Tendenci Transformation – The Right Choices for the Future

We’ve had a lot of crucial conversations lately about decisions that we made between 2006 and 2010. Yup, really. We are explaining now about how we are possibly too far ahead of the curve and why if you give it a bit of time, it will make you look like a rock-star.

MobileGeddon being a great example of how our early adopters are benefiting the absolute most!

 

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Python for the Win!

Source: Python is Now the Most Popular Introductory Teaching Language at Top U.S. Universities

We started using Python, the programming language named after Monty Python, in 2004 if not earlier. We first tested Pinax in 2008 if not earlier under J who was running our programming team.

We used Python extensively in our old environment to move files and push out content to our sites. Tasks that are now done by Puppet and Chef and Docker-Compose. We rolled our own using Python on Windows.

So for the curious, that explains why we have this huge depth of knowledge on Python programming dating back to when nobody heard of it. We’ve had to train numerous graduates of Tech, UofH, Aggies, Rice, Penn State, etc, what Python even was!

But that is all ancient history. Why? Because Python is now number 1!

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It’s hard to predict the future. We started out writing our own compete web framework in ASP. We were too early in 2001. PHP soon arrived and, being basically identical but open source, the outcome was PHP won. It should have, and did, win. We were too early. But with timing there is also a bit of luck.

I’ll do another post about GIS and mapping and why our move to strictly Postgres with GIS enabled is working out so well. Another post. And I’ll edit this one with links soon. Just needed to get the content out.

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Bootstrap3. – Because we know that we take gambles on technology and they have an impact. On you. And that is serious business. We take it seriously as evidenced by our decision to shut down Windows in line with Microsoft’s EOL policies. These are hard choices. Crucial Conversations. We’re the messenger.

And we CARE about YOU. Our clients. The future is bright. We picked our technology future amazingly well. Too well, so now perhaps our problems is more one of resources. And we’ll work through that.

Thank you. If I can leave you with one thought – it is this. THANK YOU! For those who stuck with us, WOW, um… our position for search and the future is crazy good. Open Source means freedom. Results mean donations and sales. Software means sustainable business models.

We appreciate you. Yes closure for some was hard. We wish you the best. We appreciated your time with us while it lasted longer than a Honda. As some depart and some charge forward, I’m especially excited about those who chose to charge forward.

We, you and us, we didn’t “guess” right. We did our homework and validation came ironically on April 21, the same day mobilegeddon hit and our Tendenci 6 clients jumped up in the search rankings. Luck? Hard work? I don’t know.

What do I know? I know how to serve. I serve y’all.

#peace

Ed

 

What NPO Software Success Really Looks Like

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This image came up as a topic of conversation in a meeting we had this morning and I wanted to share it. It is a pretty accurate description of the open source rewrite of Tendenci from the ground up over the last four years. And I’m pretty excited about the software moving away from the squiggly part on the right in this image from Henry Bloget’s blog post.

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What People Think Success Looks Like Vs. What It Really Looks Like

Oh don’t worry, we’ll attack new challenges and make new squiggles which will make people think we are off track, or losing it, or “freak them out” as we get to the end of a road and go “oooops, that didn’t work.” But now we know that didn’t work.

It also reminded me of some of Hugh’s quotes in his book Not Sucking that I have always liked. For example:

THERE IS NO SECRET SAUCE

WORK HARD. LIVE QUIETLY. BE FRUGAL. SIMPLIFY. NEVER COMPLAIN. CONSTANTLY ELEVATE YOUR CRAFT.

Sure, a bit of talent and good for­tune comes in handy. It’s nice that you could draw bet­ter than any other kid in your small town, or that your parents had the money to afford ten­nis les­sons after class.

But that just gets you to the star­ting line. The actual race is what hap­pens after that, day in, day out, for many years to come.

And the ones who win, the ones who really ele­vate their craft, are gene­rally the ones who work the har­dest. Life is unfair.

People underestimate the power of hard work. I like that he simplifies it all into Creativity, Mastery and Meaning. He doesn’t lie to you about a four hour work week, or tell you you have to wear Gucci to be happy, he doesn’t even list being happy as a goal. Meaning, Mastery and Creativity are how you don’t suck. Being happy is what happens when you don’t suck. But not always, because it’s hard work.

