But during the session, I wasn’t that happy with these as ways of defining the key cloud applications: Google Docs, Basecamp and Salesforce.com that people were talking about.  In the session I was struck by a much simpler way of summing up the cloud approach – it’s like lego.  Traditional applications are like clay, and cloud applications are like lego.

We were talking a lot about project management and CRM applications, as other cloud-based applications for Fundraising haven’t made much headway in the UK yet, but the lego/clay analogy works – and really highlights the pros and cons:

• Where clay allows you to build something exactly shaped to what you want, lego doesn’t – you get close, but not exact and you have to change your expectations just a little.
• Clay takes craftsmanship to make something everyone can use, lego’s much faster and much easier to plug into.
• Clay doesn’t scale well – you need to put in the right framework underneath for the final scale, and once it’s started, you can’t change it easily.  Lego scales and you’re building or changing it every day.

So can lego type systems really give us the flexibility to build up the applications we need rather than follow someone else’s hand-crafted creation?  What really brought this together for me though was my eldest daughter who’s just got her hands on meccano (which is much like lego these days I was interested to see).  We spent a happy hour on Saturday building the wheeled crane as outlined in the instructions so that she could lift teddies in and out of various positions in the living room.  When we were done, she was pleased with the result but said “I thought it would be bigger – some of my teddies are bigger than that”.

When I got home last night, she showed me what she’d done: “That crane wasn’t big enough so I took it apart and made this – I can lift my biggest teddy now”.  She’d made a crane about twice as tall, and rather more functional than the original model.  She’s six.

One of the thing we’re asked most about at the moment is that of “Cloud computing”.  What’s it all about? Why should I care?  In my session during the afternoon I’ll share some of the lessons we’ve learned working in the sector and show how cloud computing is something that charities need to sit up and listen out for.

In the desktop era, our organisations owned and managed our own hardware and software in our own premises, in the server era, we outsourced some of that – the hardware and network side mainly, to data centres and managed hosting firms, but in the cloud computing era, we’re outsourcing the management of everything connected with computing – hardware, software, reliability, backup, the whole shooting match, to suppliers of specialist software and platforms.

It’s an exciting opportunity, one that brings with it new features and capabilities, but also new risks and concerns.  I hope that you’re able to join me on Friday to find out more…

Conference information

Amazon’s web “cloud” computing service is famously very reliable, it has data spread across multiple data centres organised into multiple regions, but even with all these safeguards in place, there was still a means by which a number of failures could bring down a substantial proportion of their service.

If your organisation is looking to the cloud to save money, be more flexible or use new tools, you’ll be understandably anxious about what happens when things go wrong.  It’s useful to take a pragmatic approach in this scenario.  IT people love to design systems with multiple backups built in and automatic handlers for failures, and they’ll love to try and work out exactly how reliable and automatic the end solution actually is, but at the end of the day there’s only one way to be sure and whilst your IT people might not be very comfortable with it, it’s worth a try.

I first read about this a while ago in some IT publication or other whose details now escape me.  I read the story that a new Chief Information Officer, on starting work with a new team in a day long workshop, was briefed by technician after technician about how all the servers in the business were reliable and backed up and would resolve problems automatically when they occurred.  He kept asking one question: how sure are you that this will work when things go wrong.  Of course the technicians were very confident that things would work and kept telling him so.  When the technicians returned after lunch, they found in the middle of the conference room table a block of wood with a fire axe imbedded in it.  The new CIO said to the technicians “Some time later today, I’m going to put that axe through one of the servers in this building, how confident are you that things will keep on working”.  We can anticipate that there might have been some further double checking happening after that.

Of course I’m not advocating that you destroy your equipment or risk life and limb, but it is very easy to simulate failures in computer equipment: you pull the plug out.  When we commissioned a major new system recently, we deliberately worked to build in the very highest level of automatic backup and failure management with the expectation that if any device in the setup failed, the rest of the system would seamlessly pick up the slack.  After all the specifications, sign-offs, commissioning and testing, everyone was very confident.  When I asked to go and pull some plugs out, however, I was met with some resistance, and a certain amount of double checking.  In the in end it was a very worthwhile exercise because I know exactly what happens when there’s a hardware failure in this key system – not all that much – the other devices sort the problem out and then get a human to come and replace the broken bit.

