Raised Eyebrow Blog

A month from now, on Saturday, August 14, I’ll be attending Vancouver’s first NetSquared Camp, a day-long event for people who work at the intersection of social change and technology. The goal of the event is to build skills and capacity through peer learning, and invites the participation of “nonprofits, activists and social entrepreneurs [along] with their friends and allies in the world of technology and communications.”

NetSquared Camp is an unconference, and for those who aren’t familiar with that term, it’s an event where the agenda is entirely driven by the participants. So if you show up and speak up, there’s a very good chance that you’ll learn something that’s relevant to you. (You may also end up teaching others, since the participants also lead & facilitate the sessions.)

The list of suggested session topics is both wide-ranging and highly practical, and the organizers have set up a wiki where you can propose your own session ideas.

Perhaps best of all, the ticket price is by donation, with the suggested donation a very affordable $20. By the look of the RSVP list, interest is high, and as with all unconferences, the event’s success will depend entirely on who shows up — so please mark the date in your calendar and spread the word.

Here at Raised Eyebrow we’re very passionate about sharing what we know and building capacity within the nonprofit sector, so we’re very pleased to be a sponsor of NetSquared Camp Vancouver 2010. I’m looking forward to seeing how the agenda evolves.

Depending on the size of your organization and whether or not you have previously applied for this program, there is a BC Government initiative which your organization may be able to use to offset some of the cost of your website (re)design and development project.

Information about the program and the one page application form are available on the Ministry website: http://www.aved.gov.bc.ca/workplace_training_program/welcome.htm

In brief the eligibility requirements are:

• Business or organization (non-profit organizations are eligible) with less than 50 employees (this number would not include volunteers).
• Been operating for more than a year.
• Apply the funding to training which will “help improve productivity” and/or “support the introduction of new equipment, technology or work process”. Your new CMS should be eligible as a new technology which will also help improve productivity.
• You must have not already applied for the grant.

The grant offers:

• Up to $1,500 per employee for training costs
• An organizational maximum of $5,000

Please note that training for Owners is not eligible for the grant, however, we have been unable to ascertain whether or not Executive Directors are excluded (there is no language that says so, and the Ministry has been slow to respond).

The program is in place until January 31, 2011.

Please note, this is a one time grant so if you feel there is other training to which you could better apply this grant, then we would advise you to not apply for the grant for your website training.

Of course Raised Eyebrow can not guarantee that your funding will be approved, but the training we provide to our clients as a part of a website redesign or a new development project does fit into the criteria of the program. We are in no way affiliated with this program, we simply want to make our clients aware of it as we are conscious of the limited resources that many of our clients operate under.

More information:

• Download the One Page Application Form (PDF)
• Questions and Answers on the Ministry website (PDF)

I spoke today at WordCamp Vancouver – a one-day conference for people who work with WordPress (including developers, designers and users). It was a great event, thanks to the hard work of the organizers. The presenters shared lots of very useful information on design and coding as well as about social media and web culture.

I chose to focus my 25-minute talk on what I think lies below the surface of the work we do as web designers and developers, and that’s a more consultative and strategic role that we can play if we choose to (and if our clients let us).

The session was recorded on video, and I’ll post that video when I get the link that video is posted below, but for now I thought I would at least share my slide deck – particularly for those in attendance who requested it.

Video from the event:

(Many thanks to Justin Carlson for recording & sharing the video.)

When I used a PC, I found this utility that I used to keep track of my passwords.  Roboform is this happy will green dude who sits in your utility tray and keeps a list of all of your login accounts, their URLs, usernames, passwords and notes.  Launching an account is as easy as clicking on Roboform and selecting the account you’d like to launch and voila the site launches and Roboform fills your username and password and automatically logs you in.  Roboform works with a master password, so when you login to your computer to launch Roboform you need to enter a master password.  You can set how often you want to be prompted for the password.

When I moved to Mac, I missed the little green guy.  Every time I had to copy a url, username and password from a spreadsheet and paste them manually into an internet browser, the heart ache increased.  Plus, there was all kinds of silliness with the spreadsheet: who had it open, who deleted that field, what is the most current version of the FTP info, etc.

