knowing and sharing what we know

over the last few weeks, I've been circling back to a pretty simple question: how can PTP staff do a better job of tracking and sharing what we know about the groups that we work with? It seems pretty simple on the surface - we just use our database, or some sort of database at least.

you're probably not surprised to hear that the question is a fair bit more complicated than it might seem on the surface. We currently use our database to track most of this information, largely through entering notes of conversations we have with groups. This information is accessible when you're looking at an individual contact - you can pull up notes from prior conversations and get a feel for what's transpired between PTP and that individual. Similarly, when viewing an organization's record, we can see a list of recent contacts with all individuals at that organization.

this is all fine, and works well to give us information on the history of the facts of the relationship, but tells us very very little about the meaning of those facts and doesn't contribute to an overall picture of the current state of the organization, its relationship to PTP, or the technology developments coming out of the group and their implications for our program.

What I'd love is some way to look at the aggregate of what we know and use that to help take the pulse of technology use by community organizing groups. I don't even mind needing to do some reading or digging to get there. The problem is that the current system just doesn't seem to really lend itself to that application of what the database holds.