GoodGNUs

I’m at WordCampUK - a conference for WordPress developers and users. There have been great presentations, from Accessibility & HTML5 to WordPress Themes. However the real value of any conference is the corridor time, face-to-face chat with peers, and people doing all sorts of unexpected and fun things with Free Software.

WordCampUK has been a bit short on corridor time, but has made up for it with socials, and lunch-time meetings: today in particular when most of the 3rd sector people got together for a not-for-profits meetup. As promised, below are the details of everyone at that lunch, so that WordPress people working in the voluntary sector can find each other:

Not-for-Profit people working with WordPress

Name/Twitter or Web Link & region or country:

Richard Weltman, NW

Chris Middleton, Notts

Jason King, London & NW

Steve Graham, S/SW

Linda Parkinson-Hardman, SW

Chris Witham, Yorks/Derbys

Daniel Koskinen, Finland

Kristina Krause, Seattle & Kent, UK

Chris Booth, Scotland

Jag Gill, Sheffield

Alex Stuart, Scotland

Chris Murray, Sheffield

Andrew Laughland, Bucks

Richard Smedley, NW

Added in from comments & tweets…

John Adams, Glasgow

Steve Taylor, London

If you’re doing something with WordPress in the not-for-profit sector, please feel free to put your name and link into the comments. I’ve no idea if anything useful will come out of this, along the lines of Plone’s NGO group, or Drupal’s various specialist groups - I just offer this set of links up with a vague hope ;-)

Update

There’s now a mailing list for anyone helping the sector using WordPress - sign up and say hello, everyone welcome.

• The Modernization of Emacs (the most important changes i think emacs should adopt)
  Heresy? No, a collection of good ideas that would improve Emacs.
  (tags: emacs elisp coding programming ergonomics gnu)

Back from giving my new “Free Software in the UK Voluntary Sector, and why you should care” talk to Manchester Free Software Group. A small audience, but a nice rambling debate over many fields, and good real ale at the Lass, so all-in-all a good evening.

Before travelling up to Manchester I spent a day not listening to Election news (okay, mostly not listening - I tuned in to the Daily Politics Election Debate), and working on websites - always a nice break from pure SysAdmin work. One WordPress site, and three Drupal sites. Not necessarily a good idea.

Drupal is, admittedly, far more complicated than WordPress, but has a lovely modular construction, and is easy to theme and style, so working on just one WP site (out of a total of 4 websites) actually doubled my workload, as I struggled to find ways of doing things on the (admittedly) easier platform.

Counter-intuitive

Why was I doing 3 Drupal and 1 WordPress site? Good question. The three Drupal sites are voluntary efforts for local voluntary groups: they could grow and scale in unpredictable ways, and Drupal offers the simplest way to start, and to grow, without holding you back if your needs suddenly become somewhat complex. Despite its higher price-of-entry (even the text-editing interface for the end user needs to be added manually, never mind the work of adding a custom content type to replace the lamentable standard calendaring), Drupal installations are easily repeatable, easily customisable, and so flexible that grown SysAdmins often weep with the simple joy of it all.

WordPress, on the other hand, works better out-of-the-box, particularly for the end user(s) who will be maintaining content on the site, and so is the obvious choice for low-cost sales to clients wanting rudimentary content management. Obvious choice? Well, obvious doesn’t always mean right. In this case Drupal, the counter-intuitive choice, would have been more efficient - even had I charged my WordPress rate for it (which is half the price of my cheapest Drupal rate), for I’d have got the job done more quickly alongside the other Drupal sites, without thinking my way round WP theming and which modules got around the limitations of the originally-blog-based design.

The lesson learned? Love your tools for the job they do, but charge for the end results, not the use of the tools - less pain all round, however wrong it seems. Tomorrow, more web: Quick, someone book a place on one of my courses before I’m seduced to become purely a web developer ;-)

LinuxUser & Developer, issue 86, just came through the letterbox. I flicked through and a reader’s letter caught my eye - not because it called my Arduino article “wonderful” <blush>, but for its links to CopyLeft hardware resources.

Small Form Factor, Free Software, Open Hardware - 3 out of 3 for the NanoNote.