When I migrated to Mac I had accumulated 249 passwords in my Roboform! The amount of information that people are beginning to need to be able to track in their personal and professional lives is outrageous.

At Raised Eyebrow we have thousands of passwords and they needed to be stored uber securely.  Moreover, the data is a more complex set of information, Client Names, Contact Info, FTP Info, Database Info, CMS Info, Host Info, Stats Info, etc.  We combed through the market of Mac-based password keepers. 1Password, KeePassX seemed to be the best options that emerged at the time.  1Password, which is proprietary, seemed more feature rich, while KeePass, which is open source, seemed easier to install as a shared network installation.  Nonetheless, the amount of customization we required in terms of fields made neither solution appealing. So we kept on using a spreadsheet.

One day in utter frustration we had a brainstorming session.  We build websites, so maybe we could build an internal site that would keep our data?  From that session was born the idea for our super secure, one stop shop, password vault website.  That was 6 months ago.

Today, I just finished entering the last password from our main password list! What we developed in many respects is akin to a custom contact database.  We have different content types: Client, Website, Newsletter, Domain, etc.  Seeing the product, in its current state makes me wonder whether we should have invested the time we took to develop it into implementing and customizing a CRM (customer relationship manager)?  Could the data be accommodated in an off the shelf solution, like Salesforce or Daylight with customization?

Now, we are on the eve of embarking on a CRM implementation process. Starting such a process makes we wonder about all our systems: which ones work? Which ones should we keep? Which ones can be folded into the CRM? How can we streamline our workflow, while ensuring the integrity and security of our data?  How can specialized industries be best served by CRM software?

One major benefit from developing our password keeper is that we engaged in the exact process that would be required to clean up our data if we were going to import it into a CRM.  Instead of having a laundry list of every type of password in one long list, we have nice clean data parsed into types.  Also, it was like putting out a fire so that we wouldn’t be smoked out while we began to think about a CRM project. So, I’m happy with the path we’ve taken and looking forward to seeing what we do next.

If you have password overload, there are lots of solutions out there to make your life easier. And if you’ve recently done a CRM project in a all Mac environment, let me know how it went.

A few weeks ago, we moved out of the Flack Block and relocated a mere two blocks away to another beautiful heritage office building on West Pender: The Duncan Building. Much as we’ll miss our neighbours in the Flack Block, we’re excited about the bright & airy space (and the hardwood floors!) that our new office affords.

We’re still settling in, but I wanted to share a few photos to give you a flavour of our workplace. Please pardon the bare walls and the boxes in the corners…

We’re excited to announce a new opportunity at Raised Eyebrow. Our little-web-studio-that-could is growing again, and we’ve got an opening for a Front-End Developer/Themer to help us build awesome websites for fabulous, mission-driven clients.

This is a position for someone with solid technical skills — someone who can rock HTML and CSS, who prides themselves on attention to detail and clean, elegant code. You’ll be turning design comps into themes for Drupal and WordPress sites, so experience with one (or both) of those CMS’s is preferred, but if you’re confident in your coding skills and are new to Drupal & WordPress, don’t let that stop you.

Because we’re a small shop, everyone here tends to wear a few hats, so we’re looking for someone with smarts, adaptability and a serious appetite for learning. We pride ourselves on the quality of our work, our efficiency, and our passion for our clients — and we’re looking for someone whose shares those values.

In our beautiful, heritage Gastown office, you’ll find a friendly team of experts, a ridiculously well-stocked tea cabinet, and abundant opportunities to work on projects that allow you to flex your technical muscles and bring your heart and ideals to work.

Sound like a fit for you (or someone you know)? The job description, with details on how to apply, is right here.

I’m writing this from Austin, TX, where I’m participating in one of the geek world’s biggest and best-loved festivals, South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi for short). Yesterday afternoon, I had the great pleasure of co-facilitating a session with Leif Utne, VP of Community at Zanby, that was a group discussion on how design & tech geeks can make the world a better place while making a living.

When we were planning the session, Leif suggested we use a format I wasn’t familiar with — the Samoan Circle, a modified fishbowl process that encourages listening and made room for many of the attendees to come forward and speak. The chairs in the room were arranged in the round, and we pulled four chairs into the middle of the room, facing each other, so that everyone could see and hear the folks who were talking.

