Find Net Tuesday in your city via its parent organization, Net Squared.

Seattle Net Tuesday recently organized an Online Makeover — Nonprofit Edition. Tech savvy members volunteered to solve technical challenges and improve organizations’ web sites and social media strategies.

While at Seattle Net Tuesday and following up after the event, I advised Vote Clean Seattle on

(1) other recent, small, social media based fundraising efforts as a model, including for technology to track and show progress
(2) local organizations who may be interested in partnering with VCS, and
(3) running a WordPress based web site to simplify inclusion of other online presence in their site.

More than a dozen volunteers offered them lots of practical, mostly technical advice. It was a fulfilling and informative experience for everyone.

Seattle Net Tuesday has featured many organizations, speakers, and formats, always staying fresh, productive, and fun, too. I have updated this post a dozen or so times to highlight upcoming or recent Tuesdays, and in a few cases I have written additional posts or articles, here or elsewhere online to do the same. On Tuesday, August 25 for example, we enjoyed “two dynamite speakers” discussing their organizations’ volunteer outreach online.

On Twitter, you may find dozens of organizers, attendees, and me! tweeting about Seattle Net Tuesday. I’ve recently helped get them going with a Twitter account for the event itself @SeaNet2. That’s not getting a lot of use as of yet though, so connect with

• * Sarah Schacht @sarahschacht
• * Jessica Dally @JessicaDally
• * Sameer Siruguri @siruguri
• * or with me @brianglanz

My Seattle Net Tuesday archives include these articles:

• * The Haas Foundation
• * Knowledge As Power — Everyday Democracy
• * Online Video Service, Inc. :: Seattle Net Tuesday Notes
• * Noonhat — Toss Your Social Salad
• * Itchmo :: Seattle Net Tuesday Notes

This Net Squared presentation discusses Community Voice Mail’s use of Second Life for networking:




I could not agree more with their Editorial Statement:

Environmentalism has taken a global turn. What was once a movement that revolved around local activism and outdoor enthusiasm now tops the agendas of leading research universities, corporations, and policy makers. As the science grows more mature and the money more serious, Conservation has emerged as a new kind of environmental magazine poised to capture the transformation.

Without being heavy handed, without preaching, pleading, or bias, we take on key environmental issues, explore them from novel angles and bring cutting-edge science to the table. Our editorial mission is to raise the bar on environmental thinking and writing. Our recipe is a mix of world-class journalism and provocative ideas spiced with offbeat illustrations that add a touch of irreverence—and delight.

They publish Conservation and its constituent Journal Watch Online as two integrated WordPress sites. We are currently working on broader plans to redesign their combined online presence. I have designed, developed, and implemented dozens of features for Conservation in our half year of working together and describe here just one such project for demonstration purposes. Many of our projects have focused on improving their behind-the-scenes editing and publishing tools as well as improving their presence online but beyond their site, in social media.

In most cases, a new feature such as adding a widgetized column to Journal Watch Online served both specific and general purposes. Specifically, the new column allows them to elevate more content and more features to the top of the page. That the new column is “widgetized” means that editors are able to use WordPress to manage content such as categorized links and a display of recent comments. What could be described as one feature — a new column — is actually any number of features, including whatever WordPress has available as a widget.

Generally, the Conservation and Journal Watch Online sites had similar designs but two significantly different widths. As a result of their difference in width, visitors navigating from one to the other would see features like the site header and footer “jumping around.” It was a visually more confusing, jarring experience. Matching the widths of the two integrated sites did not resolve all design differences but was a part of a larger effort for more conscious design and improved user experience.

The original developers of the site made these types of changes, and this type of control over a defined area of the site, much more difficult and expensive for Conservation. Two of our longer term goals in working together have been to give them greater control over their site, and to reduce their cost accordingly for making changes.

Adding a new column to Journal Watch Online was a classic win-win-win type of project, and from idea to design to completion it required just two hours’ work.

