Happy New Year, back from the dead, and updates

Last year, I took an unplanned hiatus from blogging when life suddenly accelerated. But when I look back on the second half of 2008, I feel gratitude and joy about the things I was able to participate in, and the things I was able to accomplish. Some personal highlights:

Music

Continued to take voice lessons.

Enrolled in the German Art Song class in the SF Conservatory Adult Extension program (the class I was interested in taking earlier). The focus this semester was on the songs of Schubert and Brahms. This class was an incredible opportunity for me - it stretched my brain in ways that engineers don't usually get to do, and helped me take my first big steps forward as an artist and performer.

Sang in two student recitals - my first as a solo performer. Another huge milestone. The first was a NATS student recital. The second recital was the culmination of the German Art Song class and was held at the beautiful recital salon at the conservatory. You can listen to clips here and here! There are also pics of this recital on Facebook.

Performed as soloist a couple of times with my choir. I don't think I'm at the same level yet as the best voices in the group, but I do think I am getting my foot in the door on the regular soloist roster.

Sang the A above the staff in public, by myself, more than once. This was during the recitals and concerts above. Not exactly an earth-shattering achievement for a soprano, but look, it is for me!!! We have to celebrate the small victories!!! B-flat, here I come!!!

Sang the Fauré requiem for a benefit concert and recruited a bunch of singers for same. The woman who organized the concert did it to celebrate her 50th birthday!

Sang some choral music at a concert at Stanford to commemorate the centennial birthday of Armenian-American author William Saroyan. Got a very fancy free catered dinner out of it, too. Mmmm, will sing for food...

Went to the Stanford Messiah Sing- and Play-Along for the umpteenth year. This is a favorite holiday tradition of mine. Each year, we try to go with a bunch of friends and get together beforehand for coffee/dinner. This year, we managed to assemble a bunch of Sugar Daddy's violin-playing friends to attend with us.

Watched and listened to more opera recordings!

Stravinsky - Rake's Progress
Mozart - Le Nozze di Figaro
Bizet - Carmen
Puccini - Madama Butterfly
Wagner - Das Rheingold, Tristan und Isolde
Massenet - Werther

Professional

Started my own business doing freelance Drupal/PHP website development for nonprofits! Scared about whether this will be financially viable in the long run - but I have to try.

Took on the Diabetes Society in San Jose as a pro-bono client, to build my portfolio. Did tons of work to convert their website to Drupal - and learned a crapload about Drupal in the process. Successfully launched their new Drupal website a couple weeks ago! Hurrah!

Created a website for a book launch, also on a volunteer basis. The book is Your Money or Your Life. It's a personal finance book, but not of the get-rich-quick variety. Rather, it's about living within your means, asking yourself "how much is enough", and becoming financially liberated enough to do values-based work regardless of pay.

Found out through the grapevine that the nonprofit where I wanted to work so badly a couple of years ago is now in the midst of an identity crisis and organizational meltdown. When I couldn't get a job there, it was bitterly disappointing at the time. But now it looks like the universe is looking out for me in mysterious ways. Nevertheless, it's still a bit heartbreaking because they were doing fabulous work.

Met with a nonprofit in East Palo Alto that does youth technology training, to discuss how Drupal could fit into their program. Judging from our discussion, I think it will be ambitious for them, but I am willing to give them some mentorship and coaching so they can give it a shot. I'm going to have to be very careful to set boundaries with them. They are sending out a lot of neediness vibes (which is not uncommon with small nonprofits) and I am learning the hard way that boundaries are needed in order to work positively and productively with such groups without getting sucked dry.

Attended my first Bay Area Drupal Camp (BADCamp). This is an amazing event. It's shocking what a high-quality conference this is, considering that it's FREE and sustained entirely by volunteers and a few very-low-key sponsorships. I've been to conferences that charged good money and didn't hold a candle to BADCamp.

Also attended the Nonprofit Software Development Summit. This is another amazing event, conducted in "unconference" style. The emphasis is not on "keynote speakers" and other expert muck-a-mucks handing down their knowledge from the podium. It's more about assembling an amazing mix of attendees and then throwing them together in various small-group formats to talk about topics of common interest and share expertise among themselves. Everyone gets to be an expert (and schedule a session if they want), and everyone gets to be a learner. And the event organizers put a lot of effort into getting a good mix of participants - one of them even said "we keep the jerks out". Ha ha. Truly, the strength of this event is not so much the sessions as it is the people. This is the place to go to meet technologists who are doing brilliant things for the social good, and tap into their knowledge and professional networks.

Had a meeting with World Centric, a sustainability organization in Palo Alto, to discuss a new position they are creating that will involve website development, content management, and writing. There are potentially a lot of good fits for me here. I also have to say that it is exciting to be approached about a job because the people hiring specifically have you in mind for the job. I am motivated to make this work - we'll see if we can hammer out the details and come to agreement on a work arrangement where I can put my special talents and strengths to work for them while still being able to maintain my own work/life balance.

Travels

Santa Barbara - spent time last summer with my best friend, her husband, and her two adorable terror-children!