Of course Amazon’s problem was much more complex than this, but when it comes to your IT, how confident are you that you could pull plugs out?  If you can get the IT team to the point where they’re happy to do this on a live system, you’ve come much further than most towards a really reliable IT provision.

Charities were up in arms about the loss of income – which will be considerable.  So the government extended a transitional relief, which ends tomorrow, meaning that charities could still claim at 28p in the pound for donations until 5th April 2011.  Now that particular battle is over, there’s a glaring opportunity: all of your donors are aware of “the cuts” and many will know something about gift aid changing.  Why not ask them to make up the difference?

Dear Donor,

Tomorrow the Government’s Gift Aid scheme changes.  The £10 you gave us last month was worth £12.80, but the donation you give us next month will only be worth 12.50.  In these tight financial times, our cause needs your support more than ever.  Please make up the difference by clicking here and increasing your direct debit by 30p per month.

Yours etc

Of course the real opportunity here is in a larger increase from donors.  If you’re worried that donors will be cancelling their entire direct debit because you’ve reminded them, then remember that if they’re hard up (as many people are) then they are going to do this anyway (and perhaps time to re-persuade them to support?).  If this excercise would be too expensive for the income gained, then time to think again about how to do your online direct debits – and remember that when you talk to donors online, it’s much easier to drive up your gift aid revenue by going back to donors for a declaration.

There aren’t many opportunities to talk about how government policy affects charity in such a tangible way, so whilst the actual battle here is over, there’s still plenty of support – and additional donations to go and get.  After all, if that 30p wasn’t worth it, we wouldn’t have made all that fuss in the first place, would we.

A couple of years ago I really got into riding off road: mountain biking.  If you take a look at the magazines that focus on this particular sport you’ll see that they are almost exclusively about the technology: toys for the boys.

A couple of years back, my better half send me off for a day’s expert off road coaching, and I learned how to do mountain biking really well.  (I don’t claim that I can do it really well, but my coach could and he taught me a ton).  The most important thing that I learned on the day is that the bike you’re riding is pretty much of no importance in terms of how quickly you’ll travel and how much fun you’ll have.  Sure there’s safety – you don’t want bits falling off, and theres an element of comfort that money can buy, but the important stuff isn’t about the bike.

When I started riding off road, I thought that the direction of travel was largely defined by which direction the bike was pointing.  Sure I needed to balance appropriately, but as long as I followed what the bike did, I’d stay on and get where I needed to go.  What happened in fact was that I wobbled along why I wasn’t going faster.  What my expert bike coach showed me was that the direction that I was going to go was dependent on which way I – my body – was going, and that changing which direction I was facing had far more impact than turning the handlebars.

When you’re riding a bike on a rough trail, it’s all over the place.  There are bumps, puddles, rocks and tree stumps.  Today they’ve been coppicing the Forestry Commission land up on the Ridgeway so it made for a very bumpy ride.  When I’ve ridden that trail before in those conditions it’s been very slow going – head down – worrying about every rock and dip.  Today though, I zipped along and made great time,  When I did hit a rock which had moved, and my front wheel slid off to the right, I simply pulled the bike up under me and dragged it back along in the right direction.

The secret?:  Any modern bike is much lighter than its rider and can change direction and attitude far more quickly as well.  So if you have a clear vision of the path that your body’s going to follow along the trail and you can visualise that, the bike’s seriously going to take care of itself, and the bumps will melt away.

When approaching digital technology for our clients, there are occasions when technology is put in the front seat – that sounds an alarm bell, because if we’re concentrating on the technology, we’re not concentrating on where the body – the organisation is going, and we’ll struggle to set the right course and keep on track.

This week I’ve been contrasting two briefs, from two different clients.  One outlines some objectives and doesn’t really go into the technology much other than to give an outline expectation.  The other is all about the technology and doesn’t make clear what the objective – the direction is.  If our past experience is anything to go by, project A will probably do better than project B.

