Aside from taking my first coding class, this year I dealt with several more personal excursions outside my comfort zone.

The biggest one was triggered by the abrupt and painful ending of a three-year relationship I’d treasured, which happened this summer — just a couple weeks after I moved from Oakland back home to Boulder.

I won’t delve into the details of my breakup, but it deeply shook my confidence in people, as well as in my ability to gauge the character of others — although it did reaffirm to me the quality and steadfastness of my closest friends.

One difficult realization was the way I contributed to how painful this breakup ended up being for everyone involved. Over the course of the relationship I’d slacked off on some basic communications maintenance, for the sake of savoring comfort and avoiding awkwardness and conflict. I hope to never forget that lesson again.

Anyway, that’s how — this year, for the first time in my adult life — I found myself without any intimate partners at all. So I had to learn to embrace being “single” in the conventional sense, not just solo.

This was a huge step outside my comfort zone.

Ever since I began living alone in 2010 (yeah, I’m a late bloomer), I’ve been surprised to discover how much I enjoy the solo life. I didn’t think I would like it. At first I expected to often feel lonely and sad — because that’s what society says women who live alone should feel like, and I’m as vulnerable to cultural programming as anyone else.

But during that transition I did have a good, steady, emotionally invested, and otherwise fulfilling and rewarding relationship with my boyfriend. We typically only spent time together once a week, but with our full lives and other commitments that was enough for us. The time we shared truly did rock, in every sense.

While he and I were together, I was still very much solo in the sense of being personally autonomous; but I wasn’t single in the sense of being totally unpartnered. Now, I’m both. And now, several months after that breakup, I’m realizing that I have expanded my comfort zone to include singlehood. Not just that: I enjoy it, so I’m taking time to explore it.

Yes, sometimes I do get lonely — but I also value solitude and the gifts it brings me, the mental and emotional space it affords me. And of course, everyone gets lonely. Being in a relationship doesn’t immunize you against loneliness. So it’s better to learn how to be good at being alone; and how to reach out to friends and community in good times and bad.

While I miss having partners (yes, plural — I’ve long been poly, so I’m open to having more than one honest relationship at a time), I truly don’t want another significant intimate relationship right now. I am dating a bit, but in a low-pressure, no-agenda way.

That’s not because I’m still licking my wounds from my bad breakup. (Even though, honestly, I’m not quite fully healed yet. That’ll take time. I’m getting there.) It’s because I’ve discovered that being single as well as solo is a precious opportunity to pay attention to and honor my own feelings, needs and priorities. I don’t want to trivialize or discard this opportunity. I’m getting a lot out of it.

When I’m in intimate relationships I give a fair share of my focus to what’s going on with my partners, and how well we’re treating each other. That’s good, and right, and natural, and I’ve gotten pretty skilled at it — something I credit polyamory for, although it’s not the only path to that skillset. But I don’t need to be in a relationship to be happy or fulfilled.

Right now, my life is great — in fact, better than it’s ever been. That’s no accident. I’ve worked very hard for a long time to craft a life that suits me well, and dammit, I intend to enjoy it for as long as I draw breath!

I’m sure, when I want new intimate relationships, I will be able to find them. I enjoy relationships, I’m good at them, and I relish that they really are completely configurable. Love was never one size fits all.

Still it’s good to know through experience that I really am totally fine and can be very happy whether or not I’m in a relationship. I wish more people could experience this. Many people I care about soldier on in dead, destructive, even poisonous relationships. Sometimes that’s for economic or family reasons, but often it’s because they fear being alone. I say that with compassion; for a lot of my life, that was my story too. There are far worse things than being alone.

I dread making big changes in my life. That’s always terribly uncomfortable and disorienting for me, even when they’re good changes that I want (or at least, I know they’re right for me), and when I deliberately work to make them happen. For instance, last winter I decided that although I loved many things about my time and friends in Oakland, it wasn’t my home and I didn’t want to keep living there. So I returned to Boulder, Colorado.

Since my move ended up coinciding with my breakup (although it wasn’t the cause of the breakup), it was especially wrenching. But all things considered, it also provided a level of comfort, certainty and even distance that I especially needed in light of my breakup.

It’s much more pleasant being single in a place that I love, where I have many old friends and where I’ve been making many new ones since my return. Here I have my precious mountains, which feed my soul and challenge my endurance. I have easy access (walk, bike, transit, and carshare) to all the kinds of places and activities I love, without having to buy a car. Hey, I even went indoor rock climbing last week!