Detroit - also last summer, we and the in-laws flew to Detroit to visit Sugar Daddy's aunt, uncle, cousins, and grandmother.

Tahoe National Forest - A Fourth-of-July camping trip with the in-laws. Lots of hiking and exploring. It's sooo nice on Fourth-of-July weekend to enjoy the beauty of the Sierras without the crowds!!!

Other Stuff

Took a tour of Far West Fungi's mushroom farm in Moss Landing, organized by Slow Food Santa Cruz in conjunction with MSSF. This was all-around fun. For a nominal tour fee of just $5/person, we got to see their fascinating mushroom farm operations, enjoy the beautiful coastal landscape of Moss Landing, and then eat a fabulous potluck lunch afterwards, to which the mushroom farmers contributed a generous amount of their harvest. I highly recommend any potluck that involves Slow Food people. Those people know how to cook! Sugar Daddy had to roll me out to the car afterwards.

Successfully crashed the San Francisco watershed mushroom foray. Signups filled up really early, but we just showed up on the day and were permitted to join. This foray is of particular interest because the area is so pristine and there are certain edible mushrooms known to be in the vicinity. I can't go into further detail or else I would have to kill you.

Went mushroom hunting at Salt Point for the first time. I have to say that six hours of driving and four hours of hiking yielded just a few spoonfuls of mushrooms! It's partly due to our lack of familiarity with the area and lack of experience hunting for boletes, but also the weather has been really poor this winter for mushrooms, with little rain. On a more positive note, we did get to try a few new mushrooms from this trip - slippery jacks, a Queen Bolete (delicious - never tasted anything like that before), and some oyster mushrooms (I've bought oysters and grown my own, but this is the first time I've gotten them from the wild).

Went to Calstar again in the fall - this was Sugar Daddy's first time at Calstar with his new astrophotography equipment. He was really excited and obsessed about it! You can see his photos here, and I've included one of the Dumbbell Nebula below. What's really impressive to me is that he gets these photos with low-budget equipment. Amateur astronomers can spend thousands and even tens of thousands on photography equipment and telescope equipment, but his setup is more in the hundreds range.


Well, that's the big update for now. I can't promise that future blogging won't be spotty or have more unplanned hiatuses - gotta go with the flow of life sometimes! Let's just keep our fingers crossed.

Alternative Gift Registry, and some very good news!

One of my major accomplishments this week was to finish my volunteer website development project at New American Dream's Alternative Gift Registry (check it out!).

You can see a few things that I worked on. Among other things, I added a bunch of new resources to their Green Celebration Tips page, and if you create a registry and browse the list of sample gift ideas, you will see a lot of my contributions on that list.

Finally - some nonprofit technical experience to add to my resume!!!

The best news of all is that after I completed this project, their IT guy said that he has some consulting budget money this year and would like to hire me to help with various projects as the need arises. Yay!!! I said yes and quoted him an hourly rate, which I have revised (upward) based on my findings on hourly rates in the nonprofit world. One caveat: I must pray that their funding does not suddenly dry up as it did in the last go-round!

New career, here I come!

Merry Christmas, people

Merry Christmas, everyone.

I'm currently visiting my mom in SoCal for the holidays. Hating the SoCal traffic and ultra-sprawl. In a couple of days, we'll head to Arizona to see the in-laws.

One weird thing we encountered while walking around the neighborhood here was a megachurch. It was a convention center-sized campus with a huge sanctuary, twice as much parking as a Wal-Mart, and a cafe and two retail spaces. It was like a big-box store for God! It's still being built and isn't yet open for worship services.

Other recent activities:

Attended two Messiah Sings - one hosted by my choir and also the Stanford one. The one we host has a better level of audience musicianship, but the Stanford one is more like a big, festive community event. Also, Sugar Daddy can accompany me to the Stanford one because they have a pick-up orchestra for instrumentalists like him. In fact, the Stanford Messiah Sing has become quite a tradition for us - we've attended it for the past few years.

Also, Sugar Daddy and I are slowly getting over our nasty colds.

I finished another piece of my volunteer web project for New Dream.

I ended up pouring a lot of time into a homemade Christmas present this year. One of my pastimes is wild edible plants, and last year I gathered leaves from California bay laurel trees, dried them, put them into recycled jars with labels I designed, and gave them to friends and family who cook with bay leaves. Well, this year I got a little more ambitious. While we were at the Calstar weekend astronomy outing at Lake San Antonio this past October, I gathered a bunch of valley oak acorns from our campsite. I decided to prepare them by adapting a couple of traditional recipes that originally used chestnuts. The end result was jars of Ghiande al Liquore (Acorns in Spirits) and Glands Glacees (Candied Acorns), which I'll give as gifts to some friends who also have an interest in wild plant foods. It was a fun project but more messy and time-consuming than I realized...it takes a long time to shell that many acorns, and also the candying process took 4 days and involved a lot of sticky sugar syrup. Also it was kind of an experimental thing. The brandied acorns take 2 weeks to cure so I haven't sampled them yet and don't know how they turned out yet. I did try the candied acorns and they are a little bit more firm than chestnuts would be, but I like the flavor (although Sugar Daddy thinks they have a woody taste). Well, at least these gifts are going to people whom I know will appreciate the novelty and the experimentation, even if they taste weird :)

Updates: nptech, music, volunteer work, mushrooms

Photo courtesy of MykoWeb

Some updates on my recent activities:

On the nonprofit tech career front: talked with S., to whom I was introduced by Gunner at Aspiration. Unfortunately, due to various circumstances, his plan to bring on more people didn't materialize...however, he was friendly to talk with, offered to pass my contact info on to others, and at my request gave me lots of useful advice about the nonprofit tech sector.

