[Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member

[Hugh Blemings]

Hi AJ, All,

Thanks for your considered reply AJ.  What follows is a bit of a combo 
of attempt to respond and open letter, please bear with me.

I've had a busy few weeks and while I'm aware there were some 
outstanding questions from your earlier emails, I just haven't had the 
bandwidth sorry.

You raise some fair questions about the choice of membership management 
platform, in particular going for FOSS alternatives versus something 
FOSS+paid for or whatever combination CivCRM might be seen to represent.

I had understood that this had been canvassed by the Membership 
Committee and while I recognise Kathy may have a preference for CiviCRM, 
yours is the first suggestion I've had that she has allowed this 
preference to overshadow a proper evaluation process.  I'll leave it to 
her to comment further on that - not I hasten to add because I'm cranky 
about what you've said :)

Candidly - would love to have you contribute if you've the bandwidth - 
I'd reached out once or twice and not heard from you so assumed you were 
frantic - which is ok :)  It'd be wonderful to have your expertise and 
energy back in Council or wherever you feel fit to contribute.

The tricky bit with this will always be whether we can have tools that 
are truly maintainable in the long term versus varying degrees of 
commercial offerings. While in some ways unfortunate, the move to Xero 
does seem to have paid other dividends, but perhaps this could have been 
accomplished with Libre tools as well ?

I'd, truly, love to be proven wrong in this, but given the difficulties 
we face as an organisation just keeping what we have ticking over with 
stretched but capable volunteers I'm frankly unsure where we go in the 
pay versus roll your own equation - I trust others smarter than I to 
research, report and implement.

I'm going to suggest something a little radical perhaps too - is it 
worth convening an actual real-time conversation (say teleconference) to 
kick some of these things over amongst interested folk.  Email can at 
times be a blunt instrument ?

Cheers,
Hugh