Noah Cooper

4 Nerdiest Upcoming Convio Features

And proud of it.

Over the past several months I've had the pleasure of working with Convio's Engineering team on a number of new features for Luminate Online. As we begin the countdown to our Winter release, I wanted to share my top 4 list of the nerdiest, but nonetheless super cool, upcoming enhancements. If, like me, you spend much of your time knee deep in code, hopefully you'll derive as much joy from this list as me. If not, well ... I'll try to keep the tech jargon to a minimum, but no promises.

1) HTML5

The time has come. Practically every browser other than that one released ten years ago now supports HTML5. What "support" means exactly varies from browser to browser of course, but the point remains — with the advent of HTML5 the internet is fundamentally changing all around us, giving non-profits new and exciting ways to engage constituents online. This Winter, Convio will be joining the e-revolution, allowing organizations to select the HTML5 DOCTYPE when building out content in Luminate Online. By doing so, you'll then be able to push the envelope with mobile-friendly <video> and other new-fangled webby goodness. If your organization needs convincing that its time to adopt HTML5, just share the following tidbit from Wikipedia with the powers that be:

“According to a report released on 30 September 2011, 34 of the world's top 100 Web sites were using HTML5.”

2) Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)

Anyone who has ever written an AJAX application will likely agree that while it makes sense from a security perspective, the "same origin policy" is the root of all evil. If you haven't ever written one, the same origin policy essentially says that client-side languages such as JavaScript are allowed to make requests only within the same domain. This is good because it means that a page on imaspammer.biz can't read information from your organization's website, but this is bad because it means yourwebsite.com can't read information from yourotherwebsite.com, at least not without a lot of hackery. With CORS, a somewhat new-ish spec from the W3C, the internet finally figured out a solution to this age-old problem. The tech jargon (sorry, I tried): with the Winter release, Convio's Open API will support the Access-Control-Allow-Origin response header. By using this feature, Convio clients will be able to do things like, for example, use the API to display a list of your organization's upcoming events on your website. Whether your website's hosted on Drupal or it's static HTML (I really hope your website isn't static HTML), all you'll need is a few lines of JavaScript. And don't worry, imaspammer.biz still won't be allowed in. If you want to learn more about CORS and Access-Control-Allow-Origin, the Mozilla Developer Network has an article with lots of useful information.

3) Asynchronous Google Analytics Tracking

Years ago, Convio was an early adopter of Google Analytics, back when it was still called "Urchin". Oh, memories. A lot has changed since then, most notably, Google has updated Analytics to use what's known as an asynchronous script. This new script, which loads silently in the background without holding up the rest of the content on a page, is faster and more precise than the older synchronous version. The out-of-the-box integration with Google Analytics in Luminate Online is getting a facelift, making use of this new, better tracking code, including both basic page tracking, as well as more sophisticated pieces of Analytics like Ecommerce tracking. Best of all, Convio clients won't need to do a thing to get this update, it'll just automagically happen when your organization's site is upgraded. You're welcome.

4) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Enhancements

No matter what Siri says, search engines are still one of the most important tools that prospective donors, volunteers, and advocates use when they want to find out about your organization. To that end, SEO really is a required part of good website design. A lot of the time SEO can seem to be some form of black magic, but there are some basic web-authoring tactics that virtually anyone can employ to improve search engine performance. This Winter, we've made a number of updates to adhere to some of these SEO best practices. First, we've made some significant improvements to the <title> and meta description that is used on your organization's events and action alerts, dynamically pulling in information about each page. Second, we've added some really fancy logic to redirect old event links to new ones. To provide a real use case, this feature will make it so that if an event participant attempts to go to your organization's 2010 walk, which is obviously over with as it's now the end of 2011, they'll automatically be redirected to the 2011 walk instead. Oh, and what will happen come January when you close the 2011 walk and open 2012? You guessed it, they'll go straight to 2012. And if you consider yourself an honorary SEO Guru, you'll be happy to know — these are 301 redirects. For the non-Gurus, this means that when the 2010 walk page is requested, Convio will respond saying that the page has permanently moved, so the next time a search engine robot attempts to crawl your site it will "see" this and update the link in its index, swapping out the 2010 link for 2011. I mean really, going to a page about an event that has come and gone is like so last year.

Again, I hope this list made your propellers spin too. Leave me a comment to let me know what nerdy feature you'd like to see Convio take on next!

Internet Soup

These are some things from the internet that I think are insightful/interesting/other words that start with "in":

• Desert Bus for Hope is pretty much my favorite charitable campaign of all time, and it's only 59 days and counting until Desert Bus 5! For the unfamiliar, Desert Bus is a Sega CD game that involves driving a bus from Tucson to Las Vegas, in fantastically exciting real-time. Since 2007, Desert Bus for Hope has raised nearly $500,000 for Child's Play, a non-profit dedicated to improving the lives of children with toys and games in a network of over 60 hospitals worldwide.
• For those in the fine state of Texas, HTML5.tx is where you need to be on October 8. The conference brings together the best and brightest in the world of web design and development to talk all things HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. And I'm not just saying that because I'm going.
• This "Compilation of Well Designed Donation Pages" blog post has been making the rounds on my team's distro list. The list, which includes a few familiar faces, highlights visually-compelling donation pages that use layout, creative color palettes, and striking imagery to drive conversion. I'd love to see some comments from other orgs who have tricked out their forms! (Bonus points if you've done some split a/b testing to confirm that your fancy design actually drives increased revenue.)
• Last but not least, did you know September 30 is Hug a Vegetarian Day? It's true. This holiday, which I sort of invented 5 years ago, is just as simple as its name implies. All you have to do to celebrate is give the vegetable lovers in your life a big ol' hug. If you don't think it's a real holiday, check out the totally legit-looking website holidays.net.

