At some point I’ve talked with all of you about implementing membership databases, online member registration, email lists, and other constituent relationship management (CRM) tools for non-profits and social activism in the past weeks or year. Some ideas have been batted about, and I thought I’d bring you up to speed.

Green Wheels has been working to create mechanisms to allow members to sign-up easily online and pay for membership, and then for us to be able to maintain membership records, email lists and more — bringing it all into one integrated system.

This is an invitation to talk about CRM for your organization in hopes that there may be opportunities to collaborate in the future. Green Wheels has recognized the need to streamline our membership so we spend as little time as possible dealing with the logistical parts of managing membership, so we can focus more on, and have the tools to effectively communicate with and leverage our membership. That’s what everybody wants to do, right?

Here’s the backstory:

I talked with Shannon Tracey of Baykeeper and Democracy Unlimited about the idea of using FileMaker, which is what Baykeeper and the NEC are already using. It is crucial to have a database running on a server so multiple people can access it, and also allow it to be plugged into websites. Unfortunately, the price tag for FileMaker Server Advanced is $2,500, and, unlike many other software publishers, FileMaker/Apple does not give away licenses through TechSoup (not very cool, in my opinion). FileMaker does offer very small volume licensing discounts for non-profits.

While $2,500 is not an unreasonable price to pay for truly essential software, Green Wheels cannot afford this cost, and so we’ve looked elsewhere.

What I’ve implemented is a free open-source web-based CRM application called CiviCRM. It was recently given a high rating in the “2007 CRM Satisfaction Survey”.

It has it’s rough edges, but also has some impressive features. A new version is imminent, and it is my hope the software will continue to improve.

Here’s what we’re using CiviCRM for, and what we hope to use it for in the future:
- The Green Wheels sign-up form handles credit-card processing automatically. They receive automatic thank-yous, and I can configure the application to send people automatic membership renewal reminders by email. The sign-up process also asks them other questions about subscription preferences and gift premiums (and then manages this information for us so we can send out receipts for tax-deductibility at the end of the year).

At any point, folks can log in again to renew their membership or change their email subscription preferences. We even hope to set up groups so folks can choose which emails they want to receive by topic. Folks will also even be able to register for, and pay for events — the whole process will be managed automatically.

It’s far from a perfect solution, but I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will prove to work well for us. I make so secret of the fact that I’d like other groups to adopt CiviCRM as well, or at least to collaborate on CRM decisions an implementation projects because we could all learn a lot from each other — shave the sharp edges off learning curves and leverage all our individual efforts. Many local groups are standardizing on Drupal as a content management system (Green Wheels, Redwood Tech Consortium, Focus the Nation, HCOAG, Humboldt LAFCo, Prosperity!, etc.) — some folks are even using the guide I created for green-wheels.org to get help with other Drupal installations and it would be great to see something similar happen with CRM.

In short, my door is always open.

It’s been a spell since I last posted on this blog, for which I humbly apologize.  I hope to post more in the near future.  Read and comment if you want to encourage me. So, yesterday I was reading the Urban Planning Blog and it had a very random link in a footnote to an entry on the blog of fake Steve Jobs, “Ask Zack de la Rocha,”  a letter from fake Zach de la Rocha from Rage Against the Machine responding to Jennifer’s question about what iPod to buy for her boyfriend.  Get all that?

Anyway, “Ask Zach” is really good.  He launches into a rapid-fire tirade on consumer culture, Asian factory labor, and a lot more.  It’s breathless, angry, and often articulate, precisely what one would expect from de la Rocha.  Then the tirade falls off right at the end for the last paragraph of friendly advice:

However, to answer your question, I’d say your choice of music player depends a lot on how your boyfriend intends to use the product. If it’s important to him to carry his complete collection in one device, I’d recommend the 160-gigabye iPod Classic from Apple. If he doesn’t mind carrying only part of his collection I’d highly recommend the iPod Touch, also from Apple. It only holds 16 gigabytes but the touch interface is really amazing. Hope that helps.

Luv, Zack

Pretty good, huh?  It got me thinking — of all the folks who listen to Rage Against the Machine, and their lyrics on genocide and other atrocities and afflictions — how many of them are inspired to action?  How many alter the course of their lives, change their decisions, their behaviors?  Let me tell you what I’ve observed: the largest Rage audience is privileged white boys.  I for one, will listen when I’m stressed out in my workday and want to crank out a website for some fast cash.

Then, today some Spearhead came up in my shuffled iTunes playlist.  Michael Franti has a great way with words and music notes, and as a rhetorician he’s fantastic.  That doesn’t actually do Franti justice. His music combine cleverness with depth.  It’s authentic and charged.

