Digital Arts Service Corps - tamm

Updates from the TANs!

Laura Hanley — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 00:01:26 +0000

On Monday, January 8, 2007, the TANs took the time to gather for our monthly conference call.

Cheryl entertained us with an informative and interesting presentation on Disaster Recovery Planning. An issue applicable to anyone and everyone, she told us what a disaster recovery plan is, why to have one, and gave us a step-by-step guide to creating one!

Next it was time for Best of/Worst of for December/early January. Here’s what people had to say!

Best thing that happened:

Tim – He enjoyed his time off during the holidays. In addition, he took advantage of the opportunity to sit in on a board meeting for his organization, which he found interesting. Way to learn new things!

Kamala – Kamala also enjoyed her vacation and took time to spend time with her family. Work-related, she has been testing databases, which she enjoys.

Karl – Karl spent his vacation time in Seattle with his family, and we all know spending time with your family during the holidays is a plus. Work-wise, he’s been spending time cleaning up the database and making it user-friendly.

Andrea – She successfully completed her EMT classes! Congrats, Andrea!

Laura – Laura also enjoyed her vacation time, splitting her time between being with her family in Indiana and seeing friends in Kentucky.

Corey – Corey got new Taebo videos! Now she and Laura can spend their mornings getting fit…and waking up the people who live under them. :)

Cheryl – Cheryl has taken the initiative to join an organization and meet new people! She attended a pot-luck meal, which was quite enjoyable.

Worst thing that happened:

Tim – A lot was waiting for him when he returned to work from his vacation. Getting caught up on things is never fun, unless you like that sort of thing (which he does not).

Kamala – Her home computer crashed. :( ‘Nuff said.

Karl – He doesn’t think that getting caught up when returning from vacation is much fun either.

Andrea – Despite the fact that she just finished her EMT classes, she’s been battling being sick.

Laura – See her blogs Unnecessary (?) adventures and Unnecessary (?) adventures – Part II. Being sick and taking SevenCorners into account when trying to receive services is no picnic.

Corey – Her car got mysteriously scratched….and it’s leased, so she has to get it fixed so she’s not fined when her lease is up. That’s not easy on a VISTA budget.

Cheryl – One day she was carrying her backpack, and she noticed that her food-containing tupperware dish leaked all over everything. What a mess!

Our next call is scheduled for 2/2/2007 at 4:00pm EST/1:00 PST. Until then, be good, stay warm, and keep on keeping on!!

Random question of the month (added by Laura): How do you create your smileys? Do they face left? (: or do they face right? :) In addition, are you right- or left-handed? I wonder if there's a correlation between which direction you make your smileys and which hand you write with.

Meeting notes from 12/8/06. (My bad, TANs!)

Laura Hanley — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 05:22:12 +0000

Whoops...so I realized that I haven't posted the notes from our conference call on 12/8/06. Here it is 1/7/07 and our next conference call is tomorrow. My apologies for the delay in posting these. I promise to be more quick in posting tomorrow's notes (if you let me!), do a better job, and be more interesting.

Tim got us started out with a very informative, interesting, and later entertaining, presentation on using on-line collaboration software, specifically Vyew. He did a better job than I could ever do explaining it in his blog. If you haven’t checked it out already, you really should…it’s neat stuff!

Next up will be Cheryl, who will teach us about having a Disaster Recovery Plan. No matter what part of the country, or the world, you’re in it’s always important to have a plan, and we look forward to learning how to go about getting that done!

We briefly discussed using MySpace for the organizations we’re VISTAs for, but I don’t really remember where that discussion ended up going…any comments/input would be greatly appreciated!

Next, we did a best of/worst of for November and early December (personally or job-related). Sorry if any of the details got mixed up or something is listed as happening that didn’t happen that way…feel free to let me know or correct me in any comments! Here’s what people had to offer!

Best thing that happened:

Cheryl – She has been interviewing with nonprofits learning a lot about what different organizations do. Informational interviews are a great way to not only learn about what others do, but a networking opportunity as well!

Andrea – She got a new bike (and helmet)! Living in a place where she can ride year-round, I’m sure she’ll get great use out of it!

Kamilla – I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear anything you said! If I had thought about it before, I could have emailed you to get your responses, but alas I didn’t. L

Corey – Thanksgiving! It’s Thanksgiving – what is there NOT to love about it!

Laura – She took an HTML class! What’s big about it is that this is the first computer class that she has ever taken. Seeing how it seems that most of the other CTC VISTAs have backgrounds in computer or at least technical skills, Laura is on her way to expanding her general technical knowledge…something she honestly never thought she’d do!

John – During the Thanksgiving holiday, one of John’s favorite moments was seeing the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. He’s also glad to be keeping busy with work!

Jeff – Cisco recently donated phone equipment to his organization, which he has been having fun playing with!

Tim – His boss has been facilitating workshops on Open Data and Open Gov, and Tim has been assisting in the preparation for those workshops. I really hope that’s right…I didn’t really understand what you were talking about. L

Worst thing that happened:

Cheryl – She has also been remotely working on technical assessments for different groups. She is responsible for writing up the results of questions asked during the assessments, and wants to figure out an efficient way to do this. Something that could automatically generate results would be great!

Andrea – Along with the joy that the holidays bring comes stress…especially stressing about getting things done before the new year. Hang in there…it’s almost over! (Or here, rather, by this point.)

