Tendenci Archives - Page 3 of 4 - Tendenci

We are making the jump – phone system in the cloud.

Our new phone system is more dynamic and mobile. We also love to hear your voices and this system will allow for clearer transmissions.

We’ll be switching over phone systems this weekend.

If you have any trouble reaching us this weekend or early next week, please send us an email at support@tendenci.com

Have suggestions for new modules?
Have questions on setup?

Check out our new community forum: http://community.tendenci.com/

Connect with Team Tendenci and the Tendenci community.

2013-04-052013-06-10

What NPO Software Success Really Looks Like

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.

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!)

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.

2013-04-052013-06-10

PyCon US 2013 – Python Conference in Santa Clara, Californa

[![image][audience]][audience-link]
[Photo by Eloy Zuniga Jr.][audience-link]

### You’d like it

For those of you who love to tinker with things or reverse engineer them (destroy them) to figure out how they work, [this is your place][pycon-url].

It’s always great to see the latest and greatest being invented by **2500** of your closest friends. When services and features are extremely undervalued and success is at it’s infancy.

Have doubts about the size of this annual event? [Check out the sponsors][sponsors].

I’ve been a programmer now for more than 10 years and a Python developer for over 3 and I can sincerely say I may never grow old of this stuff. It keeps me young, can I say that? Just did.

### What you’ll see and maybe learn

What to expect when your “[Excepting][exceptions],” little bit of nerd humour there, don’t mind if I do. But seriously, what should you expect if you come on down?

[![image][photo-guido]][guido]
[Photo by Ed Schipul][guido]

1. Well we have lightning talks with rapping programmers. [Listen to this intro][lightning-talks].

2. We have the benevolent dictator which only [speaks genius][keynote]. One of these days I’ll be able to understand his entire talk. AKA the creator of Python.

3. [The creator][keynote2] of the [Raspberry Pi][raspberry-pi]. A less-expensive computer that’s providing for those on the other side of the digital divide.

4. People sporting the latest technology such as [Teslas][tesla] and [Google Glasses][glass]. Maybe the car had more to do with the fact we were in California.

[![image][photo-tesla]][tesla]
[Photo by Ed Schipul][tesla]

### Tell me more about these “Lightning Talks”
Anyone attending PyCon can have 5 minutes to talk about anything that is *remotely* associated to Python. Bright minds are sitting in the audience, they could be sitting next to you … you could be one. So why not let them speak.

For 5 minutes you can talk to one of the widest Python audiences you’ll probably ever encounter. Talk about a pet project, do a little venting, bring a community together and promote your conference.

Just be careful, developers tend to be highly sensitive to the ole sales-pitch.

### See you next year

We had a great time — I hope this is obvious — we did a lot of learning, and we hope to see you next year.

[![image][photo-group]][group]
[Photo by Ed Schipul][group]

### References

1. [Full List of PyCon US 2013 Videos][pycon-videos]
2. [Photos taken by Ed Schipul][pycon-photos]
3. [PyCon 2011 Blog Post][pycon-2011-blogpost]

[pycon-videos]: http://pyvideo.org/category/33/pycon-us-2013 “PyCon US 2013 Videos”
[pycon-photos]: https://www.tendenci.com/photos/set/58/ “PyCon US 2013 Photos”
[pycon-2011-blogpost]: https://blog.tendenci.com/pycon-2011/ “Pycon US 2011 Blogpost”
[lightning-talks]: http://pyvideo.org/video/1853/friday-evening-lightning-talks “Lightning Talks”
[exceptions]: http://docs.python.org/3.3/tutorial/errors.html “Errors and Exceptions”
[keynote]: http://pyvideo.org/video/1667/keynote-1 “Keynote Guid Van Rossum”
[keynote2]: http://pyvideo.org/video/1668/keynote-2 “Keynote Eben Upton”
[raspberry-pi]: http://www.raspberrypi.org/ “Raspberry Pi”
[audience]: http://distilleryimage2.s3.amazonaws.com/fc91835c8d8e11e2beb722000a9f3ce2_7.jpg “PyCon US 2013 Audience”
[audience-link]: http://instagram.com/p/W4pwjGHu4G/
[guido]: https://www.tendenci.com/photos/1604/in/58/
[photo-guido]: https://www.tendenci.com/photos/1604/640×360/
[sponsors]: https://us.pycon.org/2013/sponsors/
[pycon-url]: https://us.pycon.org/2013/
[tesla]: https://www.tendenci.com/photos/1614/in/58/
[photo-tesla]: https://www.tendenci.com/photos/1614/640×360/
[glass]: https://www.google.com/glass/start/how-it-feels/
[group]: https://www.tendenci.com/photos/1599/in/58/
[photo-group]: https://www.tendenci.com/photos/1599/640×360/