I attended Gunner's talk on "How to Find Software for Your Nonprofit", the first Net Tuesday event I've attended. Pretty fun.

I got contacted out of the blue by D. who leads a major open-source nonprofit software project. He saw a message I posted on a discussion board asking about nonprofit tech career transitions and got in touch. I'm looking forward to talking to him later this month about his experiences.

I've also made some good progress on my volunteer web project for New American Dream on their Alternative Gift Registry. I emailed their IT guy an update and some screenshots. So far he seems happy with what I've done. He was also very appreciative, which I have to admit made me feel good. Money is great compensation, if you can get it...but appreciation isn't half-bad, either.

On the musical front: Whew. Busted my butt working on the pieces for the solo auditions for our December concert featuring the music of J. S. Bach and family. Just did the auditions on Monday night. Can't say that I covered myself in glory, but neither was it a train wreck.

I turned a corner during last month's voice lessons, making some good breakthroughs...but now I'm back to slow, struggling progress...

I got recruited into a small ensemble to sing the Liebeslieder Waltzes by Brahms at the Centennial Concert of the Fortnightly Music Club. It'll be a good opportunity to sing in a small ensemble, which I haven't done since college. And, I won't have to wear the dreaded blue dress!

I'm happy to report some progress tackling the subjects in my Music Curriculum for Self-Study. I've managed to pick up some IPA, and have internalized more learnings about German diction. This afternoon, I got worked over by the ear training software station at the Stanford music library. It kicked my butt. I'm drilling on recognizing chord progressions by ear. My brain is fried.

Attended a couple of concerts. One was the Stanford Symphony and Marching Band's annual Halloween concert. Very fun, but oh my god, after hearing the marching band drummers inside an auditorium, it took a few hours to get my hearing back. I also went to Sugar Daddy's concert with the HP Symphony, "From Schubert to Star Wars". Applause for Sugar Daddy - yay!!!

Other projects:

Went on an out-and-back day hike on the Rhus Ridge trail, looking for boletus mushrooms (to gawk at, not to eat or get high on :-) . Funny thing, we hardly saw any on the leg out...but on the leg back, along the same stretch of trail we passed earlier in the day, we started spotting them all over the place.

Finished reading the new book Get Satisfied. Reading this book actually made me feel serene. Highly recommend this book!

Got an update from Hands On Bay Area about sending volunteers to this Coastside Alternative Gift Fair. Turns out they won't be able to do it, since the fundraising aspect of the gift fair falls outside of their policy, and also due to low volunteer attendance for events in Pacifica. Too bad! I suggested to the gift fair people that they contact One Brick.

Made an executive decision to keep my personal & work-related blog reading down to five hours a week, max. There's lots of good stuff on blogs, but they're a real time suck (heh, do you enjoy the irony of reading that statement in my blog?). I need to prioritize.

Onward!

One-on-one with a nonprofit tech sector expert

A couple of weeks ago, I met with Allen Gunn (a.k.a. "Gunner"), executive director of Aspiration, to continue a conversation about nonprofit tech careers that we started at Nonprofit Boot Camp. From Aspiration's website: "Aspiration’s mission is to connect nonprofit organizations with software solutions that help them better carry out their work." After talking with Gunner, I felt a lot better, especially after the unexpected disappointing news from New Dream. How can you not feel better when someone tells you, "My passion is to help people like you succeed"? When making big, scary life changes, you definitely need someone like this on your team.

I'll summarize some of the information and advice I got from Gunner:

Ecology of the nonprofit tech sector:

• Paid positions
• Dedicated tech staffers at nonprofits
• "Accidental techies": nonprofit staffers who wear the techie hat out of circumstance or neccesity
• Nonprofit and for-profit companies that provide software or tech services and whose primary customers are nonprofits
• Self-employed contractors/consultants whose clients are nonprofits
• Unpaid positions
• Tech volunteers
• People who work on open source software for nonprofits

How to get started as a self-employed nonprofit web developer:

• Build a portfolio of websites, on a volunteer basis if necessary.
• As an intermediate stage, offer flat-rate projects. These are attractive to nonprofits because of the fixed cost, but note that you assume all of the risk of cost/time overruns. (Flat-rate projects are also a good option for more experienced people who are good at estimating exactly how much time the project will take.)
• It takes years to build a reputation.
• Experience in the nonprofit sector is important: if you have built websites in the for-profit sector, nonprofits may believe that you are capable of building websites, but they may not necessarily trust you to be able to do it in the very under-resourced nonprofit sector.

