The Many Forms of Openness
Over the past year Blackbaud has been doing a lot of experimenting with the web and social media to be much more open. I know there's been a perception in the past that we're a walled fortress. You can either choose to ignore that or work really hard to make reality the new perception. A lot of people from around Blackbaud choose the latter option. Here's some of the things we've done:
Forums - Earlier this year, Blackbaud re-launched its user forums, but with a new twist — anyone can access them. This has really increased their usage and some new features have improved the online experience. You also find Blackbaud staff engaging in the forums and breaking the fourth wall to help answer client questions.
Podcasts - One of the first experiments was The Baudcast, which is now posting a new episode every two weeks. Chad Norman plays host of the show and gets to break out all of his recording and editing equipment. Blackbaud Interviews is the latest podcast that we're trying out and Melanie Milonas will be doing more of these shows in the future.
Design Playground - The idea was simple: Give people access to our new products to get feedback, ideas, and sign-up for usability testing. Judging from the traffic, it's getting a lot of attention not only from clients but from the competition too. (I guess we'll see if imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery.) Brenda Murray and her product design team have been able to get a lot of valuable client interactions from this approach.
Blackbaud Labs - Blackbaud's CTO Shaun Sullivan launched the site originally to show off the new Infinity platform. The site has continued to grow since then and also includes a wiki for the BBNC API. Michael Andrews recently rebooted "labs" using Blackbaud NetCommunity and lets users download some sample code. Look for lots more new stuff on this site in the coming future.
Blogs - The original Blogbaud.com started it all back in 2007. Now there are at least 14 different Blackbaud blogs and the list keeps growing. Some of them are product specific, like The User's Edge, The Thread, and The Ledger, and others like From the Doc Side and The PCI Compliance Blog cover other topics. A big change from the days when blogging was frowned upon.
BBNC Idea Bank - This is the newest little experiment to allow clients to post ideas and feedback about our products. Think Dell Idea Storm with a few more features that let us update you on the progress of the ideas. Blackbaud's Director of Responsiveness Andrea Sanders led the effort around this and is already getting a lot of use only a week after launch.
Other Stuff - You'll find a bunch of people from Blackbaud on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Lots of people are talking about what they do, how they do it, and showing that there's a human side to technology. And I'm sure over the coming weeks and months there will be other ways that we use two-way communication tools to open things up a bit more.
There is a common thread to all of these initiatives — more communication is always a good thing. Those conversations, interactions, and communication channels can take many forms. Some people are fine with reading or listening to content and others want a much more hands-on experience. Having different approaches for different types of users with different goals in mind is perfectly ok.
This also points to something about new technologies that I recommend to clients all the time: Experiment first. Plan later. Don't form a committee or a task force. Go try some stuff. See what works. See what doesn't. Adjust the settings. Enlist savvy people to try new things too. Then when you start to see some results get more formal about growing things.
Nearly all of these Blackbaud examples started off as one person taking the initiative to try something new. There wasn't a committee. There wasn't a budget. There wasn't some highly complex strategery behind it all. Once they started to take off some support structures were put in place to help them grow and thrive. And we're just getting started. I'm looking forward to seeing what we come up with next.