As the CEO of Tendenci, the company and the software – I apologize for my lack of communication to you. I apologize to you -our long-time clients and our our new clients. I apologize to the developers who have deployed Tendenci on your own servers with little or no documentation and not posting public developer training.
I have been struggling for words on how to restart the dialog. Lucky for you I found a post that articulates what I have been wanting to say but lacked the words. My message to you is quite simply:
- I respect you
- I understand you
- I hope you forgive me (OK, I flipped this one around from “I forgive you” to be reflective of our situation at Tendenci.)
Your voice matters to me very much and quite frankly I haven’t kept up communication. Instead I have let the media, public, private and social – dictate the dialog. I know better.
I can start the dialog by dispelling a few rumors right away with some clarity to questions I have (actually) been asked.
- No I’m not moving to LA. I just fly a lot. And…. it wasn’t LA anyway….
- Yes I love San Francisco and Houston both. (not sure about LA #heh)
- Yes I still love Houston more. And yes the Bay Area can also be awesome.
- Yes, there will be more changes at Tendenci the company and with the pending release of Tendenci 6.
- No I won’t do any more phone interviews with reporters – only email or recorded so I don’t get selectively quoted.
- Yes YOUR software is open source. You can download it here https://github.com/tendenci/
- No we aren’t going out of business. Been at it 17 years. Still here. Still serving my clients. Now expanding Tendenci to build a global legacy that is better than the proprietary vendors like Blackbaud while we still make a profit and grow. What else does anyone recommend I do that helps my clients the most? (Feel free to comment. But make no mistake, the tipping point is near. Open Source will win. Why should that be different for non-profits and association management software needs?)
- Yes we are restructuring and that includes costs that go along with it. We’ve had some ups and downs and yes we are downsizing our offices in Houston and being inclusive of more remote team members.
- True rumor – NO, Tendenci 5 does NOT have all of the functionality of Tendenci 4. Nor the other way around. They are different. It’s like going from a PC to a Mac. It’s different. Don’t convert if it isn’t for you yet.
- And number 10….. yes, apparently people still actually read the paper. Didn’t realize I was newsworthy. Not sure if that is good or not. I just want to build Tendenci to “Connect and Organize the World’s People. Do Good.” Sorry if I messed up the PR part by having my head down laser focused on Tendenci.
I deleted the rest of this blog post to keep it short. Consider it my own test to myself to keep the dialog going. And I am committed to keeping open communication. Links and systems solutions in the next few posts.
Thank you,
Ed
PS. Tendenci is all about YOU! I get that. I deeply respect that. #candid #honest #servant
So, is there a side by side of the differences between T4 & T5 to help us decide if we’re ready to change?
And no fair giving me a math questions as a security check. 🙂
Becci – what a great idea! Currently I can’t say that there is a good T4/T5 comparison. I can make excuses like “we are working to x” but I think your point is valid and I need to create one.
Here is an example. I know we need to add back the newsletter functionality which doesn’t exist in Tendenci 5. This is because a small subset of users were abusing it which resulted in our mail servers getting blocked. This of course caused problems for everybody!
Now we have options like a client can pay for their own mailgun account and the integration is a relay which is much simpler than an API. So we are adding it back. But if you converted now you wouldn’t have the newsletter generator.
On the other hand a new client wouldn’t know it ever existed and they don’t miss it. They like all of the other ridiculously huge amounts of functionality in Tendenci. And will love it when they get a new newsletter generator.
The downside to this process is the farther Tendenci 4 (windows) clients get behind the harder it is to maintain conversion scripts and we are closing in on a point where I just have to let go of the past once Microsoft declares “End of Life” for the technology they are on. For some older clients this is as soon as next August. (yes we will communicate that.)