Kamilla – See above

Corey – She continues to face struggles in working out her loan situation. It really would be great if she could use her Ed Award when she finishes to help pay off loans!

Jeff – He almost ran over a kid with a U-haul trailer. If you ask me, that would be enough to ruin anyone’s day.

Laura – Although she was fortunate enough to go back to Indiana for Thanksgiving, she was unfortunate in the fact that she got sick in doing so. But I guess that’s what going from sunny, warm San Diego to grey, rainy, chilly Indianapolis will do to ya!

John – In order to get to DC for his best moment, a 10-hour drive from Boston was required. Not so fun.

Tim – One thing he has been working on is improving security for social source commons. The reason for this, however, he is less than thrilled about (understandably). Apparently someone got into and tampered with it. That’s never a good thing.

Our next call is scheduled for 1/8/2007 (yes, tomorrow/today, but I’m writing this as if I actually posted these on time). Sorry this turned out kind of long…I hope it was at least was up to par. Until then!

TANs...we're more interesting than you might think!

Laura Hanley — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 22:52:45 +0000

Last Friday, November 3rd, 2006, the Technical Assistance for Nonprofits group (aka TANs - technical assistants for nonprofits...at least in my book) had a conference call to make sure that everyone was still alive and kicking and doing well with their projects. Although Kamala was out sick (hope you're feeling better!!), and John was....well, honestly I don't know (hmmm)...at least, I don't think he was there, but it can be hard to tell over the phone (sorry John if you were actually on the call!), the rest of us spoke for about an hour about VISTA life, our terms of service, and whatever else came to mind. Below are some of the results:

In The Future...

For future calls, one member of the group is going to lead a discussion on a certain topic as to expand everyone else's knowledge on that particular topic. For example, Tim will begin our next call leading us in a discussion about collaboration software tools. All you other TANs be thinking about what you want to do for calls next year!

Project Updates

Cheryl has been heading up workshops, doing web modificiations, meeting with agencies to address how their needs can be met, and a number of other things. Yay Cheryl!

Laura (yes, me) has been focusing on checking one of the web-based tools Pangea uses for data management for inconsistencies. In addition, she has been updating a training manual for one of their other systems since it was out-of-date. Good thing she loves detail-oriented work!

Tim blogged about his most recent happening with Aspiration, and he did a great job describing it (much better than I could ever do). In a nutshell, people from different open source projects got together to brainstorm how to make products more user-friendly. (Gosh, I hope I said that right!) Really though, you should read Tim's blog...he makes it sound a lot cooler. Take 'em away, Tim!

Corey has been working on updating training materials for Pangea as well. In the hardware aspect of things, she repaired a broken power button for one of their servers. Go Corey!

Andrea's office was recently feng shui'd to ensure that her office is in harmony with her environment. :) She's been working on figuring out how her agency can host the Media That Matters festival (remember that from PSO?!). In addition, she's been focusing on volunteer stuff and working with the Library of Congress on gathering the stories of veterans. Awesome, Andrea!

Remember!

If you haven't updated your contact information yet, do it now! Make sure your agency information especially is listed and correct in your personal profile.

And that's a wrap! I hope you enjoyed hearing what the TANs have been up to!

Resources for TA-NPO

Aliya Abbasi — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 19:28:14 +0000

These might help when you are looking for answers to common non-profit and technology issues. Sign up for newsletters or just browse when you have a question:

http://nationalserviceresources.org/
"The Resource Center is your one-stop shop for online tools and training resources to strengthen your volunteer or service program...contains online training tools, event calendars, and effective practices, as well as a catalogue of printed publications and videos available on loan."

http://www.techsoup.org/
"TechSoup.org offers nonprofits a one-stop resource for technology needs by providing free information, resources, and support. In addition to online information and resources, we offer a product philanthropy service called TechSoup Stock. Here, nonprofits can access donated and discounted technology products, generously provided by corporate and nonprofit technology partners."

http://ctcnet.org/
"The Community Technology Centers' Network (CTCNet) is a national membership network of community technology centers (CTCs) and other non-profits, united in their commitment to provide technology access and education to underserved communities."

http://nten.org/
"NTEN is a professional community that connects people involved in nonprofit technology and strives to help them effectively use technology in their work."

http://npower.org/
"NPower is a national network of local nonprofit organizations that provide high-quality, unbiased, affordable and appropriate technology assistance to other organizations."

Summary of our first conference call...

Aliya Abbasi — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 18:51:35 +0000

10/06/06

We are in MA (2), NC (2), and CA (4)

We are working on a variety of projects:
organizing and maintaining computer labs
setting-up a samba server,
creating utilities to document system downtimes,
planning and designing websites,
contributing to existing free and open source software,
comparing existing software and suggesting a best-fit to npos,
usage guide/documentation for clients,
writing articles and improvising workshops.

We are interest in:
Free and Open Source Software - (tag FOSS)
Beta-Testing the www.ctcvista.org - (tag suggestions)
Fundraising for Technology - (tag fundraising)
Website Development (not CMS) - (tag webdesign)

Next steps:
Blog, Blog, Blog!
Summary of our conference call (tag tamm)
One-on-one phone meetings in 3rd week of October
:)

TA-NPO Meeting Notes

Aliya Abbasi — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 19:38:10 +0000