REALscience is a science media company based in Seattle. We are launching the new site today, March 30th 2009 and will continue rolling out improvements in the following weeks.

There are so many new features we are calling it “REALscience 2.0.” The features include:

• * Cross-browser compatibility, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, and Flock
• * Social bookmarking features so articles can be quickly submitted to relevant sites
• * Featured articles section to keep popular articles sticky near the top of the site
• * Widgetized sidebars so that any widget in WordPress can be easily added and managed
• * Gravatar readiness
• * Designed for threaded comments
• * Custom thumbnail images and optional automatic thumbnail image scaling throughout the site
• * Valid XHTML and CSS for a design without the use of tables
• * WordPress compatibility through versions 2.8.x

Visit REALscience! This is a small image of their new site:

This is a small image of their old site:

The short answer on its technical details: I started with WordPress and phT for YAPB and customized each. I would not release the work I did for MPG as a stand-alone set of code, but I could do similar work for any photographer or artist and so could you, with the tools I referenced.

If you’re considering WordPress then ready-made themes I might work with include http://bueltge.de/photos/ from http://bueltge.de/photoblog-theme-fuer-wordpress/465/ from Germany, or the flexible and simple http://photoblog.xyloid.org/.

Design side, MPG and I surfed roughly 75 to 100 good photography portfolios, first. Design memes emerged which made laying it out and color choices simple, per the goal of looking professional or industry standard.

A portfolio site and especially in photography should stay nearly out of view, moving you through scenes like a stage crew. This is not the time for gimmicky user interfaces in Flash which take two minutes to load and invent whole new ways to use a mouse — portfolios for which relatively few potential clients will have patience.

MPG needed graphics to represent her portfolio on other sites, and to incorporate it within those sites, such as her own MangoPowerGirl.com. On the left is one such graphic, which is shown in a sidebar of her site like a “tower” ad, linking to her portfolio.

MPG’s portfolio feature requirements included:

• — to be able to update it herself,
• — to have it easy to page through, with large-enough photos one at a time, and
• — to have categories with “thumbnail” views per each including an “all photos” category.

MPG’s photography portfolio is broadly compatible across browsers, operating systems, and even hardware and display settings, e.g. scaling well for lower screen resolutions while maintaining image quality.

Above all MPG’s photos are a joy to see. View select work at Mango Power Girl Photography, hundreds more photos centering on food, nature, markets, and related stories at Mango Power Girl, and thousands more of her photographs, one uploaded almost daily in MPG’s flickr stream.

p.s. for a super fast portfolio, you can also tag photos or group them in a set on flickr. For a tag, try the word ‘portfolio’ or any word, then to present the portfolio, share only a link to the slideshow flickr automagically generates per tag or set.

Here’s an example from my own flickr stream, showing photos I have tagged with “wallpaper” meaning they could be used as a computer desktop, wallpaper, or background image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianglanz/tags/wallpaper/show/

These are my notes from one of five sessions at a Seattle Net Tuesday event. Sessions were limited to five minutes, so I followed up with presenters as needed. The Knowledge As Power presentation was delivered by Executive Director Sarah Schacht.

Sarah Schacht has published the current version of the Knowledge As Power web site herself, for a low cost, with little technical experience, and using her personal computer. She updates the site herself, and has even depended on it for live video presentations, critical and successful first impressions, and fund raising.

Much of Seattle Net Tuesday is an ongoing discussion of better ways to connect nonprofits and technology. So how did Sarah pull it off? She used iWeb from Apple Computer. With iWeb and about $75 spent on the iWork Suite, plus Emma for email marketing at about $24 per month, Sarah’s young organization has a simple, sustainable, and professional online presence.

In this context, other Seattle Net Tuesday attendees mentioned that Windows Live Spaces from Microsoft was catching up, including that they offer a free domain as Apple does with iWeb. However, it was also mentioned that Live Spaces also still has issues with the increasingly popular Firefox and other Mozilla browsers.