More importantly, since I’ve returned I’ve been pleased and relieved to find that the local poly community became quite robust and welcoming while I was away. In fact, it feels stronger, more fun, and more supportive than any aspects of the poly community I encountered while living in the alternative-relationship Mecca that is the Bay Area. I’ve made many new poly friends here, and the regular Boulder poly meetup is one of the highlights of my week.

So while I’d been bracing for my interstate move to be yet another unadulterated dose of discomfort (albeit with a big eventual payoff, that’s why I did it), it turned out to offer the kind of comfort I needed to balance my far more discomforting transition to singlehood. Also this move unexpectedly provided me with the opportunity to focus on gaining some coding skills, knowledge, and context. That’s a huge bonus.

Pieces of my personal big picture keep falling into place. Apparently, it’s an outsider art installation comprised mainly of found objects. Every day I notice a new detail — either something that fits, or that doesn’t.

Here are my favorite parts of this picture: I’m grateful to have a healthy independent career, an apartment that (while small) is cheerful and cozy, my health, my cats, and most of all the love and support of my family, friends and colleagues near and far. That includes my former spouse, who remains one of my closest friends — which goes to show that breakups aren’t one-size-fits-all either. Some are actually relationship transitions.

I wouldn’t have much (or perhaps any) of these wonderful things, if I hadn’t gotten used to — and rather accomplished at — expanding my comfort zone by venturing beyond it and sticking around. Of course, this isn’t a binary; you don’t have to be totally comfortable or totally uncomfortable at any given time to do this. In fact, I’ve found it’s healthier and less stressful to blend significant discomfort with some comfort, where possible.

Most days I feel useful and happy and energetic. The days I don’t, I get through them well enough. Even when I sometimes need to cry or whine or scream or rant, that’s okay. All discomfort, and comfort, passes. If you get too attached to either, you’ll miss the big picture.

Enjoy 2013, folks. Even more importantly, embrace the parts you don’t enjoy. Expand your comfort zone however you can. Trust me; it’s worth the effort.

Had some fun with my hair this summer. Yet another comfort zone expansion.

PS: Not all excursions outside my comfort zone this year have been a big, serious deal. For fun, this summer I cut my hair short — and this week added some bright red highlights. I’m really liking the look. I never thought I’d be comfortable with short hair, or funky color. Well, there you go. Things change. And I’ve also rediscovered that I love to sing, and shoot pool. I’m integrating them back into my comfort zone. I also want to expand my comfort zone to include dancing. Who wants to join me?

My motto for 2012. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt!

I know it, you know it: the obligatory end-of-2012-reflections blog meme is coming. So I might as well get a jump on it. It’s partly geeky, partly personal. And it’s not at all professional. Roll with it.

For me, 2012 has been a year of expanding my comfort zone by stepping outside it. Sometimes by being booted unceremoniously beyond it. I’ve walked the talk of one of my favorite pithy t-shirts of the year: “Comfort zone = dead zone.” At the ripe old age of 46, I’m finally learning how to be more at peace with being uncomfortable or uncertain, even for extended periods of time; and how to temper this discomfort with the kind of comfort that feeds my soul and keeps me sane.

One uncomfortable but important advance I made this year was to knuckle down and really start to learn how to code.

I took a 3-month immersion course from the Da Vinci Institute (a tech community catalyst for Colorado’s Front Range) in front-end web development skills: HTML5, CSS, and Javascript (really, JQuery). While this wasn’t programming in the software development sense, I learned a lot.

I especially appreciate the integrative insight as well as the practical skills offered by our instructor, Richard Jones; and by my friend and mentor Justin Crawford (who just joined Mozilla — congrats!). And I am grateful for the generous scholarship funded by the Boulder startup Epic Playground, which enabled me to take this class.

So really, what did I learn? While I can’t say I enjoy coding CSS, I now can do it — very slowly, clumsily, and with much frustration, but with some success. That’s a huge leap for me. More importantly, I now can look at a CSS file and understand how it works and what it’s doing, and sometimes where it’s going wrong.

Most importantly, I now greatly respect how CSS works and what it can do. I can recognize its rhythms and beauty as well as its practicality. I appreciate its specificity and nuances — even when they’re making me bash my head against my keyboard. The payoff: I now can make better decisions about CSS and even pitch in and write some of it. This will benefit any digital media project I do in the future.

While CSS was my biggest challenge and greatest frustration with this class, my greatest discovery came through through learning how to use HTML5. That got me even more intrigued by structured content, responsive web design, outliners, and adaptive content.

