Picking up the thread from Alison’s post on unplugging, I am moved to share a few observations about what it’s been like to plug back in after a significant hiatus from the office and from interaction with technology.

Defining “unplugged”

The first part of July I took three weeks of vacation and went on a road trip with my family. We drove 2,000 miles and covered parts of the OR and CA coast, the Redwoods, Sonoma wine country, Palo Alto and San Francisco. I share this not to bore you with the entire itinerary, but to give you a sense of the scale of the trip and of how unplugged I was. I didn’t check work email after the first few days, there were long gaps in cell phone coverage, and I went 2.5 solid weeks without looking at a computer monitor except for educational displays at park system exhibits, and Facebook on my phone — which is a recreational break for me from my dependency on email at my desk.

The experience of being unplugged

I had some withdrawal pangs at first, but I eventually settled in quite nicely to the long view of magnificent scenery and the joys of real time conversation. Mostly I enjoyed focusing on one thing at a time, making me a case study for the brain research that tells us multitasking is impossible for our neural circuitry, and we end up shortchanging the whole list of things we’re trying to do at the same time. Like trying to talk with my partner on the phone while sneakily typing - it never works, I always get caught, and I have to rewrite anyhow. Why not just take a moment to talk? 

Plugging back in

Now I’m back at work, digging out my inbox and re-engaging with projects I put down for 3 weeks. A few observations stand out from my reentry:

The economy is taking a toll. Headlines in three weeks worth of the Puget Sound Business Journal include the closures of  Taproot’s Puget Sound area office and of Unitus, and “Foundation grants to stay down, survey says”. It’s one thing to live with the “new normal” day to day, but coming back and seeing the accumulated evidence is sobering.

NPower does great work for nonprofits. Reading the kudos and thank you notes that came in from customers while I was gone were a reminder of our expertise and of the quality relationships we build with our community partners. It made me proud.

Exciting times are ahead. NPower Seattle is on the brink of some exciting changes to our services and our service area. Technology changes fast, but there is staying power to that 12-year-old idea that a nonprofit providing technology solutions to the nonprofit sector could change the game. I am happy to be a part of making that happen, one focused moment at a time.

Though this announcement is not directly technology related, we offer it as a service to our nonprofit partners. (Credit to The Nonprofit Center in Tacoma for a snappy recap of the issue.)

The IRS has released the list of those nonprofit groups that face losing their exempt status because they failed to file their returns for three consecutive years. Organizations who have failed to file for the last three years and were supposed to back in May (which includes groups whose fiscal year ends on December 31) have until October 15 to file, so if you are on this list be sure to get in compliance. 

Some facts about the Washington nonprofits on the list:

There are 8,128 nonprofits in the state that are at risk of losing their exempt status

• 1652  of those organizations are in Seattle
• 427 are in Tacoma
• 198 are in Olympia
• 398 are in Spokane

Update: (7/21/10) As of today, the TechSoup/Microsoft webinar on Office 2010 is FULL!  A recording of the webinar will be posted online after the event.  You can access it, along with other Microsoft Community Affairs webinars, at http://bit.ly/ngowebinar.

Join Microsoft Community Affairs on Tuesday, July 27th for a sneak peek of what’s new in Office 2010:

Event Title: Microsoft Office 2010: What’s the latest & why we like it

Event Time: Tuesday, July 27, 2010 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM PDT

Event Description: The latest version of Microsoft Office was released to the world last month. Should you upgrade? Should you care?  In this FREE webinar, co-hosted by TechSoup and Microsoft, nonprofits and public libraries can see what’s new with Office and why there may be some compelling reasons to make the switch.

Elliot Harmon from TechSoup, author of What Your Organization Should Know About Office 2010, will be joined by a Microsoft Office expert to highlight some of the new features like Web Apps for improved online collaboration, the Social Connector tool to bridge your Outlook to social media tools, as well as improvements to built-in image and video-editing features throughout the suite. In addition, we’ll discuss the pros and cons of upgrading at your organization, compatibility with older versions of the Office suite, and how you can go about upgrading your donation through TechSoup or Microsoft Software Assurance.