The best way to not suck is to MASTER something use­ful. Obvious, yes?

Then he drops the story of Jiro on me. (my commentary is below this long excerpt from Hugh’s post).

The thing is, I know TONS of super suc­cess­ful peo­ple, but none of them fit this extreme, celeb-lottery-winner-Reality-TV model. Some of them are actually pretty boring, to be honest. But they lead happy, friendly lives and do VERY well career-wise.

THAT is what most suc­cess looks like, if you think about it. The stuff on TV or in the movies just isn’t REAL enough for us to learn that much use­ful stuff.

So I was thin­king about this again, recently, HARD.

What model would work for folk like you and me? A model that didn’t mean you had to sell your soul to Wall Street, Holly­wood, Washing­ton or the tabloids? A suc­cess model that doesn’t rely solely on the unli­ke­lihood of outra­geously good for­tune or acts of evil?

Then quite by chance, I saw a great docu­men­tary recently: “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”, a film about the world’s grea­test sushi mas­ter, and a light ­bulb EXPLODED in my head.

Our man, 85-year-old Jiro Ono is the world’s grea­test sushi chef– the only sushi mas­ter to ever have been awar­ded three Miche­lin stars. He’s also the oldest per­son to have ever been a reci­pient of that award.

The thing is, he doesn’t have a lot of money or own a fleet of trendy res­tau­rants in all the world’s capi­tals, a-la Wolf­gang Puck. No syn­di­ca­ted TV shows, celebrity-chef book deals or TV talk-show cir­cuits, either.

He just has just a small, plain, dull, ordi­nary-looking, low-key sushi bar with ten seats in the base­ment of a Tokyo office buil­ding, near the sub­way, the kind of non­desc­ript place you’d pro­bably just walk by without stop­ping, if you saw it. Ten seats! Yet he REALLY IS the best in the world at what he does.

Jiro works seven days a week, over 350 days a year (he hates taking vaca­tion), ser­ves sushi and sashimi to peo­ple in very small num­bers, and THAT’S IT. Just sushi. No salad, no appe­ti­zers, no deserts.

Like I said, JUST SUSHI. And by stic­king to this mini­ma­list, bare-bones for­mula, he’s become the best in the world.

A tiny little sushi bar in some ran­dom sub­way sta­tion. Yet peo­ple wait in line, peo­ple book a stool at his sushi bar as much as a year in advance, at pri­ces star­ting around $600 a head. Peo­ple have been known to fly all the way from Ame­rica or Europe, just to expe­rience a 30-minute meal. In an office basement!

I read that and felt humbled. And befuddled. And yes perhaps a bit justified.

I’m also really happy to know others are like me. I don’t particularly consider myself successful but I expect it will all work out. I have many blessings and I work with great people. I have a wonderful family. I’ve also had my share of loss and plenty of criticism, which I have learned comes with the role of CEO even for a small company (note: there are no books on how to be a CEO. You just do your damndest to learn fast!)

Hugh MacLeod

Back to Jiro. I get him. For me, I have been obsessing about one single software product called Tendenci built specifically for associations and non-profits for 13 years now. I’ve had a lot of help. I’ve never wavered nor lost the passion to keep improving it. I’m truly obsessed with making software in a way that makes our CLIENTS successful.

I started it in 2001, (the tech bubble had burst) on the premise, after reading hundreds of marketing books that clients who made money off of your software wouldn’t leave you. That they might forgive a missed deadline, but they would not forgive a security breach. That they wanted the freedom to leave at any time. So all of our clients were sold month to month, export your data and leave whenever you want. (this was before open source was an option and before PHP was around.)

What started on the Microsoft platform is now rewritten by a a great team of programmers who work here, and outsourcers, and hopefully more and more by people in the community. It is now Django/Python/Postgres and Ubuntu. We are working hard, and I am obsessing on adding donor management that integrates with Salesforce Foundation’s free licenses for non-profits. I’m completely obsessed with giving NPOs an alternative – that they can succeed on both bottom lines, financial and causes, and put more of their money and time towards the cause instead of spending 10k/user for Raiser’s Edge.

Can a 13 year old product built on Django give NPOs a real alternative to Raiser’s Edge and Blackbaud? And can it be an OPEN SOURCE product that you can integrate, extend, and experience with no vendor lock in at all? The odds are against me. And there are only 10 stools. And my obsession with achieving this success grows stronger every day, and it is not because I know anyone at Blackbaud.