I’m noticing a familiar feeling as I learn about these particular techniques and technologies. It’s the way I felt about internet content in 1998, when I started Contentious.com: not pushing myself forward, but rather feeling drawn ahead and motivated by compelling new territory. I don’t know quite what I’m going to do in this territory, but I’m definitely going there.

Whether or not I become a great (or even competent) coder in the process is not the point. Coding is a crucial new literacy. It’s fundamentally empowering. And if I’ve learned anything about myself in 46 years, it’s that I really, really suck at being powerless.

I was definitely in over my head with this course, but that wasn’t what put me outside my comfort zone. I’m accustomed to diving into a new subject, being a beginner. I enjoy it. In fact, my urge to keep exploring is a big part of why I became a journalist in the first place — done right, this profession continually reveals new territory, or shows old territory in a new light.

In 12 weeks I didn’t learn as much about coding as I’d aspired to. That was my own doing. The problem was, I just didn’t put in enough time outside of class. Getting proficient at coding requires tons of steady practice. I was able and willing to put in the time for the class (3.5 hours/day, 3 days/week), but honestly I didn’t do enough of the homework.

So I had to ask myself the hard question: Why wasn’t I doing enough homework? That made me really uncomfortable, because it forced me to compare who I actually am with who I want to believe I am. Life and code go together. (In fact, my friend Lisa Williams has a blog about that.)

Over the last few years I’m been learning how to pay attention to, and honor, what I really want to do — and what I’m willing to do. The hard part is that these things often don’t match my conscious aspirations, or what others might expect of me (at least, usually, what I guess others might expect of me).

During earlier phases in my life I’ve simply powered through all sorts of things (projects, classes, events, interstate moves, buying real estate, managing relationships, etc.) because I felt I should do them or I’d already committed myself to them. Now I’ve arrived at a point in my life where I need to focus not just on what my project or task at hand is, but what my goals are. I’m finally learning to take my personal “big picture” seriously, treat it like it matters. Because it does.

In this case, being a hard-core programmer or developer is simply not my goal. It never was — but the social pressure in geekdom is that if you’re going to code at all, you must totally throw yourself into it or else there’s no point in trying. Well, so much for the social myths of subcultures. All of you geeks who want to chide me for my lack of diligence (and I know you’re out there), feel free. Hey, I’m from NJ. I can take it.

I didn’t consciously intend to shift my personal focus this way. It emerged when I started, a little over a year ago, to specifically pay closer attention to my emotions, thought patterns, attention patterns, and reactions. I started journaling far more than ever before, that helped a lot.

Getting to know my personal big picture is often uncomfortable, because so far it isn’t terribly clear or coherent. And it may never be. But I’m getting better at sensing when I find things that fit into it — and when I don’t.

I see that what I needed most from this class was confidence that I can learn how to code — I’d held off so long because it frankly intimidated me. I felt like I’d never be good enough to impress anyone. Now I don’t care about that.

I also needed some practical experience doing simple coding. And I needed to learn enough to decide which digital media technologies and skills make sense for me to pursue more vigorously.

While I never aspired to be a full-time professional software developer or web designer, being useful is core to my sense of who I am, who I always have been, and who I want to be. Much of what I do with my life and work happens through digital media. I want to be more empowered to at least tweak, and perhaps help shape, the technologies of digital media. So I’ve started moving in that direction. I’m working through some self-paced courses at Code Academy, and I’ve got some projects in mind.

First coding project: Contentious.com needs a better theme. I know, it’s kinda broken right now. So I’m learning PHP, so I can work more effectively with WordPress, since it’s a tool I use on several projects. I need to be able to get under the hood with it.

I don’t expect continuing with coding to be comfortable. In fact, I expect it will intimidate and frustrate the hell out of me much of the time. But the things I really need to learn, I know I can learn. Or at least, I can make some serious progress toward learning them. And for the rest, I can connect with smart, talented people — another skill I’ve invested heavily in developing, and which has paid off handsomely for me.

EDITORIAL NOTE: If you only read me for my media and tech musings, and dislike stuff that gets any more personal than what you just read, feel free to stop reading now. I won’t take it personally. But if you care for some more personal insight into what I learned in 2012, read on!

Here’s part 2.

It seems that a big part of learning to code is simply spending lots of time practicing it — getting things wrong, getting frustrated, asking for help, and getting them a little better next time (hopefully). In that sense it’s like learning to play a musical instrument — you can think and talk about it all you want, but if you really want to learn it you need to get your fingers moving and be willing to sound really crappy for quite awhile.

Yeah, I know: Duh. But it’s one thing knowing that piece of obviousness, and another to really knuckle down and do it….