2013-01-232013-06-10

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!

Overview of the Nonprofit Starter Pack from Salesforce.com Foundation

Advocacy in the Cloud from Salesforce.com Foundation

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!

2012-11-302013-06-10

Tendenci Accounting and Billing Changes to Help Us Better Serve You

Dear clients – know that we love you and are proud to serve you. And I need your help. We have to make a few billing changes.

In 2013, we are making a few billing automation changes and adding fees for clients that pay late or require more paperwork so everyone else doesn’t have to pay more to cover that tiny subset. In short:

If you know what the amount is going to be, like Tendenci Software Fees, or a monthly retainer, we need it set up recurring and automatic like your cell phone, water bill, car payment, etc… This is standard stuff for all of us.
If it is something you would want to review, like variable charges for graphics, you will need to login to a portal and review your invoices for payment. We recommend putting a reminder on your calendar to simply check the portal once a month just in case Intuit’s monthly reminder emails don’t make it through.
For the tiny fraction of clients who slow pay, to be fair to our other clients, we are implementing processing and late fees.

We are software developers, marketing consultants, designers, strategists, photographers and many other things. What we are not is accountants. We want to focus on improving your software and service. These minor changes make life more efficient for everyone. And it is the ethical thing to do as only the ones who pay late will see any late fees.

How much do I appreciate y’all? A LOT! Without you there is no Schipul Company and no Tendenci software to support the non-profit (and sometimes for profit) communities. And I’m so proud of the team and grateful to our clients that we were able to publish Tendenci 5.0 fully open-source. Obviously I was inspired by Matt and Dries’ business models at their talk at SchipulCon 2011. They both have great open source products and well run companies with fully automated billing. Schipul and Tendenci need to catch up and do the same thing to continue supporting our now open source product.

The email below is going out to our billing contacts today. It’s the stuff our lawyers make us say to tell you about official changes in our billing and contracts. We want you happy. If you would like to contact me directly my email is eschipul at the domain name “schipul.com”

Sincerely,

Ed Schipul, CEO

LAWYERLY STUFF BELOW

Important Changes Coming to Schipul’s Billing Process in 2013

We’re Going Paperless!

In order to spend more time serving our clients – and less time on paperwork for us and for you – we are upgrading our current accounting system. In 2013, we are moving away from paper invoices and implementing automated billing procedures for all clients. This change will ensure that your account remains current by eliminating the unpredictability of the postal service in delivering mailed invoices and checks in a timely manner. We will be working hard over the next few weeks to get all of our clients converted to the new system.

Visit our blog to read more on these changes from our CEO Ed Schipul:
https://blog.tendenci.com/tendenci-accounting-and-billing-changes-to-help/

Automated Monthly Payments

Monthly software charges will be the first to convert to the new system. Instead of receiving a paper invoice each month, your credit card will be automatically charged for the standard amount of your retainer and software fees. An emailed receipt will be generated each time a payment is made to your account for your records.

Variable Support Charges

At this time, support charges outside of your retainer and software fees will still be invoiced monthly based on usage. You will receive an email with links to review your invoice and make an online payment.

ACH Debit Option

If your organization does not have a valid credit card, you have the option of setting up your monthly payment via ACH automatic debit.

Charges for December and January

Your November invoice covers the standard monthly charges for December. Please pay this invoice as usual to cover your December software charges. When you implement the automatic billing feature, your initial payment will cover your January invoice.