Check these out as possible collaborators/employers:

• Radical Designs - web development shop based in SF
• Picnet - has an office in SF; consider applying as a support/maintenance engineer for entry-level experience
• Democracy in Action - Java house. East Coast HQ, but they have a small West Coast office in SF.

Opportunities for consulting niches:

• Fire drill websites - Build a nonprofit website in two weeks; let them know up-front what functionality they can and cannot expect from the website.
• Technology selection - what is the right stack for a particular nonprofit to use, given their size and characteristics?
• "Intake" work for birthing a website - see below

Hourly rates for nonprofit tech:

• $75-100/hr: "Activist" rate for web work; people who are not in it for the money and who want to keep it affordable for the nonprofit community
• $100-125/hr: High-end "activist" rate for web work; Groovy development
• $125+/hr: "Capitalist" rate; charging what the market will bear
• $200-$400/hr: (!!!) "Capitalist" rate for Ruby on Rails development
• This was a pleasant surprise for me. Combined with a live-below-your-means lifestyle, these rates should be sufficient for me to make a non-negligible income while also having enough time for other pursuits and volunteer projects. I do need to take the extra tax bite for ICs into account.

Dysfunction in the nonprofit world:

• Many need organizational development
• Know when to walk away. Identify no-win situations and relationships that have reached the end of their useful life.
• Nonprofits can play mind games - they are masters of the passive-aggressive guilt trip and may try to guilt you into continuing a relationship as a volunteer/employee, even if it's not working out
• Organizational politics - as in any org, there may be internal groups that wrangle, oppose each other, and want completely different outcomes
• Not brutally efficient like the for-profit world

Volunteering tech services to nonprofits:

• Set your own terms. Be proactive and propose a project/task, rather than waiting for them to assign you something. Make sure the scope of the project is limited and well-defined, rather than open-ended. (This advice may not necessarily apply to all volunteers, but it definitely applies to someone in my situation, who has a strategic purpose for volunteering and needs to make sure that the unpaid volunteer engagement is a fair exchange of my time for valuable experience that I need.)
• If you leave the nonprofit, don't screw them. I.e., if you decide to part ways (because the situation is not working out, you have been offered a paid job, you need to acquire other types of experience, or any other reason), leave their website/technology in a good enough state so that they can continue to use it and so that it will be easy for someone else to pick up where you left off. Be professional, don't burn bridges, part as friends.
• Technology audit
• Website audit

Question: I really want to work for a particular org. If I do some work for them on a pro-bono basis, will it compromise my ability to get paid employment with them?

• Volunteer and pro-bono work can build your reputation with the org, add to your experience/skills, and help you get to know each other and see if it's a good fit.
• However, you don't want it to erode the possibility of future employment
• Choose a high-value deliverable
• Limit the time frame and scope. Don't make it open-ended, you may open yourself up for exploitation.
• Be ready to walk. It's like dating: even if you like them a lot, you shouldn't act too desperate :)
• If the pro-bono project ends and they ask you to continue working with them but don't offer to pay, there is code language you can use in such situations that basically tells them "I need to pay the rent"
• Even if you like the org a lot, there is value in working with a variety of different orgs.

Why is nonprofit tech is a growth sector?

• Most nonprofits still don't have a website! (Then again, many nonprofits don't have the funding for one! Or, they might be all-volunteer shops run by a guy or two in their spare time.)
• Good consultants are booked 3-6 months out!
• Technology stacks are now mature enough that nonprofits can safely adopt them (e.g. CMS)
• If you can apply technology to facilitate fundraising, you are golden! (e.g. fundraising widgets)

Birthing a nonprofit website:

• Facilitation. Asking questions. Gathering requirements. This requires more time and effort than in the for-profit world
• Dealing with organizational politics
• "Intake" work (requirements gathering, etc.) - there is a great need for people to do this, since a lot of techies shy away from it and prefer to just do implementation

Entry paths for nonprofit tech:

• In the for-profit software world, "QA Engineer" is one entry path for eventually becoming a "Development Engineer".
• In the nonprofit software world, "Support Engineer" and "Maintenance Engineer" are the analogous entry paths.

Occupational hazards of nonprofit tech:

• Nonprofits that come to you and say, "We need technology X". Why?!?! Start with needs and requirements, not with technologies.
• Overengineering; custom code. Techies who come in and create a custom code website just for experience, then leave (and leave the nonprofit screwed).

Other notes:

You may have skills you didn't realize you had. For example, as a developer I have gone through several release cycles for a large-scale enterprise product - this translates to project management experience! Be on the lookout for transferable skills that I already have, and chances to acquire new ones.

Most nonprofits don't need the full-blown "scalable robust" solution. Most nonprofits can't even afford the solution that actually addresses their needs. So, there is an art to choosing and delivering a solution that 1) meets a few of their most pressing needs, 2) is maintainable by non-tech-savvy staffers (or future consultants), and 3) leaves them a path for growth.

Nonprofits make decisions at a glacial pace - including hiring decisions. Be patient and be prepared to wait.

"M*A*S*H" model - stabilize the patient. When you start with a nonprofit to do their IT work, first attend to the places where they're bleeding. E.g. are they doing backups?!?! Cheap/easy/kludgy backups are better than no backups at all.

