Watch Video from 2011 Speed Geek

Earlier this month we held our annual Speed Geek event here at Groundwire Headquarters in downtown Seattle. During five minute presentations our awesome presenters wowed audiences with the latest and greatest relationship-building and communications technology from Groundwire.

Special thanks to our wonderful presenters:

• Sara Arkle, Idaho Conservation League
• Karl Hardin, Dogwood Initiative
• Brendan Mackinson, People for Puget Sound
• Katie Pelly, IslandWood
• Eileen Quigley, Climate Solutions, New Energy Cities
• Margaret Ullman, Mountains to Sound Greenway
• Eric Magnuson, Groundwire
• Evan Callahan, Groundwire

And super special thanks to our wonderful sponsors: Advomatic, Better World Club, Fission Strategy, Free Range Studios, Janet Boguch Non-Profit Works and ShareZen.

Megaphone! An Online Petition and Letter-Writing Tool

Groundwire Labs Manager Eric Magnuson shows off Megaphone, the online petition and letter-writing tool for Plone websites. Using Washington Wildlife and Recreation Coalition to demonstrate, Eric shows how people who wish to take action with WWRC can click “Take Action” on the site, then quickly fill out a form that allows them to send an email letter to their state senator and representatives. Megaphone matches address to legislator and auto-populates the form, making it super easy for citizens to send letters to their district’s elected officials. After an interested person takes action, their information is stored in WWRC’s Salesforce.com database, so organizers can target those likely to take action on specific issues for future campaigns.  

Watch Megaphone in action. (Flip Video quality: accidentally Dogme 95 style, but stick with it, it gets less hand-heldy as it goes on.)

Calculate Greenhouse Gas Emissions with a Salesforce.com Database

Groundwire CRM consultant Evan Callahan shows off an online carbon calculator that government officials use to determine the amount of CO2 their cities, counties, utilities, etc. are releasing into the atmosphere. This tool was custom built by Groundwire for ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability), but can be replicated and built upon for other groups looking for a technology tool to calculate CO2 emissions. The Carbon Calculator is built within the group’s web-based Salesforce.com database so data is tracked and stored all in one place where any authorized staff member can easily access it. Staff members submit information about their city’s use of electricity and fossil fuels and the raw data is transformed into a carbon footprint graph, which city officials can use to take measures to reduce impact they are having on the climate.

Watch carbon calculator in action.  (Flip Video quality: quieter room because we taped it during dress rehearsal, some odd zooming about but you’ll get the gist.)

Stopping Oil Tankers with a Powerful Email Provider Built for Salesforce: Predictive Response

Karl Hardin and Dogwood Initiative in Victoria BC work to protect their beautiful corner of the world from environmental disaster. Their No Tankers campaign has been instrumental in keeping Exxon-Valdez-sized tankers off the coast of BC. To inform, engage, organize and mobilize tens of thousands of activists on behalf of their work, Dogwood Initiative uses Predictive Response, an emailing tool built to integrate with Salesforce.com databases. The “Predictive” in Predictive Response?  Depending upon the email recipient's actions, Predictive Response can be set to automatically respond using the rules you give it – e.g. “send follow-up email after three days if not opened.”  Karl shows us how they use the email tool to set up a multi-step, targeted communication to deepen relationships with their newest supporters – the petition signers. Also – look for predictive A/B subject line testing coming down the pike from Predictive Response – testing different subject lines then automatically moving forward with the lines that produce a higher open rate!

Check out notes from a successful email campaign here: (Flip Video quality: whoops, kind of dark, but don’t click off because Karl is a great presenter and the whole five minutes is well worth watching.)

Using a Pyramid Framework to Engage Idahoans in Protecting the Environment.

If you work for a nonprofit, you probably have a lot of people swirling around your organization—volunteers, board members, big donors, small donors, life-time supporters, brand new friends, alumni, people who use your programs and more. We are helping groups use the Engagement Pyramid to organize their community of supporters and would-be supporters, with a Salesforce.com tool to track and manage the engagement data. Sara Arkle shows how the Idaho Conservation League is using the Engagement Pyramid to build a common language at their organization around engagement -- and ultimately build power -- considering their traditional audience and reaching out to new supporters as well.

Watch Sara talk about the Engagement Pyramid and ICL. (Flip Video quality: The Engagement Pyramid looks great in spite of some weird zooming.)

Inform and Engage – Resources for Pioneering Cities of New, Clean Energy

Eileen Quigley from Climate Solutions, New Energy Cities project shows off the robust resources section on their new site. The New Energy Cities project works with 10-12 pioneering communities who have a 20-year plan to reduce their carbon output by 80% by going deep into energy efficiency, smart grid, renewable energy, and electric cars. An important part of this project’s mission is to make sure pioneering communities can get the information they need.  The goal of this is to build as many resources as possible up on the site that laypeople can use. Site users can quickly narrow search by category and by the type of resource (blog post, research, article, case study, policy) they need. To build this section, Groundwire leveraged several of our other Plone products and built on previous work we had done on resource presentation. To make the resources easy to find, we set up a searching and filtering interface with custom landing pages and friendly icons.  

Check out this cool resources library. (Flip Video Quality: an odd angle shot from below, but presenter Eileen saves it with her well-planned presentation.)

Our Brand-New Volunteer Management Application for Salesforce.

Visitors to the new website we built for Mountains to Sound Greenway can use an interactive map to find hikes and events close to where they live and work. They can also sign up for volunteer work right on the MTSG website, with all of their information being captured and fed into MTSG’s Salesforce database on the back-end. It’s a Plone website, but the volunteer opportunities surfacing on the site are being created using Salesforce Sites, so staff members can easily change volunteer opportunities by editing fields in Salesforce. When volunteers sign up on the website, a confirmation is immediately sent to their email. All data from new volunteers coming in through the website is managed in Groundwire’s new application for volunteer management in Salesforce - so staff members can look at donors, volunteers, alumni, clients, consultants, partners and more all in one centralized, web-based place.

Check out volunteers for Salesforce with Mountains to Sound Greenway in action. (Flip Video quality: side angle and somewhat dark, but Margaret's interesting presentation keeps viewers engaged.)

Event Registration Made Easy with Eventbrite and Salesforce Integration.

IslandWood is a school, conference center and retreat center in the woods of beautiful Bainbridge Island. It needs easy online registration for its many events and programs. We hooked IslandWood up with Eventbrite, an online event registration site that’s user-friendly and kind to nonprofits. Most importantly, Eventbrite connects with Salesforce.com using the Eventbrite Connector tool, so all staff members can import registrants into their database for reporting and engagement tracking.

Watch Eventbrite and Salesforce in action. (Flip Video quality: some quick jerking back and forth from screen to Katie, but cool to see this online event registration with Salesforce reporting in action. Careful not to get distracted by sumo wrestler bobble-head at bottom of screen.)