The theme of the session was “Socially Conscious Geek: making money while doing good,” and we provided some framing questions, but we knew that whoever showed up would have their own questions and goals for the discussion, so we tried to move quickly beyond our introductions and dive into the conversation proper.

I’m so glad we did, because as soon as we opened it up to the room, the conversation went in very interesting directions. Some of the themes that emerged were:

• Recruiting challenges for nonprofits: Someone asked how nonprofits can attract staff when the salaries are generally lower than they are in the corporate sector. Some great responses to this question emerged, including:
  • Explore what gets geeks interested, and offer up incentives that matter to them
  • Sell the lifestyle & “sleep better at night” benefits
  • Offer other benefits that provide competitive advantage with corporate positions, e.g. keep work hours reasonable, paid volunteer time, etc.
  • Someone mentioned that in the US, if you work for nonprofit organizations for 10 years after college, your outstanding student loans are forgiven. Given the size of the average student loan these days, that could provide a tangible financial benefit in the tens, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
  • Recognize that nonprofits can offer more opportunities for leadership & effecting change within the organization, because nonprofits often have leaner & more democratic structures. (I want to point out that this is definitely not always the case, though I do think it’s a valid point. However, I’ve seen some highly inefficient nonprofit organizations in my time.)
• There was some great discussion of how our definitions of sustainability must include financial sustainability; this is true for both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. We need to both make money and do good; neither can be sacrificed. Some models put forward for this included:
  • Businesses can build charitable giving into their modus operandi, i.e. give x% of pre-tax profits to a particular cause or organization.
  • Design & tech agencies can offer discounts to nonprofit clients & stay profitable by engaging high-profit corporate clients.
  • Social enterprise models, e.g. nonprofits creating products & services people are willing to pay for.
  • Seed funding from progressive coalitions
• We also heard a number of people ask how we can collaborate better across movements and sectors – there is a real hunger for cross-pollination of ideas and learning from one another’s successes and failures.
• One women shared her story of working at a large, multinational corporation, feeling somewhat discouraged by said corporation’s lack of a formal social responsibility mandate, and responding by starting interest groups within her company. This has had the effect of both raising the profile of various causes, but also concrete changes in the business such as influencing purchasing decisions.
• Someone said they would love to see a crowdsourcing app that could leverage companies’ internal technical skills & resources and connect & share them with nonprofits who need them.

Those were my notes, but there’s plenty more available on Twitter — attendees tweeted their session notes using the hashtag #scgeek.

Happy 8th March, by lucaNRT on Flickr

Today, as we do every year, we’re closing our doors on March 8 to celebrate International Women’s Day. It isn’t a stat holiday here in Canada, but we like to honour it as a pseudo-stat, for several reasons.

One, we’re proud to be a women-owned business, and in our industry I’m pretty certain that still puts us firmly in the minority. (When we started out 10 years ago, I’m pretty certain we were the only web development shop in town that was women-run, but these days the landscape has thankfully shifted pretty significantly.) Although women are making great strides in the tech arena, we still have a long way to go in terms of achieving equity either in terms of raw numbers or on an economic level. Honouring International Women’s Day is a way for us to bring some visibility to women’s issues.

Two, we’ve always tried to create a work environment at Raised Eyebrow that’s healthy & balanced, and a big part of how we achieve that is by ensuring everyone who works here has a generous amount of time off. March is often a holiday-free zone (except in those years when Easter comes early), so it’s a great time to throw in a long weekend.

And three, taking the day off gives us a chance to celebrate the amazing women in our lives. In Italy, it’s traditional for men to give mimosa branches to their favourite women – here in Vancouver, cherry blossoms are probably easier to find.

We’d love to see more people and businesses in Canada celebrate International Women’s Day in big, visible ways. What are you doing to celebrate? Let us know in the comments.

If you’ve spoken with us recently, or visited the office, you’ll already be aware that my business partner Emira is beginning a new chapter in her life, as a mother. Her baby is due about two weeks from now (and yes, we do have a pool going, so feel free to chime in with your date picks), and Friday was her last day in the office for a while. She’s taking a few months of maternity leave — we’re not yet sure how long she’ll be away, and we’re just going to leave it up to her to decide when she’s ready to come back. (I suspect it won’t be too long before her curiosity gets the better of her and she can’t stand not being up to speed on our clients’ projects any longer… but our hope is that she takes all the time she needs to settle in and enjoy her time with her newborn.)