If you are weak in graphic design, you can partner with someone with strong design skills.

I should go look at the resumes of other nonprofit techies.

Get some skin in the game! Gunner has connections with a lot of nonprofit web consulting groups and can hook me up with shops where I can get experience.

I need to consult my internal compass and decide what I'm passionate about: nonprofit engagement ("intake" work may be the best fit), nonprofit impact (there's a high-impact opportunity at a Drupal shop), or technology (there are opportunities for Ruby on Rails developers to create all sorts of custom bells and whistles for nonprofit websites).

If I go the Drupal route, Gunner knows C. from Floatleft on the East Coast who could be a great mentor for work/life balance issues in the nonprofit web development.

Next steps:

Gunner put me in touch with someone who's doing Drupal/CiviCRM websites for nonprofits who needs some extra help and is willing to work with someone with my experience (or lack thereof). I need to set up a meeting with him to see if we can work out a mutually agreeable arrangement. I also need to think about what I want to get out of this experience so that I can bring it to our discussion.

Working at New Dream: the good(?) news and the bad news

Well, fall is here and I finally got in touch again with the IT guy at Center for a New American Dream about working for them.

The good news is that, since I last spoke with them, they got together the budget to create a new position on their technology staff.

The bad news is…they hired someone else for it. On top of that, this more or less wipes out any remaining budget they have for compensating contractors…like myself.

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! That hurts! I’d be lying if I said it didn’t.

That said, it’s still early in the game. I need some time to react and get my new game plan together, but I think I still have a Plan B, C, D, ... up my sleeve. Good thing I’m currently on hiatus from work life and its attendant stresses, and am living a relaxed and happy life at present. Otherwise, I do not think I would be handling this news so well, I’d be probably feeling a lot more rage and heartbreak. Who knows, maybe it will hit me later. But I do find that stress makes me more likely to blow situations out of proportion.

But for now, I will indulge myself just a little bit and jump up and down in anguish for a couple of hours this afternoon. This may also call for Ben and Jerry’s, or Haagen-Daaz. But I think by tomorrow I’ll be ready to move on and plan my next move.

See more progress on: work for a nonprofit

Concerts, socializing, learning PHP, dealing with apartment issues

This week in review:

On the social scene: Saturday I attended G.'s party to celebrate 5 years of cancer-free living. It was an uplifting and life-affirming experience. While I was there, I also got to catch up with some colleagues from my former workplace. That evening, we went up to the city to visit my uncle and an aunt who's in town from Vermont. (Note to self: I also saw my cousin C. who just finished filing for non-profit status for his organization, the Wilderness Arts and Literacy Collaborative; he might be a good contact if I ever want to start my own non-profit.) Sunday, I called my old high-school friend J. who lives in CT, just because. Monday, I visited a relative of mine who's distantly related to me, yet happens to live maybe a mile away (and yet I haven't seen her for years). This coming weekend, another aunt is coming to town from Toronto; gotta make plans to see her. And the most surprising encounter of the week: I got an email from B., a junior-high friend I haven't been in touch with for years and years. Sounds like lots of changes and challenges in her life recently; hugs to you, B.!

Apartment issues have been a time suck this week. There was a situation with the landlord that we thought might escalate into something unpleasant, but miraculously, it might be headed towards the happiest possible ending. It did get us talking about our future housing needs. Ideally, we'd like to live close enough to Sugar Daddy's workplace that he can commute by foot or bicycle. We might shop around for an apartment in that vicinity. We talk about buying on and off, but never really get serious about it, although we did go to our first-ever open house on Sunday - a condo in Mountain View.

Music has kept us really busy this week. Voice lesson Tuesday, dress rehearsals Monday and Wednesday, performing in concerts this coming Saturday and Sunday, went to my friend R.'s concert last Friday, and also saw R. sing yesterday with the HP Choir (and Sugar Daddy accompanied them in the orchestra). I'm doubling up on practice hours this week because I'll be in Phoenix all next week and won't get in any more practice time before my next voice lesson. Between all this and the apartment situation, I had to slack off on piano this week. If I can get a couple of hours in on the piano before leaving for Phoenix, I'll have to be satisfied with that.

Two-and-a-half months after leaving my software job, I was finally able to look at code again...I just started giving myself a crash course in PHP to prepare for the contract job with New American Dream. At least the basics so I can fake it until I make it :) I've also started reading a bit about technology and non-profits at TechSoup. I want to do some high-level reading about social media/networks, find out what's out there today, and think about how it can be incorporated into a non-profit's strategy.

Off to Phoenix next week for Sugar Daddy's grandfather's 90th birthday bash! The man has three times as much life experience as me, and he still has a sense of humor, pretty decent health and mobility, and probably a more active social life than me! Amazing!

Talked to New Dream's IT guy; things are looking good

I just got off the call with J., New Dream's IT guy, and things are looking positive and promising. I made some notes on the call below. My general impression was that they appreciate and value what I've done for them so far as a member/volunteer, and they think I have a lot to offer them, so it's just a matter of putting together a plan and hammering out the details of what exactly I would work on and what kind of a work arrangement they can offer.

