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Editor's Note: Our thoughts are with those impacted by the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. While it may be some time until the full impact has been assessed, we will continue to work with our nonprofit partners to determine where our support can be of the greatest benefit. More on our efforts supporting relief in Japan can be found here.
Guest Post by: John A. Goslin, Chief Technology Officer, Boys & Girls Clubs of America
Teen at Rainier Vista Boys and Girls Club, Seattle, WA
Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) believes every child has the potential to BE GREAT. In support of this strong conviction, we strive to build caring, responsible citizens. Boys & Girls Club staff, volunteers, parents, youth and supporters work together to put every child in our Clubs on a path to a Great Future.
Technology is playing an increasingly important role in achieving our mission, both in terms of how we support our club members and how we run our national and local organization.
For success in tomorrow’s workplace, today's youth must be digitally literate. Through Club Tech, BGCA is providing a solution to millions of America's youth to ensure they are prepared for success in school and in the future workforce. Beyond playing games and checking email, Club Tech teaches Club members how to work with technology to learn about their world and to communicate their ideas, hopes and dreams.
Today’s Clubs proudly show off and use their technology assets throughout the Club. Technology supports the educational program of the Club as members use the Internet for research and create powerful classroom presentations using Word, PowerPoint and other software. Short films are scripted, shot and edited at Clubs, allowing members to communicate in fun and exciting ways. Cellphone ringtones, digital artwork and musical scores are created by members using their talent and creativity along with technology to support the arts program in the Clubs
Technology is helping our kids to make healthy food and life choices. Using Kinect for Xbox 360, members are now able to use their whole body to play video games – encouraging active, immersive and social experiences, with fitness results to boot. Our kids are learning and being entertained all in an environment that encourages teamwork, healthy behavior, fair play and creativity.
Using Microsoft’s Kodu, BGCA is helping to introduce Club Members to computer programming and helping them advance critical design, math, and problem-solving skills. With Kodu, budding developers string together simple and intuitive cartoon icons that define the rules of their game world. Using this friendly environment, rather than complex programming languages and code, anyone can create their own video game in minutes.
Beyond the walls of our local Clubs, the national organization runs on Microsoft technology. BGCA’s computers run on Windows. Business productivity tools like those in Microsoft Office allow BGCA staff to focus on excellence in programs and mission and easily communicate and collaborate with local Clubs and external partners. SharePoint is increasingly used for collaboration, electronic content management, and publishing. SharePoint is quickly growing in its importance to the organization, as it is now powers our external websites, www.bgca.org, as well as www.myclubmylife.com and www.familyplus.bgca.org. Besides being the online representation of BGCA, our websites enable activities essential to our business and families: facilitating electronic donations to our Clubs, helping kids find a neighborhood Club, recruiting top professionals for our team, the list goes on…
In partnering with Microsoft, BGCA has also found solutions to drive down costs to providing access to technology in our Clubs. Using Windows Multipoint Server, members can share computer resources by having multiple workstations on a single computer retaining a personalized experience for each computer user and allowing oversight by the computer lab director. These types of efficiencies, when multiplied across our Clubs, allow us to provide more focus on driving our mission forward, and minimize concerns about technology costs.
As noted, Microsoft technologies are integral to almost all functions at Boys & Girls Clubs of America from our families to our staff to our online presence. The technologies used by BGCA represent best practices that would be similar to any businesses or organizations that is a Microsoft customer.
What separates BGCA is what is achieved with these technologies. They help to ensure that we can focus on helping all kids achieve the great future they deserve.
Actions to take:
Guest Post By Jean-Louis Ecochard, CIO, The Nature Conservancy
In a recent issue, The Economist published a special report on feeding the world, calling it “the 9 billion-people question.” How we meet the demands of a growing global population while managing the impact on oceans, lakes, rivers, and land will be one of society’s biggest challenges in the coming decades. Part of the answer will come from developments in technology that allow farmers, scientists and engineers to collect and share data, analyze options and develop new approaches to sustainable food production. The impact of enabling anyone, anywhere, to collaborate and contribute to the common store of knowledge is enormous. Beyond harnessing data and scientific information, though, it is equally essential for technology to help bring people together to solve real problems with smart solutions for a more sustainable future.
As CIO of The Nature Conservancy, I see opportunities for leveraging technology every day.
In Northern California, for example, scientists are working to protect and restore the Garcia River, a sparkling jewel surrounded by redwood forest and home to spawning Coho salmon. To determine progress toward meeting goals, scientists are using remote sensors to monitor water temperature and efficiently track indicators of forest health, including canopy cover, structure and complexity, as well as wildlife habitat. Through this data-driven approach, the Conservancy is identifying ways to improve our efforts on the Garcia River and testing new tools and techniques that could be deployed throughout the region.