Processing and Late Fees

Starting in 2013, a 10% processing fee will be added to invoices that are not set up for automatic recurring payment. In addition, invoices over 30 days past due will be charged a late fee of 5%.

Getting Set Up with Automatic Billing

Our goal is to have all of our clients set up in the new system by January 1. Contact our accounting team today at accounting@tendenci.com or call us at (281) 497-6567 x 523 to get set up.

Please Read Everything

We recognize changes can be confusing. Please be sure you have read all of the information regarding the new billing procedures carefully. We are here to answer any questions you may have regarding your account. Please contact us at (281) 497-6567 with any questions and to get set up on the new system. We hope this change simplifies your life too!

The Schipul Team, Creators of Tendenci

2012-11-212017-12-23

30 Days of Thanks: MMM bop

I am very thankful for my family for introducing me to good music at such an early age. Although I can’t play any instruments, I have always loved all types of music.

When I was a kid my Dad used to play a Bob Dylan cassette (John Wesley Harding) in his truck when he would pick my sister and I up from daycare.

I’m sure to say that my love for Dylan came from my Dad, along with love for many other great bands such as the Clash, the New York Dolls and the Rolling Stones.

I am also pretty sure I can attribute most my redneckness now in life (besides going to Texas State) to him playing Texas Country. For example, as a kid I remember listening to Robert Earl Keen when we’d go to the beach. If not not the redneck part, he is certainly responsible for my smart-assness.

There has always been some what of a heated discussion between my parents when talking about music. Dad would always say, “I’ve been listening to so and so since…” but Mom would have to correct him to let him know that she in fact turned him on to the artist, such as Emmylou Harris, Jimmy Dale Gilmore, Willie and Waylon and Guy Clark.

They both introduced me to bands such as Doug Sahm and the Texas Tornadoes, Steve Earle and Joe Ely.

I’d also credit my sister Briana Purser for introducing me to great bands such as the Black Angel’s, Thee Oh Sees and the Night Beats as well as the classics like Neil Young and Donovan.

Without my family, who knows what I’d be listening too. But thanks to them I have discovered such bands as Reckless Kelly, Hayes Carll, Ryan Bingham, Ghostland Observatory, Battles, Four Tet.. I could go on forever. But for that, I am very thankful for having my family in my life and the music they have shared with me. Love you guys, Happy Thanksgiving!

2012-04-042013-06-10

Thanks to the programming giants who walked before us

Giants. Giants I tell you.

Yes, I’m excited about Tendenci going open source. But first – THANK YOU to the giants who walked before us to make this possible.

As a programmer, granted I haven’t been in the code much the last 5 years doing the whole “running the company thing”, but I haven’t forgotten how important it is to give credit where credit is due. We just pushed Tendenci 5.0 live on github yesterday. As far as I know, Tendenci is the only “open source CMS system built specifically for nonprofits” and I could add “written on the Django framework and Python.”

That is what makes open source so cool. As David Geilhufe told me today when we bumped into each other at NTEN, “welcome to the open source community. it took you a while but you got here.” David’s right.

Tendenci 5 was a complete rewrite and took over 3 years to complete. I have said thanks to our programmers numerous times. But what giants’ shoulders did we stand on? Quite a few. Tendenci would not have been possible without the original committers on Django. So a RESPECTFUL tip of the hat to these trail blazers. #respect #thankyou

Adrian Holovaty
Simon Willison
Jacob Kaplan-Moss
Wilson Miner

And the list of brilliant committers goes on. Because it is a community. These people enabled us to give. I respect that.

To put it all together, Tendenci is a full web application. It is written on a framework called Django which is “the web framework for perfectionists with deadlines.” Django is written in a programming language called Python. Python was created by the amazing Guido van Rossum. I have never met Guido. But I know his brain is absolutely amazing and that our current business model would not be possible without Guido. Thank you Mr. Rossum. And thank you for everyone who contributes to the Python project.

