Susie Halksworth photo in flickr
Susie Halksworth is the Resources Director at AFL (formerly the Cambridge Independent Advice Centre), a not-for-profit organisation based in Cambridge, focused on advice and ICT projects. Her blog, Susie's Blog - Winning hearts and minds over to FOSS (Free Open Source Software) is an excellent example of how professionals in the nonprofit technology field use blogging for professional development.
Susie has a great sense of humor. She describes why she started her blog, "I'm starting this blog because our organisation is trying to move over entirely to open source software, and it's been such a feast of internecine struggle and moral outrage so far I thought it would be useful to other people to show the real non-techy issues of Moving Over To The Dark Side."
1. Tell me a little about your background
I’ve worked for AFL (Advice For Life) for 5 years, and I started work here a couple of years after I left university as a receptionist, moving up to administrator, then office manager, and now resources director. I’m hanging around to see what I’ll end up doing next! My degree is in English and I originally planned to do a PhD and go into research (on 18th century feminist women’s writing) but I somehow got sucked into the voluntary sector, I think because the people I meet are committed and interesting, I love having a job with a mission, and I never lasted longer than a couple of months anywhere else.
2. Tell me a little about your organization
AFL, which was Cambridge Independent Advice Centre until, ooh, just recently, is a medium sized voluntary organisation based in Cambridge, which has advice (on Social Welfare Law) and IT projects. It started in 1988 with two part time staff (who still run it) and a £30,000 yearly income, and now we have loads of staff and lots of different projects and a turnover of 1.3 million.
3. It sounds like you're an "accidental techie" - in that you didn't get training to do tech stuff. What are your most challenging moments as the technical person in your ngo?
I’m not just accidental, I’m not really a techie at all. I did a bit of work on Joomla websites for our IT project, and I had no training except from our very helpful computer person, Chris, who gave me stuff to read, encouraged me and helped sort it out when things went wrong. I’m involved in our FOSS project in terms of smoothing its passage (so to speak) – actually helping to work out the details of what we need to do to get people to co-operate in using it. The most challenging moments by a long chalk have been the human aspects of FOSS – persuading people to try it and not give up at the first obstacle – it has sometimes seemed more like a power struggle between silver-backed gorillas than an IT project.
4. Why blog?
A couple of reasons – I wanted to explore different and more informal ways of communicating what was going on in our organisation as we grow into this huge corporate monster, and Chris and I thought we were (to put it
euphemistically) learning so many useful lessons about how people react to FOSS being rammed down their throats with no prior consultation (sometimes slightly negatively, surprisingly) that it would be useful to share the experience.
5. Is it an organizational blog or personal blog? What conversations did you have within your employer about starting this? What do you see as the value?
It’s a semi-organisational blog, which means I censor myself slightly but probably not enough! I didn’t really discuss it with anyone. I did mention the idea to a couple of people, but no-one could really see why it was a good idea, so I went ahead and did it anyway. I don’t know what the value is, really, I’m still thinking about that one, and it’s still developing – I just think the whole networking thing that goes on with the web is really interesting, and I thought it might help us connect with other people doing the same kind of stuff. Also there was a whole feminist thing about wanting to add to the visibility of women working in FOSS.
6. If you read other blogs, what are the most useful ones for nonprofit/VSC technology issues.
I’m sorry, this is the question I’m going to fail on. I’m still finding my way round nonprofit and technology blogs – the only blog I read on a regular basis is Eunny Jang, and I think I mostly do it to revel in feeling inadequate. I’m open to any suggestions about what I should be reading!
7. I see that you like to eat chocolate raisins, do you think chocolate is an important must-have supply on hand for nonprofits organizations? What are the best chocolate raisins?
The best chocolate raisins are the ones from Al-Amin, the shop down the road, £1 for a great big bag. I notice Tesco has started selling extra-large ones, which would seem to me to destroy the whole chocolate/raisin ratio, but that’s Tesco for you – never satisfied. I do think chocolate is important because we in the voluntary sector are always so busy and underresourced, so we need something to keep us orally occupied and off the chardonnay.
Somehow, I think Susie would enjoy reading Nancy White's blog.
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