James Purser [INSERT WITTY CATCHPHRASE HERE]

I'm going to be running a workshop for Not For Profits in the Illawarra. We're going to be covering the cool tech and services available to NFPs in the web2.0 space, including social networking, extranets, and all those cool things which don't cost the earth.

Details can be found here so if you know someone involved with a NFP in the Illawarra who might be interested, point them our way.

I've put this post in a couple of different categories, because what I'm going to talk about affects so many people.

The term "Clever Country" was a term coined by Bob Hawke waaaay back in the early 90's. Yes I know there are people for whom this is all ancient history given that some of you weren't even born when he said that. While it was politically puffery at its finest it came to symbolise what many of us felt was wrong with the way the Government had been treating the country and its resources. For 109 years now, the federal government has been treating Australia as if the only thing worth supporting is mining, farming and to a much lesser extent, manufacturing (cars especially). Anything based on "new tech" like those new fangled computer thingies was left to the vagaries of a market already dominated by those big Government suppliers.

This continued through the Hawke/Keating years, worsened under the Howard/Costello Government and now the year old Rudd/Swann Government has proven that for them, tech means scary (see the Internet Filtering shambles). This doesn't look like changing any time soon.

There are many things about this that frustrate me.

It frustrates me as a business man. I run a business that is internet based. My business is trying to provide new and innovative services (notice no blatant linking in this post) to areas that can really use it, like Local Government and the Not For Profit sector. However thanks to incredibly high data pricing I'm paying through the nose for hosting in Australia instead of heading to the states. I don't want to head overseas to host my data. I want to support our local industry and I want my Government to ensure there is true competition.

Well I'm still looking at different CRM's, however I have decided that it isn't going to be CiviCRM. While CiviCRM looks good for the online community management sector, it certainly doesn't meet my needs as a specialist small business operator.

So that leaves vTiger as the lead  at the moment.

On a side note, one of the biggest challanges I've noticed in this search for the best CRM is the fact that I really am not up to speed with the marketing speak that seems to be an essential part of this software. So all in all, the process is providing a bit of an education.

One more note, I was talking to Michael Chesterton regarding the new fivedash Accounting Package/CRM system. This is an Australian open source system aimed at small to medium businesses. They claim that it's in beta at the moment, well while Michael seems to be having success with it, I haven't been able to get past creating my first company in the system. So it's back to ledger-smb and trying to figure out how to link that with vTiger I go.

As part of the whole growing the business thing, I've been looking at ways to improve my business work as opposed to my development work.

For the last few years I've been putting the developing of code ahead of the day to day running of the business and this hasn't been helpful at all. If I want this business to grow (and I do) I'm going to have to seperate the business side fo things from the geek side of things.

So with that in mind, this is what I'm going to do:

• Use the CRM system I decide upon for all communications with my clients.
• Keep my personal/development email/communications seperate from the business communications
• Study the marketing of the business. This is going to hurt I think
• Maintain an internal wiki relating to the business

While this is by no means the end of the process and journey, I think it's a good start.

Well I've been up for a little while so I thought that while the kids were occupied I would jot down a few notes.

Firstly, let's tackle politics for a moment (I know, shocked aren't we). Can someone please figure out a way to force the NSW government to go to an election early? There were two running themes this week that really drove home how completely broken the whole situation is.

Firstly, the ongoing inability of hospitals across the state to pay their bills. Looking at it locally, the South Sydney/Illawarra Health Service is in debt for a total of $24 mil, while the Western Area Health Service has reduced their debt to something like $23 million. When doctors and nurses are having to purchase things like bandages from local chemists, something is very wrong.

And while this whole mess is going on, what are our political servants doing? Fiddling while Rome burns. At a time when the state resembles the Titanic after meeting the iceberg, our representatives (the people we put into power) are arguing over who's going to be captain.

Sigh.

On the tech side of things, I've been doing a fair bit with django/python over the last few weeks and I think I'm finally getting to understand the way it all works.

The main project I've been working on has been a hosting managment app that allows for easier creation and managment of CMS such as Drupal or Plone. The idea is to make it easy for the clients to be able to manage the basics of their site without needing to muck into the back end that much. It's getting there, and I should have something ready soon.

Lastly on the business side of things I've made a couple of new years resolutions.

Well I have to say, I'm happy with the response we've recieved to the Open Source Startup Group. We now have 20 members and there has been some discussion on the list.

A thanks goes out to Michael Chesterton and Jacinta Richardson* for contributing to the information pages that we're putting together and a welcome to everyone who's joined.

I would like to point out that this group isn't aimed specifically at being an Australian group. Rather it's meant to be a place where people can find information about their local situation, whether they live in Sydney, Wellington or Khuala Lumpur, so to those of you reading this who aren't based in Australia, please come and join up.

*Apologies to Jacinta for getting your last name wrong, I blame the heat.

One of the activities I took part in during the excellence that was LCA 09 was the Startup BoF - both of them in fact. The first one was less than successful and yet and enjoyable time was had, so we decided to have another go at it. At the second attempt we managed to actually talk about running an Open Source Startup :)

One of the upshots of that was the suggestion that  a mailing list be setup to try and keep the communication up. After some thought I decided that it would probably be best to setup a google group and we could take it from there.

http://groups.google.com/group/openssg

So if you're running an Open Source Startup or are thinking of running one, or if you have gobs of money you'd like to invest in an Open Source Startup then sign up and lets talk.

"If you live in the Kensington area of the Randwick Local Government area, you should be recieving a pamphlete informing you of the launch of a new site - kensotraffic.com.au, specifically put together to both get information out to the public about the ongoing issues of traffic and transport in the Kensington area, and to get feedback from the residents."

Originally posted here: http://collaborynth.com.au/blog/kensotraffic.com.au

Yup, we've put out another one :)

You know what I like about my line of work? Taking tech like Plone and being able to bend it to what I or my client needs it to do. Even better, it let's me indulge one of my great passions, democractic development. kensotraffic.com.au might seem to be about a very local issue in only a very small part of a big city, however to be honest, it's these single issue projects that are going to be the great drivers of E-Democracy in the future.

Well my history with webinars is now 1:1 bad vs good. The last one I did was to introduce a few Local Government people to a new service that I am running. It went quite well, so I'm going to tempt fate once again and I'm going to be running another webinar about Open Source and Local Governments next Monday at 11:00am AEDST.

I'll be using the dimdim web presentation service. It's flash/java based, however it also has an Open Source version of the server that I've been playing with.

If you're interested or know someone who is interested in watching the presentation, please feel free to shoot them the link above.