As noted last week, the overall project will see a total of five Sister Community sites launch this summer. These sites empower local Communities to craft their own message for their individual audiences while leveraging the common branding and shared experience on the Soapbox platform of the network as a whole.
Sisters of Mercy are an international community of Roman Catholic women religious vowed to serve people who suffer from poverty, sickness and lack of education with a special concern for women and children. They are also a dear, long-standing client of PICnet’s.
When they came to us looking to expand their web presence by creating sites for their five individual chapters throughout the country, we saw the perfect opportunity to leverage the power, flexibility, and elegance of the new Soapbox 2.0 platform to meet their needs.
The West Midwest Chapter is the inaugural site to launch of these Sister sites with others scheduled to go live over the next few weeks. All sites make use of a handcrafted PICnet design customized to offer consistent branding across all project sites while offering Community-specific touches with color schemes and menu options.
Tonight, we launched Non-Profit Soapbox 2.0.5 to add some nifty features for our Soapbox clients. We modified and updated a number of good features as requested, including some of the following:
the Display News module more effectively displays upcoming events
provides Soapbox administrators more access to editing their Web sites from the frontend (visitor’s) view
optimization to the search engine friendly URL system
We’re clipping forward at a great pace using our PICnet Agile methodology, and we’re bringing in bug and feature requests into each of our releases. If you’ve got a request you’d like to see tossed into our queue, let us know, and we’ll be happy to review it in our agile process. Hop over to the Support Center to submit your request, and we’ll take it from there.
In early April 2009, we launched Soapbox 2.0, a system that allows organizations to enjoy the power of Joomla! 1.5 without needing to worry about common open source hurdles, like installation, hosting, and full-service support. It also consists of some awesome new components that Joomla! lacks out-of-the-box, such as our Taxonomy 1.0.
Just 30 minutes ago, we officially launched Soapbox 2.0.4, which gave us an opportunity to improve some key functions within our Taxonomy extension. These improvements will make our Soapbox clients quite happy, and include key updates like the creation of hierarchical term (or tag) structure for your content with a slick implementation of RSS feeds per term. You can also change the view of the term to be like Joomla’s Category List Layout or Section Blog Layout.
What does all this mean? It means that you can now provide several ways for your audience to view an article/page without duplication, maintain a list of terms/tags without overcrowding your tag cloud, and better meet your audience’s hunger for specific tag-specific information.
At PICnet, we like working with the best of the non-profit technology community, from CRM providers to graphic designers. So when our friends strike gold, we’re ecstatic.
The thick-lined drawings of the Earth, a factory and a house, meant to convey the cycle of human consumption, are straightforward and child-friendly. So are the pictures of dark puffs of factory smoke and an outlined skull and crossbones, representing polluting chemicals floating in the air.
Which is one reason “The Story of Stuff,” a 20-minute video about the effects of human consumption, has become a sleeper hit in classrooms across the nation.
Congratulations to the Free Range Studios team on this terrific achievement! Happy hour celebration in DC this week?
The CMS Brasil conference (June 20, 2009) will be a convening of about 550 open source CMS enthusiasts, with strong focus on the Joomla!, Drupal, and Wordpress communities. While my Portuguese is only as good as my Spanish (not that great), you can check out the schedule as well as keep in touch with the event messaging on Twitter.
The FISL is kicking off on June 24, 2009, in the hip Porto Alegre. I’ll be speading the word about Joomla! and sharing insight into our growing community. Additionally, I’ll be sharing some insight from research and future thoughts on the Joomla! community from my Open Source Matters seat.
With more than 3,700 registered attendees, I’m sure it’s going to be an awe inspiring site of open source at work. You can follow the conference’s events on Twitter. Of course, with the co-founder of Pirate Bay and Richard Stallman in attendance, you can expect some interesting discussions on the conference floor.
Looking forward to seeing our Brazilian (and worldwide) Joomla! friends at these great events. Ping me if you’ll be there.
If you didn’t get a chance to make it to the Non-Profit Technology conference (NTC), or were too busy schmoozing in the hallways during the sessions, OneWorld’s got you covered. Roshani Kothari, a good friend of PICnet for many years, is leading a conference call this Thursday (May 7, 2009) at 4pm ET to share some key takeaways from the popular non-profit techie event.