That’s where I’ve been falling down on this project so far — I pay attention in class and understand stuff in class (our teacher, Richard Jones, is really skilled). But spending time on the homework is where I’m having a hard time. Quite simply, I keep procrastinating because it’s uncomfortable for me.

So my goal for the next week is to spend at least 3 hours a day on work related to the class, including at least 90 solid minutes of coding practice. (Yeah, hardcore developers may snicker at that, but for me it’s a big deal. Especially being self-employed: I don’t get vacation time, and even cutting back on my workload I still have much I can’t put aside totally. So go ahead and snicker.)

Another thing I’ve realized is that part of my habits for learning something new is to try to related it through analogy to things I already know, or relationships I already understand. For instance, in class Monday our teacher was talking about phenomena, principles, and techniques in web design. Basically they’re philosophical constructs. I just wasn’t getting the distinctions and the relationships, so I tried out an analogy:

• Principles = Core aspects of how web design works, such as page flow. (My attempted analogy: blood must circulate through the body.)
• Phenomena = what happens when your code gets screwy, like float collapse. (My attempted analogy: when an artery gets clogged a heart attack can occur.)
• Techniques = how you address the problem, such as clearfix. (My attempted analogy: clearing the artery and implanting a stent.)

Hey, @agahran ! The perfect blend of Korean pop and Star Trek! http://t.co/bi4uM4EL

That link took me to a HuffPo story about a Star Trek-themed parody of a smash Korean Pop (K-pop) dance rap hit, “Gangnam Style.” I’d never heard of or seen the original by K-Pop rapper PSY, so I decided to check it out — because you can’t appreciate a parody until you see the original. Here it is:

And here it is again, in Klingon!

It struck me when I watched the original: Doesn’t PSY bear a suspicious resemblance to the new North Korean leader Kim Jong Un? Hmmmm…

PSY

Kim Jong Un

…See what I mean? I sense a coup coming across the DMZ. Perhaps they’re attempting to emulate this Coup, from Oakland?

My pop-culture education for the day is now complete. I can return to unraveling the mysteries of the Box Model now….

First off: As I writing this it’s about 5:30 am. I’ve been up since about 1:30 am. Welcome to Codeville.

Wednesday I attended my first Da Vinci Coders class in web front-end development skills. I started a little behind; I missed the real first class on Monday because I was away giving a presentation in Chicago.

Right away I was in over my head. But I expected that. Hence, the motivational t-shirt.

Our instructor, Richard Jones, did a pretty good job of catching me up on what was covered in the first class. I like his approach — he sets the context with the higher-level concepts so we first learn to think like developers, to think very carefully about the nature and purpose of content on a page, and make our decisions about how to use HTML5 and CSS based on that assessment.

For our first assignment he gave us a PDF file exported from a webpage that was a very textbook-like discussion of the Pacific Temperate Rainforest. The topic doesn’t really matter, though. I was really only paying attention to the structure of the content. I do a lot of writing and editing work, so it was somewhat of a relief not to have to consider whether the content made any sense. I only had to pay attention to the structure of the content — what sections, figures, and other major elements it comprised.

That relief didn’t last long….

When I started recreating what I saw on the PDF using HTML and CSS files, I started feeling stupid. Yeah, I knew that would happen.

In practice, the process of repackaging that simple rainforest information as a webpage reminded me of drawing classes I took ages ago. There, I had to focus an inordinate amount of energy into really looking at that damned bowl of fruit I was trying (and mostly failing) to sketch. Tonight my refrain was, “Why didn’t I SEE that there’s padding at the bottom of that figure box!” (facepalm)

But I soldiered through my annoyance, and after about 3.5 hours I finally finished it! I think I did OK.

…Well, except for one tiny detail. And I do mean tiny.

stubborn character

In the next-to-last section of that page (“fungi”), there’s a box at the end which contains a short excerpt from a book. Just under the excerpted text there’s a line of text citing the source. That line begins with an angle quotation mark. And on the PDF, that angle quote falls just slightly to the left of the excerpt text’s left margin.

I figured out how to use CSS to give that source cite text the appropriate font size and styling (which was different from the excerpt text). I felt really proud of myself for that. Until I realized I couldn’t figure out how to nudge that %^&^$$^#@%!@# arcane piece of punctuation just a tiny bit leftward.

After wrestling with that stylistic nit for another half hour, I finally threw in the towel. Hell, the rest of my page looked right, as far as I can tell. And my code validated. For now, that’s good enough. I did learn a lot from this exercise.

And I fully expect that as soon as Richard sees my page later today he’ll spot several things wrong with it. Oh well, that’s OK. That’s how learning works.