QI-hardware, producers of the Ben NanoNote, and the MilkyMist One boards are all projects deserving much wider publicity within (and beyond) the Free Software and hardware hacking communities. I’m certainly very tempted by the NanoNote.

Thanks to Wolfgang Spraul of QI Hardware for writing in to LU&D with the links.

Picture Credit: http://sharism.cc/ - licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Saturday saw the annual Chorlton Big Green Festival, one of the country’s largest Green Fairs, and this year blessed with a stall from Manchester Free Software (MFS).

Those of us volunteering to staff the MFS Stall had a great time - not just enjoying the vegan food and drink of the Fair, and catching up with old friends from Manchester’s numerous environmental groups in attendance, but from several hours of talking to the general public about software freedom.

While MFS membership is heavy in Unix admins and programmers, the group is about the philosophy of software freedom, not playing with technology - thus we all enjoyed engaging with the public on why freedom matters in software. Passers by ranged from committed Ubuntu users to those without a computer at home, yet nearly all were responsive to the principle of software built on values of community, education, and sharing knowledge.

Freedom in the 3rd Sector

Indeed, it continues to remain a puzzle why so many in the charity sector actively campaign against Free Software solutions, and promote the sector’s continued reliance on an unsustainable model of dependence on a few tax-subsidised, private companies.

These are issues I hope to tease out a little in my talk on Free Software in the UK Voluntary Sector, and why you should care, at MFS’s 20th April meeting. I’d welcome people with a wide range of views to come along and debate the issue afterwards.

To the UKUUG’s Large Scale System Administrators’ conference today where I was the rather strange choice of last minute speaker. Having spent 18 hours at the keyboard yesterday I wasn’t best prepared, but speaking on The Third Sector and Free Software shouldn’t have been too much of a challenge to me.

Indeed, despite the talk being more of a ramble at times, I think I managed to distill 4 key messages for the assembled Unix crowd:

1. There’s a real lack of IT knowledge in many VCS groups resulting in too many having no IT strategy. Please get involved with a local group at a governance level and help to make up this deficit.
2. Of all the resources lacking, training is holding back most groups. Please give a little time for effective training.
3. Many groups are tied into niche proprietary applications. Please help to code web-enabled, Free Software replacements.
4. I’m involved in lots of projects with great potential but not enough man power - please speak to me about collaborating on them.

I think I may also have mentioned what a great business model the Social Enterprise is rather too many times. :-)

If you were at the talk and want to get in touch about any of the projects, please e-mail me, or find me on Twitter.

At recent events, when I meet new people, we naturally ask each other “What do you do?”. I’m failing quite badly at summarising my activities, so thought I’d briefly list current projects here, for reference:

1. Gaia University - IT strategy, project management, & SysAdmin, in a programme to gradually upgrade every online aspect of this international sustainability university over the next few years.
2. Social Media & the Accessible Web - the Profitable Conversations courses highlighted on the courses page. Got off to a good start last year, now lining up a number of courses around the North West for the Spring.
3. Hackspace North West - 10 months ago I started bringing people together whom I thought would be interested in getting spaces off the ground. I have done very little on this as fortunately it turned out there were plenty of people also wanting local hackspaces, and they’ve gone on to work towards getting them going. Latest steps in Shropshire & Staffordshire.
4. Credit Unions - Free Software solutions
   Should have been going a long time ago, but a key personnel hiccough has delayed things. Now we’re on the move again, and I’ll be posting announcements on the project here very soon.
5. Other financial software & local currencies…
   Next step is looking for partners to take the core of the Credit Union software, and adapt it for 3rd Sector book-keeping needs. This is something VCOs have been crying out for.
   We’re also talking to those involved with Complementary Currencies in a number of countries - something just beginning to gain ground in the UK after a brief flurry of LETS in the 80s.
6. Cloud Computing for the 3rd Sector.
   Voluntary Groups can’t host sensitive data in the USA, and don’t want to be advertised at by Google. Hoping to work with Fossbox on this, and looking for a sponsor to host the 1U server I have that was donated to the project by Blue Fountain.
7. Permaculture
   I studied for my Permaculture Designers’ Certificate in 1993-94, while also studying for the Royal Botanic Gardens’ diploma at Kew. It was the wrong time, and once back home in Montgomeryshire there was little or no work. Now I find a resurgent interest in sustainable design, and am following recent speaking engagements with more practical work.
8. IT Recycling
   M6-IT cic had a great success here, with Richard Rothwell’s Supported Family Computing project reaching dozens of families with recycled hardware, Free Software, family training, and local support, as well as broadband for people previously blacklisted by the ‘phone companies.
   Search for partners to replicate this has been unsuccessful, but it’s been a privilege to lead workshops on community recycling with ArcSpace in Hulme, Manchester, with an interesting and enthusiastic crowd of local activists.
9. Web
   Preparing new sites for local sustainability groups, campaigns, and VCOs: some Wordpress, blog-based, mostly Drupal CMS. I miss Plone, but it’s unsuitable for the quick and low-resourced sites I’m doing now.
   When a few more get finished I’ll put up some portfolio pages.
10. Blogging?
    I’m developing a horicultural/ethnobotany blog I started designing some time ago, and a *nix introductory blog for NetBook users. Once I can get a 30 hour day I’ll push these through to publication. :^)
11. Journalism - Linux User & Developer magazine recently commissioned me for a few articles. The first of these, on Arduino boards and open hardware hacking, hit the shelves a few days ago.
12. In Transition - the two towns nearest to our village are both in possession of new groups moving towards Transition Town Status. I’ve been lucky enough to meet some very interesting people, and get a chance to begin to investigate local food and power solutions.
    It’s certainly easier to work totally locally, than try to bring people together at a distance as I did at FACT’s Small Steps to Sustainability workshops. More soon here, and on Twitter.

Hope that helps fill a gap until I renew my calls-for-collaboration posts, too. As to Networking events, maybe I should print this list on a postcard?

The Association For Free Software (AFFS) has been formally wound up this week. Founded at a meeting during the 2002 Sheffield Linux Seminar, AFFS was a membership organisation for UK supporters of Free Software - as distinct from a national chapter of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), which would have been more official, and less member-led.

AFFS had some great early successes, including securing donations from UKFSN (apologies for the 3rd set of initials in two paragraphs) to support UK Free Software projects. Jason Clifford’s UK Free Software Network is a not-for-profit ISP created to support the local Free Software community.

I was co-opted to the committee early on to help with projects such as campaigns to get Free Software into schools, and served as chairman for a few months before family needs and conflicts with work led to me scaling back voluntary commitments.

Sadly AFFS had problems with membership renewals, and stalled somewhere along the way. Now it has been formally wound up I hope we can look back on the successes of the Free Software community in the UK, and ponder what comes next. A UK chapter of the FSFE perhaps (the UK being the only significant country without one), or some other form of membership organisation. Does the success of the Manchester Free Software Group show the way? After all, it’s always best to build on existing structures.

Free Software Funding

The residual membership voted to distribute the remaining AFFS funds as follows:

The funds remaining in its (the AFFS') bank account have been disbursed
as follows, two thirds, £2307, to the FSFE, and one third, £1154, as a
grant, to a UK project to develop software.

In more detail, that £1154 has been entrusted to me to disburse to the Free Software projects I’m working on for the Voluntary Sector. It will be mostly used to fund financial software for Credit Unions, and to help with a project trying to provide entirely Free Software cloud services for 3rd Sector groups.

Open Collaboration

More details of the projects will appear here, as part of my “Calls for Collaboration…” posts, however here’s the basics: We have begun work on flexible, web-based, Credit Union software. Development cost is currently covered, mostly through donated time, but incidental expenses need to be met.

For cloud services I have a server generously donated by Blue Fountain Systems. We’re hoping to get donated hosting (call me on 0779 456 0714 with your generous offer), but the project has expenses to meet in getting geographically-disparate volunteers together.

By funding projects that have actually started, but are at early stages, and by funding incidental expenses to supplement voluntary and otherwise funded coding, I hope to make the community’s money go much further. For this reason I may also consider other projects that arise over the next 12 months.