For online donations, Knowledge As Power has made good use of a PayPal button, the code for which is provided by PayPal.

Sarah recommends the iWeb and Apple technologies to anyone wanting to get something started online, without too much technical fuss — provided you own or can easily access a Mac computer.

Of Knowledge As Power, I say: may it live long, and prosper.

Give Knowledge As Power’s legislation-tracking web site a try!

I found the film’s soundtrack clever, affecting me enough that I had to wonder why. It opens with accordion music, crowd noise, and market speak. The accordion sets a romantic, communal, timeless mood with old folk melodies. It is the music of the people, fitting Seattle’s great market.

Accordions are used in folk music throughout Europe and North and South America. They are often used by buskers — street performers. Buskers are common at Pike Place Market itself, if not always with accordions.

At first we see an empty market, with some focus on leaking pipes and damaged infrastructure. In 1969, they needed to not only save The Market from development, but rebuild it from decades of structural neglect.

A vendor steps into view. We hear, then see The Market’s business being done, its teeming, happy crowds, some shopping for dinner and others with no apparent agenda. There is a lot of focus on prices, reminding us that without a profiteering middle man, The Market makes basic economic sense for both producers and consumers.

The accordion easily ebbs out of one melody and flows into another, many times over. It is as if you saw someone interesting in the crowd and tried to follow. You would get glimpses, then lose them at times, and get an occasional glance in return that would keep you following.

In the middle of the film we are shown the doors to the Athenian Inn Restaurant, next door to Lowell’s Restaurant & Bar. A 1960s, Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass interlude overtakes the audio track. Their album “Whipped Cream & Other Delights” was all about food, and although it was four years old when this film was produced it was still all the rage. This is a nod to youths who not only made this film but generally contributed much to saving The Market. The instrumental music of Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass did also appeal to many older adults, so it was a diplomatic choice.

We see a ferry and hear its horn while enjoying a view from inside Lowell’s. The interlude ends with a bit of “A Taste of Honey,” instrumentation including a Fender bass, an electric and an acoustic guitar.

It was over coffee at Lowell’s that Steinbrueck and friends hatched plans to save The Market in the 1960s. For nearly 100 years at both Lowell’s and the Athenian, there have been restaurants in this place where you could meet friends or make friends. They have been fertile ground for greatness for nearly all of Pike Place Market and Seattle history.

The accordion reemerges with a few ending scenes and the film credits. Daily business is done, a couple meanders, smiling arm in arm, and a grandfather leads his granddaughter by the hand.

The credits read “A University of Washington Film,” by B. Biggs, G. Coldevin, R. Dong, J. Dunn, D. Macdonald, D. Pratt, and C. Vollan, with Advisors J. Driscoll and T. Kirkman. To these Seattleites of 1969: for my many market adventures since 1992 when my family moved here and met The Market, and from 2008 when now I write: thank you.

Below: Peter and Victor Steinbrueck promoting the rehabilitation of Pike Place Market, also in 1969:

Photo courtesy Peter Steinbrueck and HistoryLink.org.

Article cover art by Brian Glanz, in part using images from the Seattle Municipal Archives.

Read more about Mango Power Girl :)

“By the power of mango!”

This tour de notre jardin links to F00Ds with its edibles, such as her Applemint Gimlet and her Chilled Mint Tea. No doubt she will update it now and then to track its progress.

Note: I am so-happily-married to Mango Power Girl.

My first reaction was: we should be counting dead and injured people, not only dead and injured Americans.

The point of increasing our perception of war in this simple, everyday way is to make it more real. A spike in media attention for this sign and for the war will remind many of the war in Iraq, making it a little bit more real. For those who pass by Ron Richardson’s sign often, the small but repeated reminder makes the war still more real. The sign does not let them forget the war, and for that Richardson is to be commended. Richardson is a retired history teacher who himself served in the military; we are grateful for his shared wisdom.

