Triangle NetTuesday/501 Tech Club: November 11, 2008
Location: Triangle United Way, 1100 Perimeter Park Dr, Morrisville, NC 27560
Speaker: Todd Sutton, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Application Services, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and Google Apps EDU Customer Advisory Board
Google services for nonprofits: Todd Sutton led a discussion on the various Google tools and services available to non-profirts and how they can be used to promote a cause, raise money, and operate more efficiently. As Google's tag-line says "You're changing the world. We want to help."
Website: http://www.meetup.com/TriangleNetTuesday/calendar/8962679/
Presentation slides are attached below:
Notes and discussion:
- Education institutions and nonprofits get the same Google services that businesses pay as much as $50/year/person for.
- UNC-Greensboro looked at outsourcing student email. They were using Lotus Notes for email and the user satisfaction among students was low. They are now looking at outsourcing email for staff and faculty. Outblaze was expensive. With Microsoft, had to purchase some services. Google mail is free. Email was the driver. Apps were good add-on. At the time of investigation, Microsoft provided limited options for installation. Google provided the APIs to connect to their services, which meant much greater flexibility.
- Gmail: 7+ gig inbox. Disk space is not a problem.
- UNC-G uses igoogle to create a starter page (portal for users), a custom page using gadgets, for things like announcements. igoogle is a collection page for gadgets.
- No ads.
- Potential for life-time accounts.
- The cost of antivirus/antispam, goes along with other costs since Google provides for free.
- Google has redundant data centers. A data center can disappear without any loss of data.
- See http://www.google.com/nonprofits/ for services for nonprofits
- One person who attended is using Google Grants and offered to present on it at a future meeting.
- Google Checkout: "Process online donations for free until 2009 and pay no monthly, setup, or gateway fees." Don't know yet whether it will stay free, but Todd thinks that, given the way Google has done things in the past, it could remain free.
- UNC-G uses Google gadgets for things like newsfeeds and other information.
- Sites integrates docs, presentation, etc. on a Web page -- lets you drag and drop -- using for intranets. For example http://www.kainoshealth.net/
- YouTube
- Google acquired GrandCentral -- give out one phone number and chose which phone rings.
- Google acquired Postini for archiving and retention.
- GDrive is in the works. "With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc)." -- http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=121
- Google gears 30-day local caches, aimed at use offline.
- Groups getting role-based access control. Groups for email lists, has moderator capabilities and other list features.
Video chat with Google Talk is 1 to 1 now, will be 1 to many later.
- With Google docs, multiple people can edit docs at the same time.
- With Google Reader, you can create your own newspaper.
Sign-In and Evaluation Form
There were about 40 people.
About 20 forms collected.
How did you hear about this meeting:
- NetTuesday site/email list: 6
- 501 Tech Club site/email list: 4
- Another email list (please specify): 2 Meetup, 3 RTPnet list, 2 Internetworkers, 1 NTEN
- A friend/colleague: 4
- Other (please specify):
Suggestions for future meetings:
- Topics I Could Present On:
- Topics I'm Interested In:
- Web use, best practices, upgrading
- Technology and social media
- Open source systems and apps to save money
- GIS for Dummies
- Getting local events out via the Web. More Google.
- I'd like to join the organizers group to help plan meetings:
- Good meeting places:
- Central in Triangle. United Way is good.
- Other suggestions:
Evaluation of this meeting:
- Previous knowledge of the topic:
- I was unaware of this technology before hearing about this meeting. 5
- I've heard of the technology, but don't use it yet. 9
- I use this technology. 8
- I could give this talk.
- Other
- Was the meeting what you expected? 14 Yes 1 No 2 Better 1 Did not know what to expect
- Was the meeting worth your time? 19 Yes
- Do you expect to use the info from this meeting: Immediately? 11 Yes 2 No Within six months? 7 Yes 1 Maybe 1 Don't know
- Possibly, after working with it myself some
- Do you want to learn more on this topic? 8 Yes, 2 No, 1 Perhaps just updates
- Comments:
- Good amount of info - Good use of time