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

[Tim Ansell]

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> 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>
> wrote:
>
>> Michael Cordover <la at mjec.net> writes:
>> > On 16 January 2015 at 14:39, Kathy Reid <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
>>
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>>
>>
>
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