If this all sounds a bit airy-fairy-it’s-all-in-your-head, then get your request in now for the London Olympics mountain biking events.  You’ll see bikes that are a blur of jagged motion and vibration energy, and riders that glide down the track at a rate that will genuinely astonish you.

Yesterday a contradictory story was posted quoting “experts” who put the story straight.  Apart from wondering why the BBC didn’t ask these experts in the first place, this got me thinking.  In this example, there were quite a few “experts” (this blog included) who realised immediately that the original story had got the wrong end of the stick, but as is often the case, the authority of the BBC (which, let’s face it, is usually a pretty good bet) carried a lot of weight and will have lead to an awful lot of time being wasted on a non-issue at many digital charities.

In our projects I am continually reminded of the value of engaging the right experts as early as possible.  That’s why whenever we set up a major programme of work, it’s vital to engage consulting experts, project management experts, design experts and technology experts from day one.  Digital stuff is complicated and, as the BBC demonstrated this week, it’s very easy for the well informed non-expert to get things very wrong.

We’ve found in practice that the value of the slight nudge an expert can give at the beginning of a project isn’t truly apparent until much later when it’s realised that the project has avoided the need for a huge (and expensive) course correction.  Anyone who’s spent the last 48 hours trying to come up with a workable way to implement “opt in” cookies would certainly have valued an early intervention like this!

So here’s the challenge.  You’ve taken a break from something to read this blog.  Whatever it is, perhaps it’s something important and complex – who do you know who’s an expert?  Perhaps they are a member of your team or someone at an agency you work with: ring them up, or better still – go and see them.  Take muffins.   Ask them about your project.  They’re an expert so if they can’t add anything they’ll know right away.  You might just be surprised at how valuable the result turns out to be.

Delve a bit deeper though, and you’ll see that whilst there’s something to keep an eye on here, you aren’t going to be forced to disable cookies from your website (probably)…

The Data Protection Act, created in 1998 has a core premise that information can only be used for the purpose for which it was collected.  So when you visit a website and click around, make a donation or sign a petition, you’ll be providing and exchanging information using cookies to do this.  And that’s fine.

Where the problem comes is that some websites which carry advertising share the information that you’ve provided to the site you’re interacting with (perhaps you searched for “First Aid Kit”) with other sites: “Third Parties” who use that information to serve you adverts which relate to the information that’s been supplied.  This clearly goes beyond the usual tactic of advertising which is to target adverts based on the demographic of the main groups of users on the site, and actually supplies adverts relating to the things you’re interested in.  Overall this can make ads much more effective for advertisers (though it can lead to some hilarity – google “targeted advertising fail” for various examples)

The problem with this is that it breaches the Data Protection Act, because the information you provided wasn’t for that purpose and so sites configured in this way are in breach of current UK legislation.  To muddy the water though, there’s another accepted code of practice which allows websites to take an “opt out” approach.  This effectively says “if you don’t want this kind of stuff, use your browser settings to block it across all sites”.  This is a bit of a cop out as it doesn’t get around the breach of the data protection rules (the concern being that if a site shares information, how do you control what is shared?), so the EU have leaped into action to specifically address third party cookies and has directed that they should be “opt in”.

And that’s where the clear explanation ends really, the UK Government has rejected the directive, web developers are up in arms because it appears that they could be asked to switch off Google Analytics, and general confusion reigns.

Ashurst do provide this useful summary. (thank you!)

What’s clear at this point is that charities should be careful – talk to your web team, your tech team, your agency – and get the techies in the room – about how you use information that is collected from users.  If you know you have processes which share this information with third parties (perhaps your charity is part of a confederation and you share information) it’s probably a safe bet to put in place the requisite tick boxes on the registration forms on your site to ensure that you have users permission to do this.  If you don’t use ads and you don’t share the information with third parties (are you sure)? Then it’s still best to ensure you keep an eye on this issue.

I’ll report further developments back here on the blog as and when.

Latest update – 9th March from BBC news

You can follow the blog on twitter at @MartinFBCampbel

One of the most striking features that it has is to track all the times you use a particular route, and it can then keep track of the worst, best, average etc times that you’ve put in on that route.  All very interesting if you’re a stats head.