The key to success goes beyond good science: our challenge is to establish systems that facilitate collaboration and foster working relationships between a wide range of stakeholders, from farmers and ranchers to business owners and government officials. In addition to new handheld devices, mobile applications, games and social networking, all of which offer exciting opportunities for collaboration, The Nature Conservancy is also investing in enterprise solutions that provide a platform for future applications. Microsoft SharePoint, for example, helps our field offices coordinate volunteers who previously used cumbersome paper forms, maps and reports sent through the postal mail. SharePoint is allowing Nature Conservancy staff around the world to work more effectively across borders and geographies on everything from development to field work, as well as programs and communications. With a disparate global workforce, it is an important tool in collaborating, sharing, accessing, and finding the information we need to be effective in pursuing our mission of protecting nature, for people today and future generations.
Information and communications technology will continue to help us support an increasing worldwide population while better protecting our water, land and natural resources. At the end of the day, however, it is less about the technology than about the power of new tools in bringing people together to find practical solutions. We haven’t solved the “9 billion-people question” yet, but we are getting closer to some of the answers.
Take action:
The Leadership View
Guest Post by Tom Mara, Station Director, www.KEXP.org
KEXP is an arts organization with a mission to enrich your life by championing music and discovery. We operate a non-commercial radio station in Seattle where our DJs have the responsibility -- and the authority -- to curate and select the music you hear from a wide and deep array of music genres: from indie rock to world music, from hip hop to country, from reggae to the blues, among many others. We stream this service and provide a great deal of archived music, podcasts and video casts, all at no charge to the public.
We also invest a great deal in recording and distributing live performances. Last year we produced about 500 live in-studio sessions, a terrific way to bring the artists as close as possible to our listeners.
Technology has enabled us to build upon our traditional modes of public service. For example, our website enables you to recall any radio program from the past fourteen days, to connect to more than 30,000 photographs of artists and bands we've captured though the years, and to download video of in-studio-sessions. These have been terrific advances for our listeners over the past few years. But what about the future and our never-ending obligation to uphold our mission?
Perhaps I'm thinking too simplistically here, but I think there are two ways of approaching how technology can uphold a non-profit organization's mission. A lot of us focus on >buying< technology: it's an expense that rests within our profit and loss statement, and it's a strong way to drive greater efficiency or increase a capacity of a business system. But how many of us in the non-profit world step back and challenge ourselves to envision how technology could significantly drive greater public service impact. Is technology an expense - or is it an agent to generate impact? Better yet, can it be both in our organizations?
Photo courtesy of KEXP: Photo "Trombone Shorty" taken by Ken Roeder Photography
Microsoft recently committed to supporting KEXP's mission which is to enrich people's lives by championing music and discovery. Simply put, its commitment over the next three years is amazingly generous and will do wonders. But as we contemplated in recent months how Microsoft could support our non-profit, and as we had a series of planning sessions with their experts, we were encouraged -- challenged really -- to figure out how KEXP should prepare itself to optimize Microsoft's investment. Had we fully contemplated how technology could directly move the community impact needle? Had we considered new modes of public service? How would a greater investment in technology drive our economic engine and increase and improve our capacity to conduct business and generate greater revenue in order to become a more effective steward of our mission. Stunningly beautiful questions, really, in my view with this one being the most focusing: How could our constituents be better served with technology?
As we worked towards answering them, we transformed ourselves. I believe we became a stronger organization, one with greater clarity of opportunity and risks, greater understanding of vision, keener strategies, and a more sophisticated technology philosophy, for example:
The KEXP-Microsoft initiative has already been transformative to our organization. And we are giddy about how it will generate even more progress. However, perhaps most importantly, it has caused us to better understand how technology can - and should -- be a powerful agent in pursuing our public service mission, in addition to how it can improve efficiency and increase capacity.
How could technology amazingly drive public service impact for your constituents?
If you'd like to share some ideas, shoot an email to tom@kexp.org. Good luck and keep up the important work!
For a deeper dive on the technology story of KEXP and Microsoft's partnership, check our PART 2 of this blog, written by Microsoft Sr. Director of Developer & Platform Evangelism Group, Eric Schmidt.
Take action!
(read part 1: The Leadership View, by KEXP's Tom Mara)
Part 2: The Technology View
Guest post by Eric Schmidt, Sr. Director, Developer & Platform Evangelism Group, Microsoft Corporation
Photo courtesy of KEXP; "Yo La Tengo" Photo taken by Renata Steiner / Nataworry Photography
For the past decade KEXP has been a visionary in pushing the limits of technology to serve the music community. In late 2010 Microsoft and KEXP entered a multi-year partnership to evolve the core technology platform that powers the KEXP. This partnership focuses on the three areas: the "Play", supporting infrastructure, and the listener.