Transparency & Accountability

Regular updates will appear on Twitter, with occasional summaries published here. However, to be clear on what’s happening with the money, I will publish an interim summary of progress here next summer, and a clear summary of where the money has gone at the end of 2010.

This is a short post remembering Richard Rothwell, who died last Friday.

Three years ago I was made redundant from the BVSC’s MOST project, a project doing good things to get Free Software in the hands of voluntary sector organisations. Looking to carry on the good work, I pieced together ideas for a social enterprise to supply Free Software, recycled hardware, & appropriate local support and training. As I cast around for help in this enterprise, it was with great relief that I found a friend, Richard Rothwell, planning something similar, down the M6 in the Black Country. We soon merged our projects and formed M6-IT cic.

Crucial to M6’s early success was the personality of Richard Rothwell. A lateral thinker; a cynic; a warm-hearted & giving man; a contrarian; and a passionate & practical advocate for Free Software, education, & communities.

It was Richard who started the Supported Family Computing programme, diverting specialist schools’ unspent community fund to making a real difference to families on the wrong side of the digital divide, providing computers, software, broadband, support, & training to children otherwise denied such advantages in life. Richard’s no nonesense style & clear-thinking got us through bureaucratic hurdles to win early tenders, and left a deep impression in client meetings (albeit occasionally one of flabbergasted surprise).

As I have spent much of the last year on a sabbatical from M6, working on goodGNUs projects, we had not been in as close contact as previously. The last time I had spoken to him was a quick discussion on VAT matters, with a promise of a proper chat when it was all out of the way. Sadly he took his life days later, for reasons those of us left behind may never truly understand.

From the comments on http://tributestorichardrothwell.net/ he has touched many people’s lives, and will be deeply missed in circles beyond Free Software and the voluntary sector. For those who know only a little of Richard Rothwell’s life and work, take a look at the links to his many published sites and articles on http://tributestorichardrothwell.net/ - an insight into the complex mind of a sadly missed friend and colleague.

I was reading Cory Docotorow’s short article on the psychology of making gaming pay in The Guardian, earlier this afternoon: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/apr/14/technology-2009-14-apr-cory-doctorow-gaming

As it neared its conclusion, it drew a parallel between the Free Software business model (the most common one that is: download our software for free, but pay us if you want help), and arbitrage between time-poor & cash-poor game players, exchanging in-game items in fantasy worlds for real money.

Whether attained by coercion, social engineering, generosity or guilt, this arbitrage of the cash-rich and the time-rich is at the centre of many of the new business models emerging on the net. It’s damned close to the GNU/Linux business model – get the OS for free, pay us (or some other group of geeks) if you can’t be arsed to figure out how to make it work.

All very interesting, of course, but something that stuck out in the article is the final paragraph.

This business model has a certain attractive stability to it, in that it relies on technology being in a constant, perpetual state of semi-brokenness, which is a fundamental characteristic of the information age, where constant change ensures constant chaos.

Now we’re back in Cult-of-Done territory. We’re in a time of change, and that means what worked yesterday, may not work tomorrow. It’s easy to see why some people don’t find such a world very easy to adapt to, and some decide that the whole thing is not relevant to them – but for knowledge workers (see Clay Shirky’s much talked-about post on the Death of Newspapers), this is the territory we’re in.

Looking for Quality

The problem now becomes not “How do we work with technology being in a constant, perpetual state of semi-brokenness,” but “How can we adapt this changing, semi-broken mess into something not just useful, but something of quality”?

In my case, it’s by being the interface between various great (but not necessarily complete) bits of Free Software, and some Voluntary Sector organisations that just want to get things done, and not worry about technology.

More specifically it’s with some very exciting new Social Enterprise start-ups that’ll be blogged about here in the next few weeks & months.

Down the garden path

However embracing this chaos has meant me letting go of cherished ideas of over-engineering, and instead building robustness from flexibility & quick response to change.

No wonder it’s such a pleasure to leave all this behind for a bit of gardening now and then - a time-tested source of predictability & chaos, with quality in the eye of the beholder. :)