Yesterday’s conference (21st February, London) on Voluntary Sector Databases was an interesting event. Independently organised it sold out and has a waiting list for a repeat event (due in May).
At the start of the event I was wondering why it was so popular, given that databases have been growing in use in the sector for quite a while. Perhaps the answer is that we are now moving on to the second phase of database use - not starting from a blank sheet but having existing systems which have been forced to adapt to do more (and maybe failing), more than one database system being used in different parts of the organisation and now a perceived need to bring information (or rather data) together to improve efficiency, reporting and quite possibly understanding of the services that the charity provides.

Could this be called ‘Database 2.0′ as per ‘Web 2.0′ being the next stage of web use? Hopefully not - the latter term is used to mean different things by different people, often just to look trendy.

I was facilitating a session on Change Management - see the VolResource wiki for some thoughts arising from that, and you can add your own contributions on the issues in selecting, developing and implementing too. But what I’d really like is something more of a cross between a blog like this, where comments are encouraged, and a wiki where usually text is updated by different users in isolation. There’s probably a way of setting up the wiki to do that, but I’m not that familiar with the technology.

In the meantime, please feel free make comments or additions whichever way.

Net squared, a newish American set up billed as ‘remixing the web for social change’ is beginning to have some interesting stuff on its blog. Here’s what I’ve just picked up:

• The first time I’ve seen anything sector related on flickr, the photo sharing/tagging website: International NGOs.
• The ability to create mini-charts of how often words have appeared in blogs recently. Here’s an attempt at a link to ‘social enterprise‘ - below - it ought to refresh automatically.
• And a blog from a real frontline charity worker which has been going for a while: Urban Sprouts School Gardens, in San Francisco. is a project getting the youngsters involved in growing food.

Posts that contain Social Enterprise per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

VolResource is experimenting with a wiki to develop information resources for the sector - for later transfer to the main site probably, or around an event. An example of the latter just set up is one on Databases for the voluntary sector. This is intended to contribute to a conference being held on 21st February (see main VR site events listings for details).

Also new is Web in Practice, transferred from main site and extended to cover podcasts, blogs and news feeds (RSS). This aims to rpovide good or interesting examples of charity/voluntary sector sites which in some way or another are promoting action by site visitors - whether its buying charity gifts, signing a petition or learning first aid!

General wiki link. Let us know what you think, suggestions for wiki pages etc.

We’re experimenting with turning some VolResource pages into ‘wiki’ format, where people can make their own contributions. (We’ll be keeping the old stuff too for the moment at least!)

We’ve transferred a couple of pages to start with, which might particularly benefit from outside input (there has been some already fed into the existing pages). Namely Taxonomy, Planning and Monitoring.

Take a look at www.voluntarynews.org.uk/mediawiki. Comments and suggestions welcome, on the wiki, here or by email.

From PublicTechnology.net

Dorset For You, the pioneering online portal launched by five local councils this February to replace individual council websites, has adopted taxonomy-based technology from APR Smartlogik to boost information ‘findability’ through the site and make it even easier for citizens to access the information they need quickly and easily.
…………
The real intuitive element to search is delivered by creating a regional taxonomy, or thesaurus, to supplement the terms of the official category list and ensure that the search function can translate the language of citizens (for instance, “rubbish”) to match government documents (”waste disposal”). Semaphore’s taxonomy management tool will be used by dorsetforyou.com to underpin its search, also enabling the function to understand misspellings, slang and suggest synonyms.

More:
dorsetforyou.com enhances service with new information ‘findability’ :: PublicTechnology.net :: e-Government & public sector IT news from