… Now, just as the sun comes up, I’m going to try to grab a couple hours sleep. Then I’ll do some client work, then read through the articles and research assignments from Wednesday’s class (yeah, I’m behind on that), and then go to class.

And after that, I’ll head to my cabin in the mountains overnight. And I’ll probably sleep 12 hours, then take a morning walk to clear my head, then head home and code again.

I’m regretting that after the Wednesday class I came home, got dinner, and mostly took the evening off from work and code. And then yesterday I put off doing my class homework too. I woke up 1:30 am today (normal insomnia, not stressed) and realized since I wasn’t going back to sleep I should just do the assignment. I’m glad I did — it took a lot longer than I expected to. I couldn’t bang it out in an hour.

But I see why I procrastinated on my homework: When I’m starting a new learning curve, actually diving in for the very first time is the hardest step. That’s why I’ve put off learning coding for years — no, for over a decade. It was wanting to avoid the head-bashing “I don’t understand this and it’s not working and I’m failing!” feeling.

That’s why I’m taking this class, and why I don’t want to waste this opportunity by simply not trying hard enough to push through my discomfort and frustration. My teacher seems capable, and my classmates seem supportive. Being a beginner is always awkward, but it’s less awkward when you’re not the only one, and when you have help.

So: we’ll see how things go from here. But for now, I’ll try to sleep a bit.

I’m learning to code.

Took me long enough to get around to it, I know.

Specifically, starting next week I’m taking an intensive 3-month full immersion course offered by the Da Vinci Institute in nearby Louisville, CO in front-end development skills: HTML5, cascading stylesheets, and Javascript. It’s part of their Da Vinci Coders program, aimed at bringing beginners quickly up to speed with useful, in-demand tech skills. (They also offer Ruby on Rails training.)

The training isn’t cheap. But serendipity struck: Local tech startup Callisto.fm offered two full scholarships for women, to encourage more diversity in the Front Range tech scene. And I won!

I’m deeply grateful for this opportunity, since (because my move from CA back to CO this year ate the lion’s share of my discretionary budget for Major Life Changes) I otherwise would’ve had to wait until next year to do this course. And I feel like I’ve put off learning to code long enough.

Financing is also available for Da Vinci Coders. Had I not won this scholarship, I would have gone that route next year. But this time I got lucky.

Admittedly this adventure involves seriously stepping outside my comfort zone. While I know a lot about technology and know many coders, I’ve no prior programming experience. But I’m sick of getting tech ideas that require coding, and then having to either let them go or else beg a developer to help me even start to test out my idea. Both of those options frustrate me.

My goal is to learn enough front-end technology to be able to build simple, functional mobile web apps — that is, interactive app-like functionality delivered through the web browser on a phone or tablet.

Why mobile web apps? Because I’m passionate about mobile technology and what it can do for people’s lives. But I think the current overwhelming focus on platform-specific “native” apps (which users must find in an app market, download and install, and remember to run) is complete overkill for many of the interactive things people want to do on their phones and tablets. To back this up, research shows one in four mobile apps never get opened more than once, and 75% never get used more than 10 times.

Since mobile users are so fickle (and, let’s be honest, most mobile interactive features are things you’d only want to use a handful of times anyway), why not deliver more of this functionality via the mobile web? It’s low-overhead, inherently cross-platform, cheaper to develop, and — thanks to newer browsers and the growing penetration of smartphones (by the end of this year, half of all cell phones in use in the US will be smartphones) — pretty damn nifty.

My goal is not to become a full-time programmer. I’m a good journalist, writer, and editor, and I think that will always be my mainstay. But I realize that coding has become a key literacy skill, and I’m sick of being illiterate. I don’t expect to do anything fancy or impressive with coding, but I think it will give me more options and allow me to work on even more cool projects.

Plus, when I go to hackathons, I’ll be able to really pitch in and help. I hate standing on the sidelines.

And if Lisa Williams can learn to code, I can do it too. Seriously, she’s one of my best friends and mentors, and I’m inspired by her example.

Wish me luck! And watch Contentious.com for my observations, frustrations, and triumphs from this project.

On Thursday, July 26, I’ll be delivering the following presentation at the Social Media for Nonprofits – Silicon Valley conference: 5 affordable ways nonprofits can use mobile technology. (Follow the conference hashtag: #sm4np)

This presentation is meant to be just a quick overview, to let nonprofits know what’s possible today, and where they should focus their attention.

