Although I have zero programming skills, I think I may be about to become a techie.

While visiting Guy, he pointed me in the direction of Coghead, which is launching a beta version of its web-based business application-building program. If it is all its cracked up to be, this could be big.

Remember in the early 90s before Windows when we were still using DOS? You would open up WordPerfect and be presented with a single blinking < and you'd have to know on your own where to go next. The first time this happened to me, I just sat there for about 5 minutes, staring at the screen, wondering what I was supposed to do, especially since my employer had thoughfully provided me with no documentation for using the program.

Then, a few years later, Windows arrived. It was amazing. You could look at a screen and point to what you wanted to do (I won't mention that Apple had figured this stuff out awhile ago). It was the advent of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) and it was like a whole new world had opened up for us.

That's what Coghead could do for programming. Rather than having to know  code, you should be able to create programs yourself by dragging and dropping items into your "document" (your program). According to the site, you could do things like:

• Manage knowledge--"The Knowledge Base is a crucial tool for storing commonly asked questions, which are often used in responding to RFPs and RFIs. The knowledge base not only stores the question and answer, but also associates the questions to particular products and versions. Further, the answers are assigned to owners who must maintain the information. The application also assigns "check-up" times when the information is tagged to review." How cool would it be if you could easily create your own on-line database of typical RFP responses or to easily create an on-line policy and procedure manual?

• Create your own project management software so that you could keep track of progress on various projects, share documents, etc.

• Manage events--"The Event Management application helps you organize events and manage registrants. The application can be used as the central administrative tool by event personnel, but can also be extended to participants to facilitate registration by participants and vendors." Employment and training programs could manage a job fair this way, for example.

• Manage recruitment--"The Recruiting Manager helps keep the recruiting process at your company productive by providing a central repository for applicant resumes, open positions, candidate recommendations, interview schedules, and comments made by the interviewers." And, again, for employment and training programs, this could be a way to also manage job development activities to refer clients to available job opportunities.

I signed up  to test the beta version, which you can do, too by going here.  That's also where you can read more about the various options that will be available.

Coghead is in the very beginning stages and I didn't see information on eventual cost. But it seems to me like there's a lot of potential in this project. I'll be curious to see what happens next and how something like this could benefit NPOs.

Michele