I’m obsessed with collaboratively building Tendenci not because of what the software itself can do. I’m obsessed and seeking mastery because of what global-non-profits can do with the first open source Python software built specifically for them.  That is my passion.

 

 

 

 

Tendenci Open Source Donor Management Roadmap

Tendenci has come a long way since it was started in 2001. I didn’t have a choice back then so thus began (at the time – we are now open source) a proprietary system. But we work mostly with Associations and Non Profits. They/You (and I can attest first hand after volunteering with several nonprofits over the years) don’t want proprietary – you want OPEN SOURCE!

So what is our roadmap for Tendenci, now completely open source, for donor management?

I have to say we weren’t feeling the urgency on the donor management part until recently. Why? Because Blackbaud (Nasdaq BLKB) acquired Convio and removed the only viable option. And now they are shutting down Common Ground. Not cool. (Side bar: Word is Convio used to advertise “Common Ground, because we’re not Raiser’s Edge.” If that is true or not, it’s still funny and was always a comment that came up at NTEN or Techsoup meetings over the years.)

Tendenci is written in Django and Python and will remain open source. We are adding a basic GPL CRM with modifications for donor management first. More importantly we are integrating Tendenci with the Salesforce Foundation and the Non-Profit Starter pack through their open source connectors and well documented API.

The team at Tendenci is working feverishly to get full Tendenci-Salesforce integration done because we need it too!

We are prepared and qualified. We have a former employee who now works at Salesforce, we use Salesforce ourselves, and quite frankly they seem to care about the non-profit world. We at Schipul are “all in” as they say as are Tendenci powers the majority of our clients are non-profits.

What can you do now to get ready?

If you want to get ready to fully integrate your Tendenci site, hosted with us or self hosted with the open source community version, a good jumping off point would be to read up on the great work the Salesforce Foundation does for Non Profits. Sign up with the Foundation to get your free licenses even if you just want to play around with it.

I’ll try to keep everyone more up to speed on our roadmap, it’s been a crazy year. But make no mistake, we are building an open system that will reduce the costs of advocacy and non-profit associations and foundations by a factor of 10 compared to Raiser’s Edge. There is hope. (Programmer? – join us on github! http://github.com/tendenci/tendenci ) And in case you can’t tell, I’m excited about this!

Quack! Ducks race for non-profits

This past Sunday marked the 4th Annual Silicon Valley Duck Race. It’s a fun event held in Vasona Lake Park in Los Gatos, CA where attendees get to sponsor an iconic rubber ducky as it floats down the lake. Ducks are sponsored for $5 a piece, and sponsors can win great prizes if their duck is picked across the finish line – anything from a Tahoe vacation to a gardening gift basket. There’s even a chance to win a million dollars! Sadly, none of my ducks were the lucky millionaire ones. That’s why I’m still here to write you this blog post.

The Silicon Valley Duck Race is not just an opportunity to have fun, it’s also a chance to do good. The event is coordinated on by the JewishFamily Services of Silicon Valley, but benefits a total of seventeen different non-profits and charities in the area. Typically the race sells out and all 15,000 ducks in the race are sponsored before start, but this year sales were sluggish. Leading up to race day only about 11,000 had been sold – a strong showing but another example for non-profits how overall giving is down. Media attention surrounding the low sales plus a gorgeous Sunday led to a last-minute push for a total of 13,502 ducks sponsored.

This ducky is usually on top of the San Jose Children's Discovery Museum

It was my first time at the duck race, and I really enjoyed it! I was most surprised to see the giant duck that resides at the top of the San Jose Children’s Discovery Museum down at ground level. When I was first exploring downtown San Jose, I noticed this giant duck on top of a building and couldn’t imagine what for. Then it dawned on me – that had to be the Children’s Museum! It was really cool to see it up close. The duck race was such a fun event, and made all the better by the non-profit support. Plus a day in the California sunshine didn’t hurt either. I’m already looking forward to next year! Photos  from the Silicon Valley Duck Race are online at Schipul.com and you can watch the duck launch too!

Shade of Hope Helps Make Houses Homes

Blinds.com Hosts “Shade of Hope” Fundraiser for the Houston Furniture Bank from Schipul – The Web Marketing Co. on Vimeo.

