[Linux-aus] MemberDB is a great short term solution, but we need a broader rethink

[Kathy Reid]

Thanks Tim for the roundup.

I think our first step here should be identifying, then consolidating 
and (with Council's input of course), prioritising and weighting the 
requirements. While the most prominent requirements are likely going to 
be around managing memberships for Linux Australia, if we think forward 
to where LA might be in five years, this will also give rise to 
requirements for things like event handling and possibly tracking things 
like policy submissions.

Then, we should rate each contender against weighted requirements to see 
what the best candidates are.

Does this sound like a good way forward?

Kind regards,
Kathy


On 1/02/2015 2:38 AM, Tim Ansell wrote:
> Just getting through backlog of emails and discovered that AJ had also 
> suggested two other alternatives to ZooKeepr in another thread (I'm 
> excluding the third non-FOSS option).
>
> For completeness, the list of FOSS conference management systems which 
> *might* be alternatives for ZooKeepr are;
>
>  * http://eldarion.com/symposion/ - used by PyCon US, ApacheCon
>  * https://launchpad.net/summit - used by Canonical, Linaro, DebConf
>  * http://pentabarf.org/Main_Page - (formerly?) used by CCC, 
> FOSDEM, DebConf
>
> Before LCA should even consider changing, someone actually needs to do 
> the legwork to find out all of the following;
>  * if the systems have the features needed by LCA (or other LA 
> conferences) and how much effort would be needed to add the missing 
> features,
>  * if the projects are under active development (and how does that 
> development compare to ZooKeepr),
>  * if the projects are in any better state than Zookeepr
>  * are there any experts we can lean on when we need XXX changes 5 
> minutes before LCA starts,
>
> I'm **not** volunteering to do that.
>
> Tim 'mithro' Ansell
>
> On 1 February 2015 at 02:11, Tim Ansell <mithro at mithis.com 
> <mailto:mithro at mithis.com>> wrote:
>
>     As Stewart mentioned, rewriting from scratch takes a lot of extra
>     effort and I don't think LA has the resources for that type of
>     task. There is a lot more to a conference management system then
>     it first seems like. Plus anything which deals with billing gets
>     complicated fast (writing a billing system seems to be a right of
>     passage for become a real "grumpy old programmer" :).
>
>     If people really do want to replace ZooKeepr (which I'm not sure
>     is *actually* the case) its worth checking out Symposion used by
>     PyCon US and other conferences (http://eldarion.com/symposion/)
>     and contributing to that. The big problem with Symposion is that
>     it has been highly North America focused and hence probably
>     missing things needed by an Australian conference.
>
>     Tim 'mithro' Ansell
>
>
>     On 28 January 2015 at 13:52, Stewart Smith
>     <stewart at flamingspork.com <mailto:stewart at flamingspork.com>> wrote:
>
>         Michael Cordover <la at mjec.net <mailto:la at mjec.net>> writes:
>         > On 16 January 2015 at 14:39, Kathy Reid
>         <kathy at kathyreid.id.au <mailto:kathy at kathyreid.id.au>> wrote:
>         >> While this is a great short term solution, I think we
>         should (in parallel)
>         >> discuss and debate a MemberDB replacement, likely something
>         like CiviCRM.
>         >> This is a bit more work and effort, but I think would have
>         good long term
>         >> returns, and address the pressing need for targeted member
>         communications.
>         >
>         > On this, I think it would be useful to do some project
>         scoping - not
>         > just around membership, but around all of the web-based
>         systems we are
>         > thining of upgrading. I know there's also been talk of a
>         zookeepr
>         > upgrade/rewrite. There are also probably other needs we
>         should be
>         > considering: other LA events, potential lobbying/other LA
>         activities,
>         > grants, Mailman 3 integration, Hurd compatibility etc etc etc.
>         >
>         > The first step here would be wishlisting *everything*, and then
>         > scoping it down into actual projects, then commencing work.
>         Strategic
>         > planning, yo.
>
>         The important thing to keep in mind is that this is all volunteer
>         work. Zookeepr has been by volunteers from 2007 to get to
>         where it is
>         today.
>
>         It would be a big judgement call to do a rewrite rather than
>         incremental
>         change - a lot of effort goes into getting all the basics again,
>         something that occured about 3 times before we used Zookeepr
>         for the
>         second time.
>
>         --
>         Stewart Smith
>
>         _______________________________________________
>         linux-aus mailing list
>         linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au <mailto:linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au>
>         http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>
>
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/attachments/20150201/3c189a55/attachment-0001.html>