We’ll miss Emira’s strategic savvy, hyper-efficient planning, and of course her cupcake baking — but we are incredibly excited for her, and can’t wait to meet her wee one when he or she arrives.

In the meantime, I’ll be attempting to fill her shoes on the sales side, and will be stepping up my roles as project manager and strategist. And to make room for all that work, we’ll be getting some help on the design side of things (which is my usual bailiwick) from the stellar Paul Jarvis. Paul has been an admired colleague of ours for many years and we’re delighted to partner with him.

If you’ve got any questions about who’s doing what in Emira’s absence, please don’t hesitate to drop us a line. And meanwhile, please join us in wishing Emira an easy birth and a wonderful nesting time with her babe.

(Oh, and don’t worry – we’ll update you all when the baby gets here!)

Two years ago, Emira & I went to South by Southwest (AKA SXSW) for the first time, and presented a panel called “Boss Lady” that featured tips for online business owners from several of the savviest women entrepreneurs we know: Vickie Howell, Jenny Hart & Alex Beauchamp, all of whom appear in the pages of our book, The Boss of You. We had such a good time that we knew we wanted to go back as soon as humanly possible, though last year we were too busy getting our book out the door to attend the conference.

But this year we’re back, this time with a panel that we hope will prove helpful to geeks of both the design and techie varieties – both camps are in full force at SXSW’s Interactive conference, which is a pure, 24/7, all-out geekfest – who are looking to bring their values into their paid work, whether it’s by learning to work with clients in the nonprofit sector, creating apps that help mission-driven organizations work more effectively, or infusing some environmental or social-justice savvy into their workplaces. The panel’s called “Socially Conscious Geek: Makin’ Money While Doin’ Good”, and it takes place Saturday, March 13^th.

The topic was inspired by a topic our friend Noah Scalin (of Skull-A-Day and Another Limited Rebellion fame) spoke about at the 2009 HOW Conference. His focus was more on graphic design, since that’s his area of expertise, but when I asked him about riffing on his ideas for an interactive design audience, he shared his materials with me with typical generosity. (This is a guy who lives and breathes a DIY, share-and-share-alike mentality that a lot of designers could learn from. But that’s a topic for another day.)

This time I’ll be attending the conference solo, while Emira spends some time with her new baby; my co-facilitator for the session is Leif Utne, a friend and colleague who works for Zanby, a software company that specializes in supporting online social communities for change. Leif’s background includes a stint as the publisher of Worldchanging.org, and lots of experience building online communities; he’s also a journalist, activist and social entrepreneur.  Zanby is used to support The UpTake, a web video community that among other things was heavily involved in documenting the RNC and DNC prior to the 2008 election, and was also engaged in citizen vote monitoring during the election. He brings both amazing facilitation skills as well as a solid understanding of how businesses and nonprofits can work together in mutually beneficial ways.

We’ll be conducting our session in a highly interactive, inclusive format called a Core Conversation: Leif and I will be kick-starting the discussion and planting some seeds, but the idea is that whoever shows up will have a chance to step forward and contribute questions and ideas – so I’m really excited to see how it develops.

We’re hoping to address questions like:

• What is a socially conscious geek?
• How can I specialize in socially conscious work and earn a living wage?
• What are some of the unique opportunities and challenges of specializing in socially conscious work?
• What is the difference between non-profit and no-profit clients?
• How do I make the transition from corporate work to working with non-profit and/or mission-driven clients?
• What is the “triple bottom line” approach to business?
• What are some examples of alternative business models that are emerging among socially conscious geeks?
• How is socially conscious work different than “green” work?
• What are some examples of clients I might be able to work with as a socially conscious geek?
• How should I market myself to values-driven clients? Is it different from marketing to corporate clients?

Ultimately, though, the decisions about what we cover will rest with whoever shows up. So please help us spread the word – and if you’ll be at SXSW, we’d love to see you there!