Coffee table. Bed. Plates. Forks. Chairs. A lamp. Individually, they’re just items on a list of things found in a house. Collectively these items represent what makes a house a home, and when simply having a roof is your main priority, what to put under it takes the backseat.   Shade of Hope is putting the spotlight on these details.

About Shade of Hope and The Furniture Bank of Houston

Blinds.com and Houston Furniture Bank Leadership TeamsShade of Hope is a community arts affair created to help raise money and awareness for   The Furniture Bank of Houston.   The name sounds stately and polished, but the Furniture Bank is modest warehouse tucked away in Houston’s Third Ward, manned by a small group of loving volunteers.

Sunday, July 18, the public will have an opportunity to see the space for themselves during the kick-off event for Shade of Hope. Artists will be on-site creating the artwork to be featured in the upcoming   Furniture, Arts and Decor Expo – Show Your heART Houston, which also benefits The Furniture Bank.

Artist + Katie Sign First Canvas for Shade of Hope

True to it’s name, artists for the event will use shades donated by Blinds.com as canvas for their artwork. We attended the artist breakfast meeting at Blinds.com and even had an opportunity to sign the first shade commemorating the event.

The Furniture Bank welcomes donations of furniture and home appliances. Anyone interested in participating or donating to Shade of Hope or the Furniture Bank can contact Esther Steinfeld of Blinds.com.

We Saw a Lady Walking a Cheetah

Of all the things I imagined seeing this weekend, a   cheetah on a leash taking a leisurely stroll through the Houston Zoo was NOT on the list. But that’s the kind of thing that happens during Photo Day at the Houston Zoo.

Photo Day is a series of 6 outings during which photographers and photography enthusiasts can visit the Houston Zoo and take pictures of the animals. Fellow Schipulite Derek Key (@dereskey) and I had the opportunity to attend Saturday’s photo day…and that’s how we saw the cheetah.

Our Day…in Photos

The animals are likely to be active during the earliest part of the day, especially in the summer…in Houston. So for Photo Day, the zoo opens two hours early (at 7am) and lets photo enthusiasts catch the early risers. I’ve been to the Houston   Zoo countless times, but this is the first time I saw so many of the big cats and rare birds.

The lions roamed their pen long enough for photo ops…

We watched the reptiles have breakfast, which is creepy and AWESOME

We found out what a Cassowary is…

and finally, we discovered that the meerkats draw quite a crowd!

Have an Awesome Time AND Help the Zoo

Since the Houston Zoo is a non-profit organization it relies heavily on membership and attendance for support. While Photo Day is open to both the public and zoo membership holders, the   zoo features   special events   just for members, including Zoobilee and special Member Mornings.

In addition to cool member activities, the zoo is also involved in conservation efforts like the Lone Star State Projects and fundraising to for treatments that help prevent elephant herpes.

Be sure to check out the Houston Zoo’s Flickr photo stream, and upload photos of your zoo visits!

Gleeking for a Good Cause

For the second year in a row, I am on the Host Committee for DiverseWorks’ Luck of the Draw Summer Auction. This is one of DW’s biggest events of the year, and one of the quirkier and memorable events in Houston each year. The concept is simple. DW asks artists from around the country to donate small works of art that are sold throughout the evening. Numbers are then drawn to determine who gets first crack at the 200+ pieces. As this is a DiverseWorks event, you can expect a great crowd, food and libations. And, to get you properly Gleeful, they’ve invited the choir from  Houston School for the Performing and Visual Arts to perform at the event.

Art Change tickets start $100 (the price goes to $125 if you purchase after June 1.), but you can guarantee a Top 20 position for $250 (NOTE: Top 5 tickets costing $500 have sold out.) Regardless of what ticket you purchase, you’re getting a piece of art at a great price. Luck of the Draw is great because it introduces you to art collection in a fun and exciting way.  Not interested in owning a unique piece of art? No problem, you can still be part of the fun for $25.

To purchase tickets: Contact Tracey Morton at tracey@diverseworks.org or call 713-223-8346.

Now, if you can’t wait to get your artsy Glee action on, DiverseWorks is hosting a Glee Season Finale Watch Party at Lucky’s Pub on Tuesday, May 25 at 7:30 PM.