Why the focus on “affordable?” Well, mobile technology isn’t free…

It costs money to get a mobile device, and telephony/data service is an ongoing expense. Also, if an organization wants to offer content or services optimized for delivery to mobile devices, they’ll have to invest time and effort — and often lay out some cash — to make it work.

Most nonprofits, especially those which operate at a community level, don’t have a lot of money or technical expertise. But they can still leverage existing mobile (or mobile-friendly) tools, platforms, and strategies to further their core missions to serve communities or raise awareness.

Earlier this year I co-authored a white paper published by the ZeroDivide Foundation: Funding mobile strategies for social impact. This document is intended to orient grantmakers to the possibilities of mobile — but it’s also pretty useful for nonprofits, too.

Here are the mobile strategies I’ll recommend to nonprofits in my presentation this week:

1. Mobile landing pages.Actually I advocate mobile-optimized websites wherever possible. But as a starting point, nonprofits which offer services or information, or which run campaigns of any kind, can launch some targeted mobile-friendly landing pages as an initial engagement point for mobile users. This is especially important if you’re doing any marketing or advertising that includes a web address — anywhere people see a URL, they should be able to enter that into their phone and get a mobile-friendly webpage.Google Sites offers a basic but pretty good — and free — landing page builder. It’s intended for business, but nonprofits should be able to use the lead generation or custom themes pretty well. And if you’re not sure how well your current site performs via mobile (or even if you think it’s a great mobile site), use Google’s site performance testing toolto see what kind of mobile experience you’re really delivering.
2. Tumblr.This relative social media newcomer is exploding in popularity, especially among people under 25. Tumblr is a hybrid of microblogging and social media. The reason I like Tumblr, and advocate its use, is that it’s perhaps the most mobile-friendly blogging tool out there — both for mobile viewing/interaction, and for posting via mobile.Everything you post to a public Tumblr blog gets indexed by search engines — which beats the hell out of Facebook’s walled garden in the long run. Oh, and Tumblr is completely free. And you can create as many Tumblr blogs as you like off a single account, making it useful for special projects or campaigns.
3. Crowdsourcing via social media. Besides texting and taking pictures, social media is one of the most popular non-voice activities people do on their mobile phones. Anything you do via social media inherently has a considerable mobile audience. This makes mobile social media a valuable tool for crowdsourcing — gathering input or content of any kind from the communities you serve or adjacent or broader audiences. I point to two recent examples conducted on Tumblr: Faces of Black Men and Planned Parenthood Saved Me (both brilliantly executed by Deanna Zandt).Whenever you want to crowdsource, make it easy for people to contribute content via mobile social media. (Read: no complicated webforms!) Also make it easy for people to access, explore, and share that content via mobile social media. Tags, hashtags, and landing pages are your friends here!
4. Teach people how to use their mobile devices, especially their cell phones. Especially their feature phones. For instance, it’s amazing how many people don’t know how to download or share photos that they take with their phone, or how to access e-mail or the web on their phones — even though many feature phones now offer these functions and more.In addition to teaching phone-use skills, nonprofits can help community members understand the carrier and other costs that might be associated with using data, e-mail, or other capabilities of their phones — as well as how to choose a phone or wireless carrier.

   The Mobile Voices community publishing platform (which gives public voice to the Hispanic community of immigrant day laborers and domestic workers in Los Angeles) emphasizes mobile technology as a tool of empowerment. Even cheap mobile technology. In a Knight Digital Media Center article, I explained how the nonprofit behind Mobile Voices, the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California (IDEPSCA), incorporates mobile skills training into many of its community activities and events.

5. SMS text messaging. I put this last because it’s the most complex and costly strategy I’m recommending, but it really should be first — since text messaging (simple messaging service, or SMS) is hands down the most ubiquitous and popular non-voice activity for mobile phone users. And that’s for allmobile users — even people who can afford the fanciest smartphones and fattest data plans text a lot.Before you dive in, understand some of the challenges. First, there’s some fairly toothy US federal and state law in place to keep people from getting text spam, so it’s worthwhile learning how to stay on the right side of these laws. In addition, U.S. wireless carriers charge both the sender and the recipient of text messages — a double-dinging that’s virtually unheard of in most of the rest of the world. This rapacious billing for text messages is a big reason why many of the innovative SMS-based programs and services popular in the developing world haven’t taken off in the U.S.

   Furthermore, carriers are getting more aggressive about blocking “free” (at least for the sender) text messages sent via e-mail-to-SMS gateway technology. So if you want to be sure your messages go through, it’s really best to bite the bullet and pay for a service that lets you send out bulk SMS in the way the carriers prefer.