But, when I saw his film I Know I’m Not Alone where he goes to Iraq, Israel, and Palestine, and Franti him speak afterwards, I was sorely disappointed.  He came across as foolish, even, disrespectful in the film.  And then for him — by no means an expert on any of the regions — to answer questions on the conflict afterwards seemed ridiculous.  The whole presentation came across as thoughtless. I talked with my friend Sara Dykman afterwards and she told me how fake she felt, and the rest of the audience seemed to her there.  I would put myself in there as well.

The point I am driving at is that Michael Franti and Spearhead’s music is nice to listen to, always a hit at a party, fun to have a drink, very well-suited to accompany a bong rip or a beer, but as an agent of social change, I have my doubts.Spinning out all my thoughts here has taken more words than I thought it would, so I should probably wrap it up.If I had to leave off with anything, it’s that I believe good music has the capacity to make us better people spiritually and emotionally, but as a direct spur to action, and as a forum for effectively discussing ideas and issues (here that Mr. Preachy Ben Harper?) it doesn’t work so well.

I can’t remember ever being called to set the world’s wrongs right by a song but I certainly have by the written and spoken word.  Fiction (this is a link to one of my favorite books) and non-fiction (this is a link to more on a recent book I read) have both been extremely influential in my life.

What do you think on music power in inspire change?

Click an image for the larger version:

From ridge behind Caribou Lake, looking toward Morris Meadows.  Emerald and Saphire Lakes off to the right (west).  Over 2,000ft of switchbacks down to the valley floor!

Rounding the bend toward Caribou Lakes.

Closer to the lakes, Lower Caribou in bottom-left.

Here’s a picture of the 90 foot tall oil rig that I didn’t take (from a Wired blog post, where you can get a lot more info about the project. For example, the detonation of the piece will created 2.4 gigawatts of energy, which Das Mann and Cusolito say is enough to “power the entire Bay Area for one minute.”

Here’s a picture I took from the top of the platform. It was cool that people had the whole week to interact with the piece in different weather conditions, times of day, states of altered consciousness, etc. before the finale when the piece was blown up.

Now, you may have caught that this project was detonated. Here’s the video from YouTube:

Then, early next morning, post oil apocalypse tribes had formed around the burning embers to watch the sun rise after the all-night “end of oil” party:

The worshipers:

Now, to those of you to whom this pyro-spectacular seems like a gigantic, hypocritical, but really fun waste of energy (that’s me included) — fair enough. But it’s interesting to look at the estimated climate impacts of Burning Man from a group called Cooling Man. Notice that less than 1% of greenhouse gas emissions from the even are estimated to have come from fire art on the playa. The vast majority is from travel to the event. After witnessing the power of the Crude Awakening explosion (the heat was extremely intense, and the playa was lit up like day), it gives me an appreciation for the amoung of energy being used in our internal combustion engines.

Lots more photos in my Burning Man gallery.

I went crazy with the camera while I was there, to do what I could to capture the Salvador Dali-like surreal landscape and art out in the desert.

I posted 213 images in a Picasa gallery.

Here are a few select images, inline in the blog.

Above: a panorma of the Black Rock City playa. Click for the magnified view, and you’ll be able to drag this panorama around. It’s made up of about 7 images. Didn’t get it exactly right in places, can you see where. Also, notice how some of the subjects moved while I was snapping pictures. See the doubles of the guy in salmon jacket on a bike, also the woman with pink hair, far right?

Cool treehouse, huh?

I want to put all my pictures up here, but really it’s just a teaser to try to get you to browse through the whole album.

Caribou Lake is at  41° 1′12.54″N, 122°58′31.48″W.

Here’s a panoramic image (this is at least 6 stitched-together images) of the view of Caribou Lake and Caribou Mountain from the pass to the south.  Click the image for a larger view.

In Google Earth, you can see Caribou Lake from behind the pass this photo was taken from.  Also, my panoram will show up as a spot you can click on in Google Earth pretty soon.

My attempt at a panoram looking the other way off of the pass, towards Emerald and Saphire Lakes, was less successful, because the light was different in all directions and I didn’t figure out how to lock in manual camera settings.  Also, I missed a few spots!

But, here’s the view from Google Earth.

More to come!  Also, look forward to Burning Man photos.

Presenting Coda! One-window development environment with drag-and-drop grep, Transmit FTP integration, change tracking… you can share code with other people on a team and it tracks who make changes, coding tips, validation, visual CSS, oh and terminal integration so you can run your php script and whatnot. And to think that I loved you, BBEdit?!?

Here’s a shot of code for my Transit Info Solutions project in Coda.

Pretty wow, huh?

Oh, and did I mention that Panic’s office and office sushi party’s probably have contributed to my fascination with the idea of moving to / living in Portland?

No more! I’m starting to use GrandCentral. You can call me here: (707) 633-4464. It rings everything. I can send you an invite if you want to use GrandCentral, too.

You can even use this web-form to call me:

Check out my friend Megan Miller’s collage she’s working on (which expresses this, among many other themes):