In our business and for clients we often track performance in key performance indicators (for income, members, interactions and things like that), and we track against trends, historical averages and targets.

That’s where this app brought me up short though.  After your cycle you can see your times your averages etc and check out graphs to your heart’s content, but during the ride itself, the app will pause your iPod for a moment and talk to you.  It’ll tell you how far you’ve come, how long it’s taken and how far you have left.  But here’s the thing, when it comes to giving you performance feedback the only option it seems to have is to compare what you’re doing now with your best.

Today’s commute was a bit slow to start off with, and I ended up 2 minutes behind my best, because I knew I could do better, it was a challenge but also an encouragement to make up that time, and you’ll be pleased to hear that I arrived at the office rather warmer than when I started out and 59 seconds ahead of my best. (1h 6m 18s if you’re interested)

Now at this stage in the season when I am just limbering up, performance is going to be much easier to improve than later in the year, but I love the simplicity of the comparison: how am I doing against my best?

Next time you’re running a digital campaign, or monitoring the performance of a site, why not pick your most important key measure: maybe it’s emails received, total donations, total registrations, and instead of comparing with an arbitrary target or the sector average simply ask: “how am I doing against my best?”

There is a lot of value, however, locked up in those assumptions, and we know that there are some that we need to check and some that we need to allow to be wrong under certain circumstances (that’s why we have RAC cover, and an IT department).

In building truly compelling and effective web communications, even some of those basic assumptions can be much more important than you think: on something I’m working on this week we realised that unlike “Javascript?” “Browser?” and “Operating System?” to our surprise “Screen Resolution” was not a dull technical issue, but a fundamental creative and strategic assumption that – when we tested it – turned out to prompt some big questions about a particular piece of digital communications.

Of course this is infuriating – which assumptions do we have to test?  We can’t walk around all day saying “ah but what if?” – I’ve tried it and stopped after about half an hour because I felt sure I was about to drive colleagues to the point of violence, so which assumptions to test and how?   It’s doubly infuriating because whilst some failures of assumptions are hard to miss: that “Rrr Rrr Rrr” sound from under the bonnet doesn’t sound right…, others are impossible to spot: “you didn’t receive my email because I didn’t sort out servers properly, why didn’t you say?… oh”.

It’s inconvenient to hold in mind a range of possibilities at one time, so in fundraising and digital design we tend to crystallise them into user personas spanning the full breadth of all the different assumptions.  But while this is a convenient tool, it’s very easy to miss out the opportunity to question an assumption which we didn’t include in that model.

There’s no simple solution to this, but for me there’s a lesson: when assumptions are questioned – check them wherever we can – and be prepared to rethink the breadth of our expectations as a result.

What’s remarkable about this is that Pete Payne is a website.

Launched on Valentine’s day 2001, The Diary of a Teenage Health Freak took online form alongside its sister site Dr Ann’s Virtual Surgery.  Both websites aim to educate teens about health – and given the age group, have quite a clear focus on puberty and sexual health.

At launch, the site consisted of a daily blog, with a simulated webcam and some natty navigation.  No eyebrows raised?  Blogs didn’t enter the mainstream for a couple of years after that and webcams were even further ahead of their time.  The site has grown over the last 10 years and is now widely used in schools as one of the few trusted resources for sexual health matters.

In wishing Pete Payne his 10th birthday, I took a moment to reflect and noted that in creating something so long lived, we did things differently from the way many websites are built today: first the content was created (as were many of the concepts) by two experienced authors – both specialists in their field: Ann McPherson and Aidan Macfarlane, second – they were assisted throughout by a specialist web writer Pete Howarth who further developed those concepts, finally – the site was backed for a long term future by a visionary leader Mike O’Regan (a founder of RM) who realised that in getting ahead of the curve, sometimes you have to wait for the rest of the world to catch up!

And catch up it has, with Pete’s 10th anniversary, he was starting to look a bit long in the tooth and so we’ve been very pleased to see him reborn in his new home with a new in-house team who have given him a contemporary makeover.

Happy birthday Pete, and here’s to 10 more years.

Pete Paynes Diary