Register now!

Have you wondered whether you should be writing “email” or “e-mail”? Should be “Web site” or “website”?

To help with questions like these, Yahoo has recently published “The Yahoo! Style Guide: Writing, Editing, and Creating content in the Digital World”, and hopes will be the definitive style and grammar guide for online writing. (To answer the questions above, they weigh in with “email” and “website”.)

The Yahoo Style Guide stands to serve as a convenient reference for grammatical questions and writing style for the web. While the free, online version is said to only contain excerpts from the printed book, it still contains enough content and advice to serve as a stand-alone reference for many users. Those interested in reading the full version can purchase print copies from several online book sellers. Here are a few of the rules included in the online guide to give you an idea:

• Don’t include the http:// before a website address or the slash (/) at the end when writing. For instance, when writing out a web address, use npowerseattle.org or www.npowerseattle.org instead of writing out http://www.npowerseattle.org/ . The “www” part of internet addresses is optional.
  
• File names should remain in all lower case letters (setup.exe), but extension and file types should be in all caps (JPEG, GIF).
• Use their word list to look up how to spell out or use tech-related words. In addition to preferring “email” and “website”, they also prefer “3D” over “3-D”, and they say that we are not supposed to use “Google” as a verb. (Use phrases like “search for” instead.)

More than just new spelling and grammar rules, the guide has a lot of great tips for writing content for the web. Visit their “Writing for the Web” section for a lot of good articles on topics like identifying your audience, search engine optimization, writing for mobile readers, gender-neutral language, and site accessibility.

Take a look through the Yahoo! Style Guide and let us know what you think in the comments. Are you an “e-mail” person? Do you have other style guides that you prefer for online writing?

Finally, it feels like summer. My family is looking forward to a relaxing weekend. The kids are headed to Mimi and Gramps’ house, while Scott and I enjoy a date weekend. As we planned this weekend, we thought we’d head out of town so we wouldn’t be tempted by our weekly chores. We love spending time together, but in a life that is consumed by family and work the pull to try and stay ahead is pretty strong.

This morning, as I was checking my personal email I came across a blog post asking “Can You Unplug?” (No judgment on what I read, please.) I’m afraid my answer is often—No.
To honor date weekend, I’m inspired to turn off my email, twitter feed and facebook status checking and enjoy some old fashioned downtime—I’m sure that I’ll be more refreshed and ready to tackle the world. Maybe you’ll join me in unplugging for the weekend? I bet the work will still be there on Monday.
-Alison

P.S. Wondering why we (the collective we) can’t put down our smart phones? It’s a psychological condition (not sure if that makes me feel better or worse) called variable reinforcement scheduling —read more about it here, Vacation Unplugging.

For two days last week, the leadership team at NPower dug in deep to build our team and expand our leadership skills. We were fortunate to be facilitated by the always on point Amanda Madorno of Roam Consulting. It was a terrific couple of days capped off with good food (we love the Meydenbauer Center), great conversation and of course a team of people who are dedicated to making NPower a success.

To prepare ourselves for our time together, we read The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni—a fable about a technology team. (For real, it wasn’t about us, though each of us saw characteristics of ourselves). We conducted a self assessment on the performance of our team. Turns out “we’re not that concerned with titles and status” but we’ve got some work to do “pointing out team members unproductive behaviors”. We spent time developing our team norms (be a Tigger, not an Eyore was one of my favorites), conducting an archaeological dig of our culture and learning ways to productively deal with conflict (We all agreed that conflict is hard, but is good and we are committed to saying all that needs to be said in our team meetings)

From the moment we walked in the room, it was clear to me that our team was committed to the mission of NPower. We’ve definitely got our work cut out of ourselves as we create and innovate new ways to provide optimal technology to our community, but I’m really pleased this is my team.

