Move Completed

Generation FIVE has completed its move to a smaller office space (although unpacking continues). I disassembled the four computers and the LAN that connected them to each other, to the printer, and to the DSL modem, helped move them to the new office, and reassembled them there. I learned the hard way the difference between a straight-through cable and a crossover cable. I had read on wonderful Wikipedia that there were such things as crossover cables, but just didn't imagine we (Generation FIVE) had so many of them on hand, until I found that for a connection between a hub and a computer, some cables worked and others didn't, and I started looking at the colors of the insulation on the wires where they come into the connectors. I also learned to look out for broken hooks on Ethernet connectors. I'm still not sure exactly what conditions have to prevail to convince the router (I guess it is the responsible party) to give the hosts all unique (within our private network) IP numbers. If I power up everything in just the right sequence, it seems to work. I haven't come across a cable for the router's console port (it seems to want serial), nor does anyone currently here know how to administer it. But that may not matter, because it is working. The DSL took a couple of days to come in from the phone company, but it's now working, too.

Looking ahead, I have a pretty ambitious looking list of tasks for the year. My priority according to my supervisor is to arrange that a certain database can be reached from three workstations instead of just one. This database is about contacts and when they have donated, attended events and trainings, etc. Pretty much, the people and the events where they have interacted with the organization. The data are managed by a tool (or collection of scripts, templates, etc.) called "ebase", which depends on a licensed DBMS, Filemaker Pro, which evidently not only costs money but requires either a Microsoft operating system or a Mac. We may be looking at paying money for an upgrade to multi-user, while there may be software out there that will do it all for free. I'm not sure whether it is riskier to spend the money on new licenses (and maybe find later it wasn't necessary and we can't get the money back), or spend the time researching moving to a different DBMS and/or "relationship" or "contact" management system or the like (and maybe lose too much time researching). My supervisor thinks anything other than continuing with the current tool, upgraded as necessary, is too complicated to even think about, and maybe he is right.

Gen 5's web site is being handled by a consultant I haven't been introduced to yet, but from how it allows an administrator to update the content by editing over the web, it could be running on one of those content management systems (Drupal, Joomla, Plone, or similar). Do contact management and content management overlap somewhere?

Then there's another goal, to arrange that coworkers in remote cities be able to update the office database the same way as people in the central office can.

There may or may not be some solution to all three of these goals, but my priorities for some of them over others, along with constraints on how fast I can find out the requirements and desires (due to some people being absent for a while and others hard to reach), may make it necessary to solve each need independently of the others, and lose any advantage of possible synergy.

In response to my last report, the subject of saving money came up. And that leads to the subject of calculating present value. To save money, it's sometimes necessary to make decisions about whether to pay now or pay later. For example, if you need a house, there's the rent-or-buy decision. And for equipment and software, the buy-it-or-build-it decision. For figuring out which option will save money and which will cost more, it's necessary to calcualte present value, or the time value of money, as they say. And for that, you need to know the inflation rate (or so I contend). You need it to calculate the real interest rate from the nominal interest rate by subtracting the inflation rate. So, what rate is safest to use, for the inflation of the USD? And once you know that, what do you use for the nominal interest rate, that on Treasury bills, or that on bank CDs?

For a real example where the time value of money would matter, there's the question of whether to try to sell the (friendly) co-tenants of the building on sharing our DSL, vs. keeping quiet, in which case they would probably continue to use their cable service and we would continue to use our DSL service. A monthly saving would be secured if we shared, but there would an up-front cost to wire the building to connect our respective private LANs together. Pay so much now, to save so much a month, forever. A classic time-value-of-money question.

Comment from Morgan Sully on July 23, 2007 - 1:20pm

Hey Jack,
sounds like you've got some really great challenges ahead of you.

The Chinese character for 'challenge' is also the same as the one for 'opportunity'.

There are softwares out there that link content management with contact management. I'm a fan of CiviCRM. It can be used within the Drupal as well as Joomla frameworks.

Here's another link from our wiki on some other tools you may find helpful: http://www.ctcvista.org/digest/spring07/Trends/Tools_For_The_Next_Revolution

Are you Linux user?

Comment from Jack Waugh on July 23, 2007 - 6:48pm

Thanks for the link; some of that may indeed be relevant.

As for Linux, Generation FIVE is wholly Microsoft. I run Linux (Ubuntu) on my personal computer, however.

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Jack Waugh
703-863-3200