Yet we also must not forget: Americans are not the only people being killed and injured in Iraq. Many thousands of innocent people have died, whether innocent Iraqis who are nobody’s enemy, innocent Americans who were not there to fight, or anyone from anywhere caught in the crossfire. Many innocent people have been killed by our enemies, but many innocent people have died due to mistakes made and crimes committed by Americans, too.

Even if we counted both American and innocent casualties, though, we would still not make real the whole human tragedy of war. Those who we call our enemies are not less human than we are. Our enemies, too, should be counted. Consider:

1) Who are America’s enemies in Iraq?

2) Who among our enemies is so threatening that we need to kill them, and who could we instead arrest and prosecute, or negotiate with politically, financially, or otherwise?

In much of the fighting, the answers to these simple questions have been unclear.

Tens of thousands are dead and hundreds of thousands are injured — those are the human numbers, not the American numbers. Exact numbers are controversial and even the Pentagon will avoid releasing their opinion on what the exact numbers are, but we cannot let details obscure the scale of this tragedy. Popular American media and Ron Richardson’s sign have recently featured the number 4,000 — but the real number is much larger, and more terrible.

The reasons for so much killing and injuring, like the scale of it all, are also easy to forget and important to repeat: Americans are being killed and injured because we are fighting a war that we started. Most Americans now think we should never have started this war. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Saddam Hussein posed no threat to us. It was out of our own fear, and our inability to collect or properly interpret what they call “intelligence,” that we began this war.

It should be soul-shaking to reflect on this and any war. Counting American casualties does make war a little more real, but counting only American casualties is a lie of omission. We must not pretend that only Americans suffer when America fights a war.

If humankind was mindful of the reality of war, there would be no more war. Counting only American casualties is less than the whole truth of the horror and the history we are making. To keep it real, we must know the whole human tragedy of war.

While modernizing the efforts of volunteers and staff, the Foundation has created online tools of possible interest to other non-profits, including:

(1) Online forms used by grant recipients to submit annual reports. The forms include requests for human interest stories from the recipients, which have come in handy later.

(2) A means of raising funds online. At last glance, there was a big button to click for donations from the foundation’s Web site.

(3) A volunteering log. Volunteers perform many tasks for Haas Foundation, especially media related. Volunteers are not only working locally, and often they are working online. The foundation receives credit for every hour volunteered, so a log helps with tracking and also managing volunteered work, especially when it is performed asynchronously.

Haas does not always create their internal tools from scratch. One recent publication was a great example of coordinating their original online tools, other readily available online tools, and volunteer efforts. Volunteers used Lulu to publish a collection of success stories, which grant recipients had entered into the online annual report form. The finished publication was volunteer-edited and sent as a thank-you to donors of a certain amount.

The Haas Foundation is modernizing these efforts quickly but does not yet have all the answers. Michele expressed their general need for coordinating a variety of online tools for volunteers. They also want a better way volunteers can connect to form a community online. The Foundation has have used Microsoft SharePoint, but SharePoint has been difficult to maintain over time, “from a usability standpoint” as they reported.

The presentation session at Seattle Net Tuesday which originated this report was brief. Our immediate group did not have an opportunity to discuss potential solutions. My instincts tend toward a private wiki like PBwiki to make collaborative working and intranet connectivity front and center. Community building can be on the side of a PBwiki, either linking to and from it and social networking sites or integrating their widgets into it. It is also possible that a custom social network like Ning would be a better glue for Haas Foundation volunteers.

The Haas Foundation would be happy to hear more suggestions. Tell them Michele Fugiel and Seattle Net Tuesday sent you!

Visit them at HaasFoundation.org.

This article was written based on a presentation by and follow-up with Volunteer Michele Fugiel at Seattle Net Tuesday in 2007.

Saul & Dayee G. Haas Foundation photo credit Mel Hazen, 2007