P.S. If you're going to Summit, come say hi in the expert lab! I'll be there pretty much 24/7.

Cloudy With a Chance of ...

If you, like me, have ever struggled to come up with an articulate explanation of what this whole "cloud computing" thing is, look no further, because Salesforce has you covered. I really enjoyed this YouTube video they posted which puts it into simple, easy-to-understand terms anyone—from your nonprofit board to your grandmother—can understand.

Or, as the fine people at Appirio put it, "Cloud: Like a sheep without legs".

Internet Soup

Years ago, my dear friend Jack Shepherd (not to be confused with that other guy) came up with the idea for a clever little recurring blog series titled "Internet Soup". Since he long ago stopped writing the aforementioned blog series, and since he's responsible for me not having a passport anymore, I figure it's OK for me to plagiarize his work.

So, here are some things from around the internet that I found interesting, and I think you might too!

Be forewarned that my soup has a lot less cute animal pictures and a lot more techie jargon.

• Earlier this month, Google announced that it will stop supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6 and 7 come August 1. I'm personally ecstatic following this announcement — the fact is that catering to users of a web browser older than the Nintendo GameCube (seriously) does nothing but limit innovation. HTML5 is no longer the futuristic sci-fi technology it once seemed. It's time we all start playing with <canvas> tags and stop worrying about making transparent images display for 5% of users still stuck in 2001. The next time you find something wrong in IE6, I encourage you to look the other way, and spend the time you would've spent worrying about that 5% thinking about your mobile strategy.
• Speaking of mobile, I just picked up a copy of the new book "Responsive Web Design" from A Book Apart. The book describes a methodology for "thinking beyond the desktop" and designing content that is device agnostic. I highly recommend it, whether you're just getting into the wide world of mobile or you consider yourself an expert. I prefer something I can hold in my hands, but it's also available in ebook format if that's your thing. If you want to wet your pallete, check out the excerpt available on A Book Apart's site.
• The folks at Families USA just launched an exciting new tool called Tweet Your Legislators that allows its advocates to sign a petition via Twitter. The Affordable Care Act petition integrates with act.ly, and includes almost 2,000 elected officials who are on Twitter, from U.S. senators and representatives to governors, attorneys general, and state senators and reps. I had a similar idea a few years back, so I'm glad to see organizations taking social advocacy to the next level!
• I've often said that I have a love/hate relationship with JavaScript. That statement has made me somewhat of a magnet for questions about JS. Clients and colleagues have often asked me for advice on where to go to learn more about JavaScript. As is the case with most things web development, my defacto answer is W3Schools. Thanks to my co-worker Eric I now have another extremely helpful resource to add to the list - a blog entry from iFadey titled "Javascript Mistakes You Must Avoid". The post includes some really useful information for anyone who's new to JavaScript on producing performant web applications.

</soup>

Games for Good - SXSWi Day 4

I'm admittedly not a hardcore "gamer", so I was a little bit nervous when my good friend Joel Bartlett—Director of Marketing for PETA, winner of the 2009 Convio Innovator Award for Advocacy—asked me to moderate a session here at South by Southwest Interactive on "Games for Good". (Don't get me wrong – I played my fair share of Starcraft and Command and Conquer back in the day, but still.) Thankfully, the panel was made up of some great experts on the topic, so I pretty much just had to sit back and watch.

The metrics for PETA's online Nintendo parody Super Chick Sisters really are impressive. Since it launched 4 months ago, the game, which uses humor and "ground stomps" to draw attention to PETA's campaign to convince McDonald's to adopt more humane slaughter methods, has been played more than 6 million times.

If you're asking yourself, "but, how engaged were all of those people?", consider this: PETA has seen users spending on average more than 10 minutes playing the game. I think Super Chick Sisters really is a great example of how nonprofits can integrate games into their online marketing efforts, and I'd love to see more organizations get into this space.

Asi Burak of Impact Games/Games for Change also shared some really inspiring examples of games that give users an outlet to contemplate serious issues, combating some of the negative stereotypes about games in the process. (I'm with Asi – we need a new phrase for video games, like graphic novel for comic books.) Asi's PeaceMaker game offers players the ability to step into the role of either the Israeli Prime Minister or the Palestinian President, with the formidable task of bringing peace to the Middle East. The game has gotten attention from both sides of the conflict. Asi says Impact Games does not hide its intentions behind the game – there is one way to "win", and that involves following the plan to peace that has the most support among the UN, Israel, and Palestine alike.

Finally on the panel was Raphael Colantonio, Creative Director at Arkane Studios (who you may know from the work they've done on games like Arx Fatalis, Call of Duty 5, and Bioshock 2). I'm glad Raphael was able to join us, and as the gaming industry expert, keep all of us on the panel honest. Raphael points out that it is often more impactful to allow the player to learn lessons on right and wrong through game play, rather than something more overt. Also, for anyone considering developing games for good, Raphael notes that its important to remember that your game must be fun to be effective, after all, your game will be competing for attention against multi-million dollar games like Rock Band.

If you weren't able to make it to SXSWi this year, or you were tied up in another panel this afternoon, follow the #gamesforgood hashtag where the conversation is continuing. You can also feel free to find me at Convio's nonprofit technology bash at B.D. Riley's tomorrow night!