After years of
producing desktop publications such as the Nonprofit
Community Resource Directory, for the nonprofit sector, Pen
& Pixel founder Phil Klein began publishing websites and dynamic
databases in 1995. Since then, Pen & Pixel has been turning
computers into community resources and helping to build the
Community Information Infrastructure. Recognizing information
and referral as a key area where communities needed effective
access to the best information on services, Pen & Pixel began
work with organizations in the Seattle area that were committed
to empowering people with good community information systems.
Through partnerships with connected organizations around the US,
Pen & Pixel developed systems that helped meet community, child
care, youth, and senior information and referral needs.
In many cases, organizations have had steep learning curves
to climb when conceiving and implementing web projects. Analysis
has been needed to determine how online community information
systems can best fit into the larger pictures of an
organization's other programs and goals--and also work in
harmony with interagency and interstate goals. As a
result, systems analysis, and technology and communications
strategic planning are key components of Pen & Pixel's projects.
As technology progresses and offers increasing opportunities
for online service delivery, personalized service, data-sharing
and data-security, new projects are more dynamic and useful than
ever. This is especially aided by organizations with savvy
staff, whose growing knowledge and expectations for technology's
role powerfully leads to improved project results. Pen & Pixel
is ever enticed to pursue projects that uncover new capabilities
that transform organizations and the people who are served.
Some of the recent trends in our work are towards bettering
the knowledge-sharing capabilities for all users of our systems
and providing effective methods for online collaboration and
community development. Today Pen & Pixel envisions a world where
the solutions found to a problem in one place will flow as a
matter of course to all places where that problem exists so that
communities improve one another naturally.
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