Status of their web development projects:

• Responsible Purchasing Network: almost done
• Alternative Gift Registry: contracted out; almost done
• Conscious Consumer: In planning/progress. New content will be added, including a major section on climate and New Dream's carbon initiative. There will be information about institutional purchasing as well as for individual consumers. The institutional part will mostly redirect to RPN, but Conscious Consumer will host some additional supporting information. Also, Conscious Consumer will be more interactive/crowdsourced, with users posting product reviews and info on where to find products locally. (I think this dovetails well with their Local Buying Guides initiative.)
• Main website: Reorganization of site content/navigation plus new UI skin are in progress, due to be completed in the near-term. Enhancements to the interactive My New Dream section will be an ongoing work-in-progress, with an eye to making the tools more useful to local organizers (better forums, ability to create geographical-/interest-based user groups, etc.).

Questions I asked:

• What web technologies are used on the website? Mainly PHP, MySQL, XML (drives some of the interactive features), Blueprint, HTML, CSS. Dreamweaver is used, but mainly as an IDE for PHP, not really for WYSIWYG. (I also noted from their website that they use Movable Type for Living Green Below Your Means, some Project Seven stuff, and the Democracy in Action service for the action alerts.)
• What kinds of web development projects are done in-house? Which are contracted out? Most work is in-house, but time-sensitive projects as well as projects tied to a specific initiative (and specific grant/funding) are often contracted out to firms like EchoDitto and Akti Technologies.
• Are volunteers ever utilized for website development? Not in the past, since they haven't had volunteers with the appropriate skill set. But they always have plenty of work and would be open to using volunteers in the future. (Note: I prefer to get paid for my work, especially if I will be devoting a significant amount of time to it. But I could see the usefulness/possibility of trying to recruit volunteer web developers on an as-needed basis for large projects. But at the same time, I don't want to undercut myself :)
• What is the timeline for the web projects? A couple of the project are already almost complete. The main website reorg is due for completion in July, but enhancements to My New Dream will be ongoing, without a set deadline.
• Who authors most of the website content? Mainly the program staff; J. also contributes some content.
• Now that you know about my skills/background/interest, what kind of role/position do you see me in, with relation to New Dream? (subtext: what kind of position can you give me and will I get paid? :) Part-time is less likely, it will probably be a contracting arrangement - J. will follow up with me after discussing with the administrative staff.

Questions I answered (although my answers on the phone were not as well put together as below):

• What kind of position are you looking for, and what is your availability? In the coming year, I am open to arrangements that do not require a full-time time commitment, e.g. part-time, contracting, freelancing. I will be available for full-time work a year from now.
• Are you planning to get into web development? My goal is to work for New Dream. After talking with others on the staff, web development is the area where I can most easily transition into a role that is of value to the Center, given my background and interests.
• Do you have a plan for learning the tools/skills needed for website development? Not in detail yet, but tell me more about which tools and technologies your website uses, so I can ramp up on them.
• Are you interested in working on content, infrastructure, back-end, ...? I'm interested in all of the above.

Other stuff we discussed:

• I proposed that I could take on a small, limited-scope piece of the current website reorg project (since it will be completed soon), and could also work on the My New Dream part of the website
• J. felt that with my background, it shouldn't be too hard for me to learn PHP

Follow-up steps:

• Send a thank-you email to J.
• J. will follow up with me on Monday
• J. will send me a draft of their new sitemap - send feedback on it
• Figure out what hourly rate to charge. Also, find out how to get set up as a software contractor. I'm clueless on these two points; need to do some research and ask around!!!
• Make a game plan for acquiring the skill set I need
• Think about when I would want to start and how many hours I would want to work. I want to get my foot in the door, but it is important for me to balance this with my personal projects in the coming year.

Marketing myself to New Dream: the hybrid transitional résumé

In a burst of activity this past weekend, I finished updating my résumé and emailed it to New Dream. I decided to restructure it to appeal more strongly to the non-profit sector and New Dream in particular. So, in addition to updating the technical/professional work experience section, I also added a section describing my activism and volunteer experience. I'm calling it a hybrid transitional résumé because its purpose is to help me change career tracks, and because it combines elements of formal work experience with relevant non-professional experience in the new field.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I need my résumé to play up my strengths enough to overcome my shortcomings (a lack of professional non-profit experience and a skill gap for serious website development). Consequently, here are some thing I tried to highlight in the résumé:

• Activism/volunteer work:
• On behalf of New Dream (this has its own section)
• For other organizations, especially ones working on similar issues
• Projects/actions that I have started on my own (to demonstrate creativity and ability to take the initiative)
• Websites I have created or contributed to: Simple Living SF South Bay/Peninsula, Resources for Sustainable Weddings, World Centric, and my Alternative Wish List. (Oops, I noticed that I accidentally left the last one out of my résumé.) I think these will be a real asset on my résumé because the first and third websites are very close to New Dream's mission, while the second and fourth are directly relevant to the Alternative Gift Registry they will be developing this year (hopefully, with my help).
• I would like the technical part of the résumé to convey a sense of intelligence, competence, commitment, dependability, experience with large/complex/challenging projects, and an ability to learn on the job.

