30 years ago yesterday, I launched my own web site online, a place to publish some of the work I was regularly posting to the soc.org.nonprofit USENET newsgroup, like Basic Customer Database Principles and Overview of Databases.

I created those database tips because so many nonprofit staff were being asked to manage data about volunteers, donors, event attendees and clients, but they had zero background in data management, and were regularly asking for help on that online community. My data management background came from hands-on experiences, mostly at nonprofit theaters, which live and die by data about event attendees and donors – and we used index cards before computers. I kept developing new web pages on other tech-related subjects to offer advice in plain language, because I felt like software developers and tech bros were doing a lousy job of doing so. I wanted to present tips for using all this emerging computer and Internet technology in human language so it could be understood by anyone, not just IT folks, and to show what it could do in language that showed it really was a great tool, not just something shiny.

I called my web site Coyote Communications. I wrote about why I called it that here, and what my driving philosophy was in creating the web site. That page also offers guidance on how to see that very first web site.

Merely having a web site of my own helped in my landing a few jobs in the 1990s, though I abandoned my web design business after my first client – I knew I was no web designer, although I quickly turned out to be quite a good manager of such, which is also a very important skill to have.

It was 1996, the start of what turned out to be a year of tremendous loss and change for me. I was really excited about launching my own site and, having been online for a couple of years and having a really positive experience from such, I was really optimistic about what the Internet could mean for humanity. I was downright perky. As I ended the year in a new home in Austin, Texas, having completely rebooted my life, I was down about personal things but still optimistic professionally, mostly because I was starting a new job that would allow me to do the oh-so-radical thing of work from home, a job I’d gotten because of my online work up to that date: I began designing the program I would direct for four years, the Virtual Volunteering Project, an initiative that eventually led me to a job, and a career, with the United Nations and a long time association with TechSoup.

But that’s getting ahead of myself. Back to Austin at the end of 1996: years passed, and my web site evolved as I evolved professionally. I never got rid of that focus on tech tips for the non-tech person at nonprofits, but over the years it expanded to resources for Community Outreach, With & Without Tech, resources for Community Engagement, Volunteering & Volunteerism, resources for people Working in International Development, particularly regarding communications, and travel resources for women, especially women motorcycle riders.

Lots of observations as I think about this anniversary:

• People were nicer online in the 1990s. No question.
• Web sites were easier to use 20 years ago.
• It is so jarring to talk with people younger than my web site.
• I could not survive without the Internet Wayback Machine.
• I thought that accessibility in web site design would be a widespread priority now. I remain stunned that web site accessibility is still not the industry standard, and that so many web designers, and those that employ them, have either never heard of it or don’t think it’s important.
• I thought the US Congress would have designed much better laws to protect the data of citizens and other residents, as well as visitors.
• Most of the ideas I hear from tech bros regarding their new tech tools aren’t new ideas.
• I have close friends and professional colleagues now that I first met online. Those type of connections don’t happen nearly as much now as they did in the 1990s and 2000s. I met so many of them on YahooGroups. I so miss YahooGroups.
• I think those of us who worked in environments without computers and the Internet are better at using tech tools than so-called “digital natives.” My generation knows that we always have to be ready to adapt to change, and knows that most of the time we’re on our own to figure out how to use something – and how to best leverage that tool in our work.
• AI slop is insidious and is ruining the Internet.
• The algorithms that are supposedly putting information in front of us based on our unique preferences are making it harder to find the information I’m actually looking for. Search engines worked far better even 15 years ago than they do now.
• The algorithms that are supposedly putting information in front of us based on our unique preferences are driving misinformation and a startling, horrific extreme right wing agenda. I regularly get things in my social media newsfeeds that I’m not only not interested in, they go against everything I believe at my core – and what I believe at my core is no secret online.
• We all need to spend less time looking at computer and phone screens. More time looking at movie screens is acceptable.

I hope my web site is still valuable to someone out there. And I hope my 2026 goes far better than my 1996.

Also see:

• The index of my various and latest tech tips.
• Tech4Causes, an online community on Reddit to discuss Tech4Good.
• United Nations Tech4Good / ICT4D Initiatives.
• Defunct Tech4Good web sites, and other sites, I still refer to.