The Purposeful — Not Accidental — Techie

The name of this blog was inspired by a recent article by Mark Shaw. It otherwise would have been “The Accidental Techie.”

I’d been thinking about this blog for awhile, and really liked Shaw’s take on the issue. I do enjoy working with technology at my organization, and while the job description to which I applied did not mention the technological roles I have since taken on, there wasn’t much accidental about my taking on this role.

When I arrived on the scene, another employee had been informally managing the museum’s technology, with call-in emergency help from some friends of the institution. It soon became apparent that help from me could improve the situation, and we started the transition.

Since then, we’ve seriously upgraded our technological abilities at my small museum. I’ve been called upon to answer questions on technology from colleagues, I’ve presented on it at my state museum association’s annual meeting, and I’ve found time and again that a lot of institutions are missing out on things technology can provide, which are easy to implement, for a simple lack of knowledge and time.

While I’m always happy to share my expertise, I discovered that there wasn’t a great, aggregated resource on the web for such things. There are a lot of great resources and blogs, however, regarding Web 2.0. What I found, however, was that a lot of museums weren’t even covering the basics. So, thus the birth of this blog, The Purposeful Techie.

My plan is to cover a variety of tools, from setting up websites to digitizing collections and managing donors. While some of this will be quite museum specific (such as collections management software), other technology covered will be of general use and interest for other non-profits, as well as regular businesses.

My general assumption will be that my readers are not volunteering/working for an institution with an entire IT Department. Instead, my posts will be based on the idea that we’re dealing with small organizations, with no staff at all, or a very small one.

There are already a lot of blogs and resources on the internet for more advanced uses of technology, particularly dealing with social media, and “Web 2.0″ applications.  I will be adding some links to what I think are some of the best of them, but the goal of this blog is to be a bit more basic than those.

If there is something you’d like to see me cover, please comment here!

-KL