Forum OpenACS Q&A: ArsDigita/OpenACS meeting summary

Ironically, my entire motivation for porting over the bboard and to start working on porting other pieces of the ACS to Postgres a year ago last month was exactly the same motivation as is held by the ArsDigita Foundation - to make the ACS toolkit available for not-for-profits who can't afford Oracle but who want to build significant websites.  It has been only recently that I've considered using OpenACS for client sites.

So hearing that aD shares my goal of making it possible for non-profits to build complex websites without breaking the bank also motivates me.  Very much.

Some background - I served on the Board of Directors of Portland Audubon, the second largest chapter of the National Audubon Society for over twelve years.  I also donate one to two months of my time nearly every year as a field biologist for HawkWatch, Int'l for the aforementioned Nevada gig, and have been on the Steering Committee of Partners in Flight's OR/WA chapter as well.

Conservation is in my blood, as is service to non-profits.  OpenACS, whether on Postgres or InterBase, will enable savvy non-profits to put  together great sites (and savviness is much easier to come by than money in grass roots organizations like those I work with).

I'll echo Ben's comments regarding 4.0. it will be a great improvement, and porting it will be a lot of work.

Worthwhile work!

Great news, Ben.

Sebastian will be back online this week, and together we'll begin charting a course that will bring the ACS "classic" and OpenACS closer together.
My long-term goal is to have a single codebase. [gasp..]

I look forward to working with everyone in the community. (Remember -- this should be fun.)

As an aside, http://cvs.arsdigita.com is now open for browsing.  Anon checkouts should be operational later in the week.

Enjoy.

I've been thinking about it for a bit since my last post, and I'm not exactly clear on what another community space would add. How would it compliment the OpenACS site? Who would the target audience be? What resources will be provided? And what are the concrete goals? While I'm really for the idea of evangelizing OpenACS for non-profits, I suspect that could be accomplished by creating a bboard category and a few articles for the existing OpenACS site.

Not-for-profits tend to be able to scare up smart folks, at least larger ones like Portland Audubon, but folks on the board and staff tend to be someone unknowledgable of computer technology.  The Portland Audubon board has three fine and intellegent biologists on it - one ran the Endangered Species program of the USF&W under Carter, another the USF&W's Region 1 (the PNW), and another all USF&W refuges in California and Nevada.  There are also vets, lawyers, accountants etc.

These people could really use some background material on just what kind of stuff a community-oriented web site could bring to the table.  A directory of good non-profit sites (not restricted to those implemented by variants of the ACS) would be really useful as it would  give folks like this targets to strive towards.

Such a resource could give weight to the claims made by members or fellow staff/board members about just what can be done at reasonable price, by providing ammunition for use on technophobic skeptics.

So I think the aD Foundation has a real chance to build THE prime web-based resource on web technology for non-profits, above and beyond  simple issues related to using the ACS to build a web presence.

But a lot of grass-roots not for profits, larger ones, at least, also have people they can draw on from the community if they have some idea  as to what they want to do.  And more importantly can raise grant money for projects if they can clearly articulate what it is they want  to do.  A resource that gives examples of good non-profit websites and clearly explains how technology like a nearly bug-free (ahem) toolkit like the ACS can be used to build such sites at reasonable cost or with reasonable amounts of skilled volunteer labor would help them tap into both resources.

we are starting a company in new york city called musea
technologies whose purpose will be to provide non-profits with
effective open source software solutions along with the technical
expertise they need to implement their web presence and
improve their IT.  clearly, openacs is the answer for most of their
problems.  you're all probably more familiar with the reason than
i am, so i won't waste anytime listing them for you.

however, after studying some of the issues that various
non-profits have with their IT, we realized the most helpful
service we could provide is not an internet presence but cheap,
reliable, scalable, etc. software that would improve their
efficiency at REASONABLE costs.  in short words, they need an
intranet solution designed for non-profits.

Unfortunately, the market is dominated by expensive bloatware.
One
glaring example is Blackbaud, "the Cadillac of donor software".
Zillions
of features, mostly unused, and a price tag of $10,000 for 2-4
users, $18,000 for 8-10 users, then $5000 after that for every 5
more you add.
That's not counting the NT/Novell server and network, nor the
$3,000 for
the training tutorial CDs.  And those guys sell a _lot_, because
they're
some of the only robust, scalable, reliable software out there.

acs includes all the basic components to build a similar system,
and with openacs we get postgresql, a great database.  the
intranet modules, customer relationship module, contacts,
bookmark sharing, file sharing, etc. all can be refined to provide
a package that meets all the needs of non-profits.  if they have
tech people, then all they need is a download.  if they don't have
an tech infrastructure, there are plenty of acs consultants out
there that can help them.

so now that i've filled a good amount of space and thrown this
idea out there, i'm interested in:
• what you guys think
• how many people are interested in being involved in this
• what other ideas you guys might have

as i said, i'd be more than happy to host a development website
to non-profit acs programmers.  uh, lemme rephrase that.  acs
programmers that want to help non-profits.  and i'd be happy to
implement all the ideas that don and michael were throwing
around.  it could be a companion or a compliment to
openacs.org if that was best.

as a company, our long-term goal is to have a non-profit
organization be in charge of maintaining & improving the free
software, as is done with many open-source systems.  (for now,
to minimize accounting hassle, we're incorporating normally).

please email me directly or contribute to this thread!!!

talli
mailto:talli@panix.com

When I left Portland Audubon, they were about to spend close to $30K on such software, hardware and training.  Long story involving in-house work that wasn't sufficient, a new executive director convinced he knew more about computer technology than me, a good salesperson, etc.  Bottom line was that the donor-tracking stuff's fine (though expensive) at a general level, but that all the stuff the various departments (education, wildlife rehab, conservation, programs /field trips/tours) were looking for never got done and probably never will.  Since the new database tools are closed-source and proprietary,  extending them in such ways isn't possible.

My proposal had been to do a system tailored to National Audubon chapters (of which there are hundreds), which we could then make available along with training, etc charging only for our actual expenses.  Seemed like a reasonable leadership role for the second largest chapter in the country to take.  But my proposal was met with blank stares, oh well.

But I've been playing with the idea of using OpenACS to take another run at the Society, because as you say it does provide the basic tools  that are needed...