I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the following topics:
2009 will go down as the year integration really took off in the NPO sector;
A great technology conference where the developers and technologists actively listened to the users’ needs;
Open source software is needed more now than ever…and is more popular than ever before.
My fellow panelists include:
Royelen Boykie - Deputy Communications Director & Chief Digital Strategist, Food & Water Watch
Robert DuBois - eMarketing Associate, GlobalGiving
Each year, the Non-Profit Technology conference (NTC) provides vendors and consultants an opportunity to stand out and show their true colors. We tend to find ways to stand out a bit more than others, and thought we’d share a little behind the scenes look at our work.
Remember, your goal is to be memorable, so push yourself beyond your comfort zone.
Don’t make a booth, make an experience
You want your visitors to feel your booth. Literally, give them something to touch.
Shed the typical corporate schwag, focus on something fun
You can give away pens and buttons, but sometimes, going a little further is helpful. How about a 3 foot tall inflatable penguin that can make anyone a hero for their favorite kid?
Penguins rock the PICnet booth (credit: Chad Norman)
Dress the part
If you’re going to show up with a penguins, you’re probably not going to be able to arrive in a button-down, embroidered company shirt. Take it to the next level, and shed the corporate duds.
Catching a cab to the NTC 2009
Make an entrance that stands out
There’s no better way to complete the full science fair booth scene than to make a strong entrance to your booth.
So there you go, a little wrap-up of the making of the PICnet Science Fair booth. Looking forward to seeing your ideas in 2010!
In what was a terrific non-stop event, PICnetters from across the country descended on the 2009 Non-Profit Technology conference (NTC), April 26-28.
The events started with the Science Fair on Sunday, an opportunity to share with the community the offerings different companies and organizations have for the sector. We at PICnet have tended to avoid the typical corporate booth, and instead opted for a little spin on the event. Penguins, traveling more than 20,000 miles to make it to the NTC to remind folks the power of Joomla! and open source software!
PICnet NTC 2009 Science Fair Booth
It’s not an NTC with some help from our flightless friends from Antartica. Despite the recession and the macro economic woes in their way, the penguins pushed north to San Francisco for another year of hijinks. Nice to have Eben Moglen speaking to the NTC crowd the day of the penguin mass arrival.
PICnet penguins hold court at the NTC 2009
With our focus on Joomla!, CMSes, and integrations, I wanted to make sure we had a chance to spread the word at a variety of sessions. While at the NTC, I spoke at the following sessions (more follow-up soon!):
Joomla, Drupal, and Plone comparisons
CMS sewing circle
CRM sewing circle
CMS pain points session (great wiki information forthcoming)
We’ll be posting more of our feedback on the different sessions we attended and participated in shortly. The NTC 2009 was yet another example of the terrific work of the NTEN team and the great leadership of Holly Ross!
I’ve just returned to Washington DC after a great 5 day trip to the UK for the Joomla Day UK 2009 event, and while I might not be at SXSW, I’m happy I made the decision to head to Maidstone for this terrific event.
When I first met Andy Wallace at the LinuxExpo Live in late 2008, I knew he was excited to put on a Joomla Day event for the UK; however, little did I know that he’d combine a terrific venue with more than 110 Joomla users, developers, and designers for one of the best Joomla Days I’ve ever attended.
Instead, I want to talk about this photo. This photo sums up what happens at Joomla Days that make them the most unique technology events I attend. After one day together, my fellow Joomla Day UK attendees turned into good friends. Sharing stories, talking through frustrations, and generally bringing to life the true power of Joomla: the ability to bring people and ideas together.
An email I’ve already received from one of the attendees sums it up best:
“I thought Joomla Day UK was the best tech event I’ve been to, it’s totally energised me for all things Joomla. Before, Joomla was this great but sort of ethereal thing, and now it’s a whole family of real people, which is totally excellent.”
Totally excellent. Well done, Mr. Wallace and my fellow presenter friends. A tip of my hat to all of you.