Allan Benamer runs a "Confessions of a non-profit IT director" blog
He is the IT director for a medium-size non-profit and built his blog as a ”safe” space for harried non-profit IT
directors/sysadmins/developers to share experiences and wisdom
regarding the IT non-profit sector. His blog is a sort of a “Make” magazine
for the non-profit nerd.
We connected with Allan a few weeks ago and he has interviewed me for a podcast (which was recorded via Skype - so a "skypecast" - sorry for the minor gaps in the recording !).
Our chat went back and forth between Wild-Apricot-specific issues and general non-profit technology industry topics. Things we have discussed include:
- The origins for Wild Apricot product and its history. What is the problem we are solving? Why the heck did we call it Wild Apricot??
- How would we convince an investor that Wild Apricot idea - providing small non-profits with an integrated set of web-based tools - is a viable business idea.
- How Wild Apricot is positioned in the non-profit tech industry and how it relates to products like Salesforce.com and Blackbaud's Raiser's Edge
- What is Web 2.0 as applied to non-profits?
- Our Agile development methodology used for Wild Apricot - how we stay flexible and react to users' needs with frequent releases (every 2-4 weeks).
- Market needs and our development plans for the next year
You can get the podcast recording (MP3 file) and check out Allan's blog at www.nonprofittechblog.org/wild-apricot-social-entrepreneur-skypecast-2