Only a decade ago, there was little in the way of consolidation of information (or wisdom!) pertaining to how technology could be used to support, document, analyze, and expand our programmatic goals.
Now, we are experiencing a proliferation - not only of technology resources for programmatic goals, but of collaborative efforts to manage this knowledge (and wisdom!) in various ways that are easily accessible to those that need it.
We may have more knowledge than we can easily find, classify, or absorb - but that is certainly a better problem than a dearth of knowledge.
In addition to TechSoup (a definitive web site), TechFinder (a searchable database), the Del.icio.us nptech Tagging Project (a folksonomy), the N-TEN 501 TechClubs (regional face-to-face gatherings), the Information Systems Forum (an email distribution list), a very promising new project has been launched by CompuMentor: ConsultantCommons.Org.
Here's the official mission of ConsultantCommons.Org:
ConsultantCommons.org provides an online collaboration space and
community for non-profit technical assistance providers to
collaboratively build and share knowledge. The goal of
ConsultantCommons.org is to provide a resource for nonprofit technology
assistance providers to share and develop consulting tools and
resources. The system is designed so that consultants can find,
contribute and collaborate on tools and information they use to
maintain a consultancy and provide services to nonprofits....
I'm especially pleased to see this new resource, since I'm a consultant in the field of nonprofit technology, and I stand to benefit from shared knowledge of best practices. But beyond that, I take some pleasure that is not particularly self-interested in the prospect of consolidating the information (and wisdom!) that consultants in this sector have accrued, and making it easily accessible to anyone who wants use technology to support a worthy mission.
While nonprofit organizations often have problems in documenting and transmitting basic information (and wisdom!) to their colleagues and successors, individual consultants are often at an even greater disadvantage, because they lack the advantage of the institutional channels and procedures for doing this.
Therefore, I welcome the launch of ConsultantCommons.Org as an important new resource.
At the same time, I can't help dreaming about a day when all of the knowledge bases that deal in nonprofit technology will be seamless and interoperable. Wouldn't it be great if - when you had a nonprofit technology question - you could create a single query that would search ConsultantCommons.Org, TechSoup, TechFinder, Del.icio.us nptech, and the Information Systems Forum archives simultaneously?