-Alison

PS-I had good intentions to take lots of pictures, but alas the only pics are of one of our team challenges. See if you can figure out the challenge.

Why did you go to work today? What keeps you going back? I was having one of those very Monday mornings this morning and my motivation for heading to the office was low. Not for any particular reason or anything to do with NPower. Just because for a moment I lost track of my passion for what we create in the world and my contribution to the collective effort. The low point came as I watched my daughter head off for her first day of jump roping camp and suddenly I wanted to go and watch her tackle the challenges of double dutch. I juxtaposed that with an image of me sitting in front of my computer screen culling through my inbox and all of a sudden the world of work seemed so…monotonous, irksome.

Then I remembered something I’d heard at the Friends of the Orphans luncheon in Seattle months ago and the flame of passion and verve that a bad case of “the Mondays” had almost squelched suddenly sparked brightly. The spark was a quote by Father Wasson, the founder of the organizations that now offers hope and a helping hand to thousands of orphans in Central and South America. He said, “You may only be one person in the world, but you may be all the world to one child.” All the world.

So here I am, in front of my computer on Monday morning. Because what I do at NPower matters. The money I raise and the community connections I foster are connected to the work that community partners like Friends of the Orphans do. Yes, there are monotonous and irksome moments. And I wade through those moments because I hold for the bigger picture of a thriving nonprofit sector that houses families, educates kids, grows gardens, encourages clean energy use, and keeps us all healthy and inspired.

Thank you Friends of the Orphans and all of the community partners that NPower has the honor to support!

– Peg Giffels

Our fellow nonprofit capacity builder, Executive Service Corps (ESC) escwa.org, in collaboration with the United Way of King County, is recruiting volunteer technology consultants for database and other small scale technology projects with local food banks and feeding programs to amplify their use of volunteers.

Up to 5 consultants are needed for projects requiring 6-10 hours a month between July and the end of September. If you are interested in volunteering please go to escwa.org/volunteer and sign up.

When Windows 7 launched in October 2009, Microsoft made a special extra donation of it or Windows Vista available to nonprofits and public libraries through TechSoup. The Microsoft Software Donation Program allows organizations one opportunity to place a donation request each year. This special extra donation lets eligible organizations place another donation request outside of the program limitations as long as the request includes only Windows 7 or Vista. If you have not yet used your special extra donation opportunity, you have until June 30, 2010, to do so. For details, see Special Extra Donation of Windows 7 or Windows Vista.

Also, in case you were not previously aware, the TechSoup admin fees for many of Microsoft’s most popular software offerings, including Windows and Office products, will be increasing effective July 1, 2010.  For example, the admin fee for Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007, which is currently $20, will increase to $31.  So if you are planning to upgrade or add any Microsoft products over the summer, you can save money by placing the requests this month. And if you have been waiting for Office 2010, it is now available through TechSoup.

NPower Seattle staff had the good fortune to sit down this afternoon with three representatives from the services industry for a discussion about the business of consulting. Panelists Kevin Mackey (Point B), Matt Joe (POP) and Ali Piyarali (Accenture) fielded questions about how to open the door to a productive relationship with customers, how to close the door when necessary, and how to incorporate new technology or processes. Thank you Kevin, Matt and Ali for joining us and for sharing your experience and suggestions!!

In closing, each panelist was asked to share one tip or piece of advice for NPower consultants. Here are the highlights from the closing remarks:

• Remember the mission of the organization you’re serving and let that guide you. Always come back to what it is they’re trying to accomplish and remember that when your work is on target, it will contribute in some way to accomplishing the mission.
• Technology is a tool. Start with the people. Technology plays a big role, yet consulting is essentially a people business.
• Trust your instincts.

NPower colleagues, please add your comments to fill in the details and share the highlights for you from today’s discussion.