocialOomph, a service that extends the power of Twitter and other social networking services. I am still learning about SocialOomph and am intrigued by it, but today I received an even more intriguing message from them (see below) that describes StatusNet and why we should all support it.

I am so pleased to learn that Kabissa has won the community vote part of the FACT Social Justice Challenge on Netsquared, and that we are in the running for the $5,000 prize and development support which will be awarded to 5 of the 15 finalists tomorrow, 20 October. It is so encouraging - and motivating! - to have such an outpouring of support from Kabissa stakeholders, not just in votes but in comments and "fandom" (53 fans as of this writing!) on our Kabissa Connections project page on Netsquared. Thank you! Please keep the comments coming, and let us know how YOU will use Kabissa Connections or if you want to partner with us to implement it.  

Looking at the Final Judging Guidelines and Voting Criteria, it looks like Kabissa Connections has a very good chance of winning: it is quite feasible, has a high social justice potential by empowering and strengthening African civil society organizations, is already attracting attention from Kabissa stakeholders, makes very innovative use of @civicrm and @drupal, and is very much scalable as an open data, free and open source software project.

Keep your fingers crossed, everyone!

Update: these workshops have been cancelled, but there is an interesting discussion now starting amongst potential CiviCRM developers and users in Berlin to get together soon to start collaborating on bringing CiviCRM to the German "Sprachraum". This will involve localizing the application and documentation into German.

As for Kabissa, we are pleased to be in the middle of an upgrade to the latest version of CiviCRM which we hope to launch in the coming weeks - so we will need guidance and support on setting it up optimally for our needs. Let us know if you're a CiviCRM export and interested in volunteering. Thanks!

Oxfam Deutschland has graciously agreed to host hands-on CiviCRM workshops on October 6-7, targeting nonprofits using (or considering) CiviCRM in their organizations as well as web developers that want to add CiviCRM implementation and customization to their toolchest.

CiviCRM is available as a companion module for Drupal and Joomla content management systems, and like these tools is also open source software and available as a free download.

The CiviCRM team have also agreed to give a quick overview of CiviCRM on October 5 at the Socialbar ("ein Treffen von Weltverbesserern" = a social event for dogooders).

Workshop Registration is open!

If you are interested in participating in the workshops, see the following links to learn more and to register:

• Berlin user and administrator training : Oct 06, 2010 9:00 AM
• Berlin developer and implementer training : Oct 07, 2010 9:00 AM

If you have any questions about the event, feel free to contact me as I am helping to coordinate the event.

As you will see, the trainers have an agile approach and the agenda is still not set in stone. It will be finalized at the event so that the workshop can be tailored to the participants. CiviCRM is fairly feature rich, so before you come be sure to review the CiviCRM manual and take CiviCRM for a test drive.

Drumbeat is a new project led by Mozilla Foundation, the folks who create the free and open source Firefox web browser. The initiative, which is organized around community-driven events and projects, is still taking shape and community input is being solicited broadly - so if you have an opinion on what is needed or want to get involved early, now is a good time to jump in.

I think Africa has a great deal to offer Drumbeat, and Drumbeat might also help bring attention to the many innovative social/mobile media projects going on in Africa. 

I am also considering Kabissa's possible role in helping to promote Drumbeat in Africa and so would be glad to hear your reactions to Drumbeat and if you want to get involved. 

The Kabissa online community platform was built using Drupal and CiviCRM, two very powerful freely available open source web applications. It would be great to get more folks in Seattle who are working in Africa to pick up on the benefits of CiviCRM for nonprofit/charitable work and consider using it. A terrific opportunity to find out more is coming up - a new CiviCRM Users Group will meet for the first time on May 27th. Details at http://bit.ly/b1vUY1

I just received notice of the next Drupal Convention coming up next month, and am curious to see if African developers are planning to attend or contribute. Drupal is the open source platform that powers the Kabissa community website, and DrupalCon is always a much heralded and powerful event. Follow on twitter at @drupalcon and @drupal. Details below. 

Keeping your web browser up to date is always a good idea to make sure websites function properly for you, but now you will soon start having problems with Gmail and Google Apps if you don't, according to an email I got from Google today (see below). This is an aggressive move on the part of Google that advances the field and will ultimately benefit everybody. I actively use Google's Chrome browser and Mozilla Firefox, both of which I strongly recommend over Internet Explorer.

I got an interesting email just now from Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the One Laptop Per Child project. I've pasted it below - if you have any extra XO laptops lying around and no longer need them, you may want to donate them to be used in child education projects in Haiti.

Personally, I am a little ambivalent about the offer - in it he seems to reinforce the idea that the laptops are not as useful as we all had hoped but that they are still useful for use by children in poor countries.