   So if you offer text alerts, news, or interactive services (and most nonprofits probably should!), it’s best to pony up for a legitimate paid service. One that’s popular with nonprofits and activists is Textmarks.

…Why didn’t I mention mobile apps? Because that’s the most costly and advanced approach to mobile. Apps are software projects that cost money to develop, test, and maintain. Apps also are tied to specific smartphone operating systems (Android, iOS, etc.). And finally, people must find your app, download and install it, and remember to run it. Those are all huge hurdles for nonprofits and the communities they serve.

I’ve seen very few projects from nonprofits which truly warrant the app approach — especially since so much app-like functionality can now be delivered fairly well via the mobile web. For a good example of a fun mobile web app, use your phone to check out Planned Parenthood’s Where Did You Wear It campaign for condom use.

However, for nonprofits that adopt my #4 strategy (provide mobile skills training) it can be useful to find apps that will be especially useful to the community you serve. For instance, people living in “underbanked” communities who have a smartphone (lots of cheap Android models out there now!) might directly benefit from learning how to use their bank’s mobile app.

Lisa is not a magical unicorn

Placeblogger founder Lisa Williams is a media person who taught herself to code. That does not make her a magical unicorn. You can do this too -- and you probably should.

Why should journalists and other news/media professionals learn to code? More importantly: HOW can they learn to code?

Today my good friend, mentor, and fellow ass-kicker Lisa Williams (founder of Placeblogger.com) gave a great presentation on this theme at TEDXPoynter, a one-day event at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, FL. I watched the livestream, and I’m sure Poynter will post the video online later. (I’ll embed that when it’s up.)

Lisa is a media professional who took the initiative to learn how to code — in part so that she wouldn’t be totally dependent on other people to realize her ideas, and also because “Corruption sucks!” Having basic coding skills gives you the power to visualize data and create other resources which make it harder for the powers that be to claim that the problems you’re spotlighting are mere “isolated incidents.”

(More from Lisa about this and other reasons why media pros (or anyone) should learn to code: Code to make a point; code to make change; on newshacking. Plus her learn to code resources guide.)

Lisa observed that when she talks to journalists about learning to code, they often ask her, “But isn’t storytelling important? Do we really have to learn how to code?”

Her response: Stop whining!

I’m totally with Lisa on this. Which is why this summer, after I move back to Boulder, CO, I’ll be devoting regular time most days to learn how to code. And you can do it, too…

My personal focus will be on building simple mobile-friendly web apps and data visualizations. This will mostly be self-guided, but I’ll have some mentoring. I’m picking a project and will learn as I build it. And I will hang with the coders at Boulder’s Dojo4 — a software development shop and hacker community nexus run by my friend and colleague Justin Crawford. So I’ll be an “apprentice geek.” (We’re still figuring out exactly what that means…)

…Anyway, Lisa mentioned how she taught herself to code well enough (in one hour per day, for eight weeks) to build simple CRUD apps (Create, Read, Update, Delete). Her first: Patchbucks — a map populated with data showing that no Patch.com reporter is more than 5 miles from a Starbucks.

Way cool. Yeah, that’s the thing. Coding can be a hell of a lot of fun. Do projects that make you laugh, first.

If you want to learn how Lisa taught herself to code, and how she’s still learning and exploring and experimenting with coding, check out her Life and Code blog.

Also, two years ago Lisa gave an excellent presentation at the Knight Digital Media Center@USC on how local news entrepreneurs can learn enough about how web technology works to manage their websites better and make better decisions for their sites. Because, frankly, a lot of hyperlocal news sites and other digital news startups are created by people who know a lot about journalism but almost nothing about technology.

I interviewed Lisa and expanded that talk into a 4-part series on KDMC: Teach Yourself Web Basics.

In it she laid out a one-year self-study plan on web technology which can benefit any web publisher. She recommended devoting just four hours per month to an area of focus for each month, and try to accomplish some basic tasks and try some exercises.

Here’s the outline. I recommend checking it out and trying it:

Part 1

• Month 1: DNS (domain name system)
• Month 2: FTP (file transfer protocol)
• Month 3: The stack

Part 2

• Month 4: UNIX file commands
• Month 5: Web server software
• Month 6: Databases

Part 3

• Month 7: Customizing your site with modules and plugins
• Month 8: Cascading stylesheets (CSS)
• Month 9: Basic programming in the language your site uses

Part 4

• Month 10: Write a site plan
• Month 11: Backup and recovery
• Month 12: User interface (UI) patterns

…Oh, and throughout this process (or learning other kinds of coding): STOP WHINING! Just loosen up and learn to have fun with technology. Being a beginner is really cool, once you get over yourself.

