Being a non-profit organization with offices in multiple locations, we tend to gravitate towards hosted applications that are either free or have special rates for non-profits. Also, being in the publishing space means that we tend to use a lot of websites or platforms to share content.
Project management
www.google.com/apps/
This is pretty much the crux of our working life—email, internal wikis, shared documents and chat. It’s easy to set up, reliable, has a very easy learning curve and has the advantage of untethering a user from any one computer.
Easy tips: Salesforce.com is a full-fledged customer management tool.
www.basecamphq.com/
Without Basecamp, coordination would be a mess. We use it to keep track of our ongoing software projects and other strategic work.
www.salesforce.com
We use Salesforce to track leads and accounts and to assist in donor management.
Outreach and publicity
www.blogger.com
We use a blog to talk about our work and to write about the industry in general—Blogspot is less than ideal but it serves our purpose.
www.youtube.com
Again, for all the video content that we produce. It’s a great way to share stuff that otherwise couldn’t be shared.
www.flickr.com
Again, serves as a platform for us to share pictures and source pictures for our blog. We’re a big fan of the Creative Commons and upload pictures with a CC-BY licence, and only use pictures with similar licence. See Pratham Books’ Flickr stream here: www.flickr.com/photos/prathambooks/
www.scribd.com
We use this to display and distribute some of our books. It’s easier than asking people to download big PDF files. You can check a collection of our work here: www.scribd.com/prathambooks
Social networking
www.facebook.com
Serves as a personal and organizational networking platform. It allows us to interact with our fans. Personally, I’m an unabashed Facebook addict. Supporters of our organization interact here: www.facebook.com/pages/Pratham-Books/9307274926
www.twitter.com
I use this both in my personal and work capacity, with distinct identities. As with Facebook, I’m a fan! And an addict. The power of one-to-many communication at its best.
Leisure
www.cricinfo.com
No working day is complete without a peek at cricket scores, and where else but at Cricinfo—they have the best commentary!
Surf worthy: Cricinfo hosts cricket analysis and match commentary.
News and information
www.google.com/reader/
It’s my one source of news, views and analysis (to steal a phrase) both for my personal and work lives. It makes it so much easier to collate and share from one central location.
Gautam John works in Bangalore at Pratham Books, a not-for-profit trust that publishes high-quality children’s books in several Indian languages at affordable prices, and at the Akshara Foundation, an NGO working in the field of education. John handles legal, technological and strategic issues for Pratham and data operations for Akshara. He is also a trained lawyer and is involved with several entrepreneurial projects.
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