Here is what my updated résumé looks like. I welcome any constructive comments on it.

I have a follow-up call with New Dream's IT guy on Thursday. I have to walk a fine: while I want to present myself as being really eager for this job, and I definitely would take a full-time job with this organization after my year off, I don't want to have my year off completely cut short. My personal projects are important to me and I don't want to be forced to jump back into the full-time workforce prematurely. I think in the near term I am open to a paid contract job of fixed scope. As a last-resort fallback position, I may be willing to work on their web projects on a temporary volunteer basis, if that would sufficient limit my time commitment, or if they really don't think I have the skill set for a paid gig but would let me acquire it as a volunteer. I need to figure out how to get my foot in the door without shooting my year off in the foot, and then negotiate the terms accordingly.

Steps to prepare for the call:

• Review the Alternative Gift Registry proposal that M. emailed me
• Look at New Dream's website and try to figure out what software/tools they are using

Questions to ask during the call:

• What web technologies do you use for the website?
• What kind of web development projects do you do in-house? What kind of projects do you contract out?
• Do you ever utilize volunteers for website development?
• What is the timeline for the Alternative Gift Registry and Conscious Consumer projects?

Other stuff I've been up to lately

Notes on various things I've been up to:

This past week, I attended a concert, a lecture, and three masterclasses that were all part of the Art of the Song Festival at Santa Clara University. It was a perfect opportunity because I love art song and all of the events were free! Not to mention that I'm now able to go to daytime weekday events, like the masterclasses. I enjoy sitting in on the classes; I get a lot out of watching the students get critiqued. Plus, voice lessons aren't cheap, so I try to avail myself of free educational opportunities when they arise. Santa Clara has voice students in a range of levels, including a few really stellar singers.

My social life is improving and I'm grateful to have more time to spend with people than I did when I was working. Most recently, I've had lunch and dinner get-togethers with college friends who have been in town, a number of former coworkers, and some other friends. More get-togethers are forthcoming.

As a bonus, some of the folks I've been getting together with have gone through, or know someone who has gone through, a career transition like the one I'm attempting, and they are enthusiastic in sharing their experiences and information. I had dinner with R. and B. yesterday. R. spent some time sharing with me the results of the What Color is Your Parachute? exercises that he found most helpful in planning his past career transitions. B. has transitioned from high-tech HR into management/leadership coaching. She recommends the Cupertino Rotary Job Search Support Group as a local resource for career changers in addition to regular job hunters. I bet she also has some good insights from both her careers as well as her personal career transition experience.

I'm making slow but steady progress on the piano. Most days I work on scales, exercises, and a couple of songs from Schaum Book D. I've made it to song #5, a cheesy medley of stripped-down Strauss waltzes :) As part of each practice session, I try either to sight-read some new piece of music (often a piano accompaniment to a choral/vocal piece that I'm working on), or play through some music theory exercises from my harmony and counterpoint textbook.

I've been knocking myself out, putting together a transitional résumé that I want to email to New American Dream next Monday. It's been quite a few years since I last updated my résumé. I'm trying to create a hybrid résumé that includes not only my software development experience but also my activism and volunteer work. My goal is to have my résumé convey the following messages to New American Dream: the section on software experience says "I'm smart/technical/experienced enough to do the job", and the section on activism/volunteerism says "I'm motivated to work for New Dream because I'm committed to your issues and have the track record to prove it". My résumé also needs to compensate for the shortcoming of not having the exact skill set and background needed for website development.

A date with destiny: calling New American Dream to explore job possibilities

I just wrapped up a call with M., a staff member at New American Dream, to explore employment possibilities there. I got a really enthusiastic reception, and M. described several of their recent initiatives for which she thought I could be a good fit. The response was so promising that I am a little scared and breathless now, know what I mean?!?!

In retrospect, I think the most critical actions I took are the ones I describe in "What I did to prepare for the call (long-term)", below. I didn't realize it at the time, nor did I deliberately take those steps with a job hunt in mind. But in hindsight, those actions helped me build relationships with the New Dream staff and demonstrate a track record of activism and enthusiastic support for their mission. They laid the groundwork for today's call.

What I did to prepare for the call (short-term):

• Read their annual reports for the last 3 years, looked at trends in their campaigns and financials (both of which could have a bearing on hiring)
• Read their current job listings
• Read about their staff members, noted their educational backgrounds and work experience (in case I need to acquire more formal education in certain areas, or more related work experience)
• Made an outline of my interests/skills that could be useful to the organization (see below)
• Made a list of questions to ask during the call (see below)
• Made a list of additional points I wanted to communicate to the organization (see below)
• Browsed some websites about informational interviews to get ideas about what questions to ask during the call (I'll post these websites in a later entry)

What I did to prepare for the call (long-term):

• Supported New Dream financially and through my self-directed volunteer/activism efforts for 6+ years
• Evangelized their message and promote their programs to others in my community
• Interacted and got acquainted with several members of their staff
• Emailed my input, ideas, feedback, and compliments on their work, writings, and programs
• Kept them updated on my local activism efforts to promote their message
• Met with them whenever they were in town