But Facebook is especially horrendous on mobile. For instance, the Facebook Android app won’t let me share items from other people’s streams, the way the Facebook standard website does.  Also, on the Facebook Android app I can’t tag someone in a status update (like saying “Joe Schmoe loves this kind of sushi.”) — I can only indicate whether I’m “with” someone, which often isn’t the case.

Argh. Gah….

Anyway, today while I’m researching and writing about Facebook’s various mobile problems, I found Kevin C. Tofel’s May 15 GigaOm post: Does your Facebook mobile app suck? here’s why

He summarized findings published in the Mobtest blog. These only looked at problems with Facebook’s iOS app, but they’re interesting even though I’m an Android user. In a nutshell, Facebook’s app relies heavily on web technology (HTML) to deliver content.  There are good reasons for this, but on iOS devices it causes problems.

Here’s how Mobtest summed it up:

Why would Facebook use HTML technology inside a native iOS app?

HTML is easier for displaying fluid content. Objective-C really sucks when it comes to fluid display. An image with text around it, buttons with varying text labels are really hard to create yourself in Objective-C as you have to calculate dimensions and positions of all elements yourself. In particular for a timeline HTML will be much easier.

Creates code that can be shared across different platforms. iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone are all different technologies and a developer’s nightmare. Sharing some content/functionality in the form of HTML makes sense.

HTML is much more in line with Facebook’s continuous deployment process. FB developers are responsible for their own QA, and part of that is to push code out to a limited set of servers, see results and then push it out to more and do this each day if not more often. With Apple taking as least a week of review, rolling back a code change is a nightmare.

They can get away with it. Yes Facebook is not a bank, there are no other iOS FB apps out there and we will still use the service as it has a virtual monopoly on social networking with 900 million users now. We just have to suck it up.

Feature phones is where growth is. A very high percentage of iPhone and Android users already have the Facebook app installed. The next frontier is feature phones, in particular in non-western parts of the world. These new users will first encounter Facebook on their mobile, and it will not be a shining iPhone.

OK, that doesn’t explain the boneheaded lack of key features in Facebook’s Android app that I noted, but it could help explain some of the poor performance I’ve experienced — slow load times, lagging updates and push notifications, and lots and lots of crashes.

Tofel, an iPhone user, closed his GigaOm post with this observation:

…For the time being, I’m going to switch to m.facebook.com in my smartphone browser. I did some testing this afternoon and the experience is far faster, up to date and generally offers the same features as the native mobile app.

That’s a problem: If integrity is supposedly what you have to offer your audience or community, then it’s bad business to shaft your customers (the advertisers).

Then along came the age of digital advertising, and finally some direct evidence of advertising’s impact started creeping in to the picture: clickthroughs, etc. These metrics were flawed and digital advertising mostly sucked (but then again, so did most print and broadcast advertising), but it was a step toward accountability, at least theoretically.

And then there was a development that purported to go even further toward helping advertisers and marketers ensure that they were spending their money usefully across all media, digital and otherwise: the demand-side platform. Wikipedia currently defines this as:

A system that allows digital advertisers to manage multiple ad exchange and data exchange accounts through one interface. Real time bidding for displaying online ads takes place within the ad exchanges, and by utilizing a DSP, marketers can manage their bids for the banners and the pricing for the data that they are layering on to target their audiences.

DSPs are unique because they incorporate many of the facets previously offered by advertising networks, such as wide access to inventory and vertical and lateral targeting, with the ability to serve ads, real-time bid on ads, track the ads, and optimize. This is all kept within one interface which creates a unique opportunity for advertisers to truly control and maximize the impact of their ads. 

Sounds good — except that DSPs can be mostly smoke and mirrors all over again, just with more data attached.

Check out Confessions of a Demand-Side Platform Salesperson, from Digiday this week:

Anyone that has not worked at a DSP or a trading desk, consider yourself lucky. It is the cesspool of our industry, with the DSPs racing towards an acquisition or IPO and the trading desks trying to validate themselves as valuable within the holding companies. It is a sweatshop environment on both sides, with workers who are bludgeoned from the top down.

…I think it is time for the major advertisers to get in and take responsibility for how their dollars are being spent. There is double-dipping within many agency/trading desks, and your advertising dollars are not as impactful as they have been. The tires need to be violently kicked at a trading desk before agreeing to allow your dollars to go through there. 

Also, the big publishers need to man up, regain their integrity and pull out. Madoff pulled off his scheme under the watchful eye of the SEC. You think the same thing isn’t happening under the oh-so frightening eye of the IAB?