A small workshop I had on using Google Apps & a motley collection of other tools tto run a non-profit, namely the lessons learned from 1,5 years of Aaltoes. Special shout-out for Henrik Kniberg for the inspiration on the tools-toolkits-processes framework.

1. Hack your work.
ac you wo
Toolbox for non-profits.
13.9.2010 Linda Liukas

2. ?
Now
N
speaking?
Linda Liukas
Marketing Major from Turku School of Economics.
Co founder Gapps. Entrepreneurship,
Co-founder of Gapps Entrepreneurship Visual Journalism (TaiK)
(TaiK),
Stanford ME310, Mechanical Engineering (TKK).
Web, Metrics, Martha S
W b M i M h Stewart.

3. Aalto
A l
Entrepreneurship
E t hi
Society
S i t Founded in 2008 ~30 team members
2008. 30 members.
Board changes every year. Community of 5000+

4. 1
2
3
Three stories:
The New Workflow
What Gets Measured, gets Managed
The Future is a Glorious Mess.
* bonus cases
Create & store Organise
Communicate Show & share

5. I The Ne
New
Workflow
"When a 12-year-old can gather information faster, process it more
efficiently, reference more diverse professionals, and get volunteer
ffi i tl f di f i l d t l t
guidance from better sources than you can at work, how can you pretend
to be competitive?
Hack work, and embrace the others in your midst who care enough to do
so."
- Thomas Friedman, The DIY Economy,
New York Times, December 2009

6. The toolbox?
Th t lb ?
Google Apps
”Physical” tools Flickr
Dropbox <- my focus
Twitter
Facebook
F b k
Newsletters
..put in practice
Thinking tools these are far more
a.k.a. mindsets or philosophies Agile Lean important
Toolkits
a.k.a. frameworks ScrumScrum
Pomodoro
Process tools
a.k.a. organizational patterns 22-minute meetings
Feedback loops

7. Share folders with
team + outsiders
Share spesific d
Sh ifi documents
Create & store Why? Meetings aren’t work. Work
Case: Docs
is done before or after – teams need tools
to gather, analyze, write and comment.
How? Share a folder with your team
team.
Collaborate on individual documents.

8. Work at the same time on a
document with 50 other people.
Use for mailing lists, invitations,
funding
f di applications etc.
li ti t
Show & share
Case: Docs

9. Update with no
Keep the meeting
HTML/markup Use the different
U th diff t minutes in one
language templates, such as place
knowledge lists
Create & store
Case: Google Sites
Why? A centralized place to store information easily. Documentation hub.
How? Used as a backlog for events (feedback participants) board meetings book
(feedback, participants), meetings,
order lists, contact info etc.

10. Aaltoes events,
A lt t
meetings and
deadlines visible
Communicate Why? Easily communicate and update
Case: GCal
events+meetings.
t ti
How? Order the private Aaltoes calender
to your prefered calendar programme.

11. Show & share Why? From ’what should we
do on Twitter’ to ’Let’s experiment!’
Case:Twitter
C T itt How? Aaltoes twitter account,
but #aaltoes far more important.
Let people speak for themselves.

12. Create & store
Case: Google Al
C G l Alerts
Why? Follow your PR online – what is said about your organisation?
How? Set daily, weekly or monthly updates on give search terms.
Receive them in your mailbox.

13. II What t
Wh t gets
measured,
d,
gets managed.
Create goals.

14. Solve
S l root causes, not
symptoms.
Focus on Why first, then How.
Do this five times
times.
Why? A new release broke a key feature for customers.
y
Why? Because a particular server failed.
Why?
Why did the server fail? Because an obscure subsystem
was used in the wrong way
way.
Why was it used in the wrong way? The engineer who
Why?
y used it didn't know how to use it properly.
p p y
Why didn't he know? Because he was never trained.
Why? Why wasn't he trained? Because his manager doesn't
Why? believe in training new engineers because they are "too
engineers,
busy."

15. Gather feedback and
visuals on your
activities to back your
communications
Create & store
Case: Forms
Why? Integrate feedback into the processes.
How?
H ? Embed the form results in your Google Sites or Docs. Set e-mail
alerts for new answers.

16. Organise
Case: Why? Continuity problem with information
information.
Missing a basic check-lists for web services.
Handbook How?
Slideshare
Curated year book as a PDF &
year-book

17. Create & store
Case: Dropbox
p
Why? Working on
rapid projects was hard
hard.
Sharing and grouping
photos didn’t work on
Flickr.
How? Shared
H ? Sh d
Dropbox for Aaltoes.
Stores the f
S financials and
web-layouts – things
that are either super
static or change a lot.

18. Why? Everyone needs pictures.
Show & share Sharing photos for blog posts journalists
blog-posts,
Case: Flickr H ?
etc.
How? Tag Aaltoes on Fli k – easy t
T A lt Flickr to
pull on websites, visual browsing and
everyone can choose th i own creative
h their ti
commons.

19. III Future is
F t ei a
g
glorious mess
The
Th cost of experimentation i
t f i t ti is
approaching zero.
pp g

20. Don t
Don’t try everything
everything.
Create dashboards – make meaning.
g
Asynchronous communication is hard (forums, blog comments) – synchronous
easier (simultanious collaboration on docs)
( )

21. Organise
Case: Like – vote - sort
Why? Sometimes voting sorting and liking is easier and more effective
voting, effective.
How? We’ve tried so far at least FB, Moderator, Uservoice.com and listiki.com

22. Communicate
Case: Google Groups
Why? Backlog for discussions, easily updateable mailing list
How?
H ? Yammer-like discussion, but in your mail. So far over 3000+ messages.

23. Label your incoming
mail according to
the project
Contextual Gmail
gadgets? Use custom e-mail
addresses
Communicate Why? People use their inbox
Case: Gmail anyways. Rise of the new, glorious inbox
apps.
How? Label your incoming mail.
Use a custom e-mail address.

24. 4 Recap?
Assess your tools accoring to your processes. Try to avoid overlap as
well as gaps. Stick to the plan, don’t change everything all the time.
Document everything And in the end, it’s not about features it’s about
everything. And, end features,
creatures.
Create & store
Alerts Slideshare
Sites Calendar Flickr
Dropbox Groups (e-mail)
Organise Communicate
Docs Skype
Twitter
X? Newsletter Google Talk
Facebook
Show & share

25. Thanks!
Th k !
Questions, comments?
Shoot:
linda@gapps.fi
linda@gapps fi
twitter.com/lindaliukas
twitter com/lindaliukas