My interests and skills:

• Serving as a West Coast presence for New Dream
• Applying my tech skills to develop website content and online activism tools
• Writing for publications and other materials, maybe even grant proposals(?)
• Developing campaigns/programs
• Outreach efforts/grassroots activism
• Contributing lots of energy, enthusiasm, and ideas
• Administrative work

What I planned to ask during the call (I only got around to the first three):

• What do you see as the organization's priorities in the next 1-2 years?
• Which programs are expanding and hiring?
• What education background and work experience make candidates most attractive to New Dream?
• What skills are in greatest need at New Dream?
• What kinds of personalities are the most successful at New Dream?
• Is there anything else I should know about the employment outlook at New Dream?
• Is it ok if I contact you once or twice during the coming year to follow up and get updated on the hiring situation?

Additional points I wanted to communicate during the call (I only got around to the first):

• Working remotely for New Dream is my #1 dream job.
• I prefer full-time, but I'm open to alternative work arrangements - part-time, contract, unpaid/volunteer (but only on a temporary/trial basis - I still need to pay the bills :-)
• My interest in working at New Dream is long-term. If nothing is available in my desired timeframe, please continue to keep me informed about opportunities that arise at a later time.
• Whatever the outcome of these career discussions/explorations is, it will not affect my future support of New Dream financially or otherwise. I have a fundamental belief in your mission and will continue to support it to the extent that I have the resources to do so.

What I learned during the call:

• New Dream is in the process of transforming from an awareness-raising organization into one that advocates and achieves actions (on a collective cultural/institutional/governmental level as well as individual/personal actions). They want to expand their message and philosophy from a limited realm of "cultural creatives" into the mainstream culture.
• Their programs and their coverage in the media have been growing so quickly that they have been swamped with work. (Sounds like it was a good time to approach them for a job...)
• New Dream has been doing a lot of hiring recently and plans to do more hiring in the immediate future.
• Specific positions:
• Carbon Program Director: someone with a lot of organizing experience, an extrovert, go-getter, very persuasive person.
• Development Officer: to develop a database of small/emerging donors
• General qualifications:
  • A college degree
  • Lots of energy and drive, on fire about the issues addressed by New Dream, thinks about this stuff at night (M. said that I fit this profile!)
• High-priority programs in the coming year:
• Carbon program (new): They have recently been awarded several grants for this. It will include a program with six steps that individuals can take, a component for assisting local county/municipal governments with meeting their CO2 reduction goals, and other initiatives. Most of the program content will be new; the only existing campaign to be folded into the carbon program is Declare Your Independence from Junk Mail.
• Alternative Gift Registry: An online gift registry for weddings, baby showers, and other occasions that includes not just traditional material gifts from a variety of stores, but charitable donations and non-material gifts as well (e.g. "babysitting for a day", "mow your lawn for a month", etc.)
• Conscious Consumer website: Will be expanded significantly. It will also incorporate an "epinions" feature with user reviews of the various green products recommended by the website.
• A general revamp of their website

What opportunities I found exciting:

• Definitely the web development stuff for the Alternative Gift Registry, the Conscious Consumer website, and the general website revamp. I heard that their IT guy has way too much web development work to do, so maybe it's a good time for me to step in!

What I will do to follow up:

• Send a thank-you email to M. Include some of the additional points I didn't get to mention during the call. Request the link to the Alternative Gift Registry proposal and related documents.
• Contact New Dream's IT guy. I have some ideas on how to market myself to the IT guy; I'll post these in a later entry.
• Think about a possible collaboration between my Resources for Sustainable Weddings website and the Alternative Gift Registry; follow up with M. on this.

Career possibilities at New Dream: getting the ball rolling

I've mentioned previously that I'm interested in working for the Center for a New American Dream. Recently, my friend S., who knows someone there, passed the word along to them about my interest. I wasn't expecting to start working on this goal so soon, but I'm grateful to S. for mentioning it to them and getting the ball rolling - it's just the kick in the pants that I needed to prevent me from procrastinating. I followed up with a couple of emails to New Dream staffers, and now I have a phone appointment to talk with one of them next week about their current hiring situation!

Positive responses from New Dream

I've mentioned in conversations with friends that I have a strong interest in working for the Center for a New American Dream, once my year is up. I'm in touch with several of the staff members there, and I keep them apprised of my activism and volunteer work via email. I'm enthused when I get positive responses from them like the ones below. I hope they stand me in good stead when I come knocking on their door to ask for a job!

One staffer says:

"I was really bowled over by how involved you are with so many great organizations and how much you give of yourself to help whenever you can. You are a real inspiration. Just your enthusiasm alone could power this office--and we are an office with a lot of enthusiasm.

I'm personally touched, too. Your commitment keeps me motivated and gives me faith at times when I begin to doubt the human race. Thank you for being so dedicated and so cool."

Another says:

"I was reading over your e-mail reflecting on 2006-2007, and thinking what an eloquent and inspiring summary it was of multiple ways in which members and supporters engage with the New Dream community."

Yet another says:

"I knew that you were one of our top activists, but I had no idea that you were approaching missionary status! I am awed by your commitment."