Our organization uses technical volunteers to provide free email and web hosting to 33 organizations. We just finished a $20,000 http://mass-service.org grant to recruit, train and support volunteers in providing on-site computer support to 6 organizations. We'd like to share our successes and failures over the past 5 years. The format of the workshop is Q&A. If the workshop participants don't have questions for us, we will have questions for them.

This workshop will focus on how to assess an organization's computer resources for maturity and appropriateness, and then how to work with board, staff, computer support people, and constituents to make the system vibrant, robust, flexible, and a true support in reaching the organization's goals. Steve will focus on the data issues, Adam on the hardware, security and maintenance issues.

Participants are encouraged to bring detailed descriptions of their computer network for discussion.

Moving Forward
The Organizers Collaborative wants to help its members develop reliable, sustainable, and efficient computer networks to help them pursue their missions. To help you, this year’s Grassroots Use of Technology conference features a founding workshop—that is, a workshop intended to be the first in a series of Boston-based collaborative workshops to help participants grow their computer systems.

Timothy Elliot will be going over what is new and hot in Microsoft and that is:

• Digital Literacy, the new educational material that Microsoft has out for free to help you with the individuals that have little to no experience with computers and help get them up to speed

• The new XP and Student Office, the way that they have cut the cost of both so that you have the chance to be able to get your office or home up to speed.

• Unlimited Potential, the next step in Microsoft in educational experience so that you have something after Digital Literacy so that individuals are more up to business skills. ( how to use office, digital camera, internet, and anti-spyware)

We will discuss and share tips&tricks and resources for
technology planning for nonprofits and organizing groups. Topics
covered will include computer equipment, tech training, databases,
websites, and more. Session activities will help you get started with your organization's planning process or assess the plans you already have.

Data standards, that is, how data is stored and communicated, is often considered too esoteric, or sometimes just too boring, for most activists and nonprofits to care much about. Even many techies that work for nonprofits don't often think much about them. But they are important - because your data, and what you can do with it is important. Open standards are data standards and formats that are not owned by anybody - they are collectively designed, and disseminated freely. This talk is designed to explain why it's important to know about Open Standards, why it's important to use software that incorporates open standards, and why, in the process of any software development or implementation project, use of open standards should be part of the picture.