Play in the Cloud
The life blood of KEXP is the "Play". DJ's select the play and listeners receive the play. Each play contains a wealth of information: title, artist, release, genre etc. Today this information is surfaced online via the real-time playlist . KEXP is investing in new cloud based technologies via Windows Azure to extend the value of the "Play". At the station this investment is called the "Music Service Fabric". The Music Service Fabric is a set of cloud based services which run on Windows Azure. These services normalize all play data throughout the station and will be used to power the real-time playlist, streaming services and will enable new features like contextual social sharing.
Contextual social sharing will enable the KEXP community to share and syndicate KEXP play information in a manner that provides attribution for KEXP as the source of the play. For example - Rebecca is at working listening to KEXP online, she hears a new song she enjoys. She scans the real time playlist and "Likes" the song. This triggers a "Like" against that play - which is really a "Like" for the artist, the release, the track as well as the show and the time it was played. If Rebecca has enabled authentication via Facebook and or Twitter she can seamlessly promote her "Like" to her social network. As the "Like" is shared traffic and promotion is tied back to KEXP, this in turn provides a mechanism to promote further information about the play or related content.
KEXP is utilizing Windows Azure to host the new service fabric. The service fabric is built with .NET Framework 4.0, leveraging the ADO.NET Entity Framework and is exposed with standards based REST services. The implementation supports a multifaceted relational model that bridges external meta-data schema with KEXP specific meta-data which is ultimately stored in SQL Azure. With Windows Azure and SQL Azure, KEXP can dynamically scale processing and storage needs as demand and complexity of related services fluctuate.
Internal Productivity
In late 2010 KEXP finished their migration from Pine email and Oracle based calendaring to Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). Specifically KEXP has adopted Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft Office Communications Online. This migration has created new efficiencies and more effective communication for KEXP's full-time and volunteer staff.
Internally KEXP operates on average with 150 staff, of which 60~ staff is volunteer based. The volunteer pool is constantly changing. Efficiently on-boarding new volunteers is crucial as KEXP has limited IT administration resources. Once rolled into a BPOS account volunteers have access to the mainline discussion groups and collaboration tools required to support their duties.
KEXP's full-time staff now enjoys unified calendaring and email through Microsoft Outlook backed by Microsoft Exchange Online. Staff can now also stay connected via Active Sync mobile devices like Windows Phone 7, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.
Net-net Microsoft BPOS has bridged the communication processes for KEXP's full-time and volunteer staff. BPOS provides a cost effective mechanism to on board new resources as KEXP's staffing needs grow.
Re-New-Member
KEXP is truly listener powered; roughly 80% of KEXP's operating income comes directly from individual donors also known as KEXP members. As a non-profit organization KEXP is faced with the ongoing challenge of motivating existing members to renew their membership while at the same time attracting and converting new listeners into members. Currently KEXP utilizes six separate systems to manage its membership and gift processing workflow. These systems operate in an autonomous manner and in most cases cannot be extended to implement new business processes. KEXP is challenged with the need to have a highly flexible technology foundation for its CRM workflow.
In early 2011 KEXP made a commitment to adopt Microsoft Dynamics CRM online as a means to implement a more unified CRM workflow for both member management & underwriting management. This initiative will model new automated workflows for new member on boarding, existing member account maintenance, gift processing and donation management. Ultimately these workflows will be integrated with applicable data flowing in and out of the music service fabric. For example, the station strives to model geographic listening/usage behavior with donor behaviors.
Another benefit from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online implementation will be streamlined interaction with new workflows via Outlook and existing collaboration tools. This will provide KEXP staff the means to drive long running workflows in a more consistent manner.
The net impact from this new architecture is that KEXP will have a more extensible CRM technology platform to both improve existing workflows as well as extend new workflows to their collaboration tools and within the music service fabric. Ultimately these investments will provide a more meaningful and transparent connection between KEXP and its global listener and member community.
The technology partnership between KEXP and Microsoft focuses on three most important pillars of the station: the core staff, the play and the listener. Innovation around meta-data management, combined with new CRM workflows layered on top of unified knowledge worker tools will take KEXP into the next decade of leadership and to further drive their public service mission.
Listener powered, technology powered - where the music and technology matters - KEXP.org.
We have all been shocked and saddened by the images and reports coming from Japan.
It is a human tragedy on a massive scale.
To help support ongoing relief efforts, Microsoft is making an initial commitment of $2 million, which includes $250,000 in cash as well as in-kind contributions such as software.
We already have a range of support efforts underway including:
There are many opportunities to help. We invite you to consider supporting any of the following relief organizations in the work they are doing to help the people in Japan:
We will continue to monitor the situation in Japan and do what we can to help.