We have a lot to learn still. And we are studying and learning as fast as we can. Any help is appreciated. But first and foremost, thank you to all of the programmers who walked before us and made our current path possible. ~Ed

2012-04-042014-11-02

Schipul Releases Open Source Tendenci CMS for NonProfit Websites

We love Open Source and our clients do too! We often hear from clients that you only will use open source software to build your websites and the advantages of having an open source community of developers and designers are undeniable.

That’s why everyone here at Schipul is super excited to announce we can now offer you a new open source option in addition to Drupal and WordPress open source website development and design with our open source release of our Tendenci CMS for NonProfit Websites.

Tendenci is the First Open Source CMS Made Just for Non-Profits!

The open source release of Tendenci is now available as part at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco going on this week, April 3-5.

If you are at NTEN NTC 2012, come to the NetSquared Local Community Organizers #12NTC Beerside Chat tonight at Jasper’s. Come learn more about the event and come hang out with us in San Francisco this week!

Here’s photos of the nonprofit tech conference that our team of Schipulites attending NTEN’s NonProfit Technology Conference are shooting and sharing daily.

What Does This Mean for Current Schipul Clients?

Here are some links with information for our current clients to explain what this means for you and your website, and what open source software is:

Open Source Tendenci FAQ for Current Tendenci Clients | From the Tendenci Blog

What is the Difference Between Tendenci Enterprise and Tendenci Community? FAQ

Open Source Hosting Prices and FAQ with the Tendenci Community

Download, Deploy and Host Your Own Open Source NonProfit Website with Tendenci CMS

We have set-up a public repository on Github for Tendenci where you can access the software for those looking to host their own Tendenci website here: https://github.com/tendenci/tendenci/. The Tendenci CMS is written in the Python programming language within a Django framework.

Visit Tendenci.org for information and help with our open source CMS.

If you have additional questions, comments, concerns, etc. please don’t hesitate to contact us, or post them in the comments below.

Get All the Open Source Tendenci News

Twitter’ @Tendenci
Facebook’ facebook.com/tendenci
The Tendenci Blog’ blog.tendenci.com

Sign up on our email list below to receive the latest updates about the open source release of Tendenci – The CMS for Non-Profits and Share the news with your friends!

2012-03-162014-11-02

Tendenci, the NPO CMS website software, is going open source thanks to Matt and Dries

UPDATE 4/3/2012: The Tendenci Open Source Download is available on GitHub here. Also view Instructions on Hosting Requirements

============================

We are making Tendenci open source. Yes really. Official Tendenci Open Source Press Release here. So what is Tendenci?

Tendenci is an Open Source Software for Associations (AMS) and Built Specifically for Non-Profits.

That’s it. Sounds simple but organizing people, especially members of non-profit organizations (NPOs), is a real challenge. And designing software is a challenge too. Therefore focus produces better results.

We’ve talked about making our product open source for years internally. So why now?

The tipping point for me was last year at our bi-annual conference where we had the privilege of hosting two open-source visionaries Dries Buytaert and Matt Mullenweg on the stage at the same time. Dries is the founder of Drupal and Matt is the founder of WordPress.

Their WordPress-Drupal talk at SchipulCon 2011 moderated by David was absolutely inspiring to me. Here were two men who give their product away for FREE but still create jobs with over 100 employees each. The video is on WordPress.tv here.

One thing Matt said during the talk was:

People being told what to do and working for money are never going to match people working for passion and a community.

— MATT MULLENWEG

Matt’s right. I do things for free with a greater passion than what I do for the almighty dollar. I’ll spend 5 hours editing photos for a volunteer event out of passion for the arts. Or to support and remember our troops. Because I am passionate about both. I am passionate about non-profits and service to community and country, which is what drove me to start programming Tendenci in 2001! And yet paradoxically I have always kept Tendenci proprietary. My vision for the company is:

To Connect and Organize the World’s People. Do Good.

Thus we are making our code open source for the NPO community to use, build upon, download and do as they wish. And yes, we fully realize our competitors will be the first to download. But hey, maybe they have some great ideas for integration plugins and they can make a profit too. It will be released on GitHub to coincide with the NTEN conference in San Francisco next month.

Why am I doing this? It is me (Ed) making an ideological decision. I didn’t say “logical” I said “ideological.” I want to change the world. After travelling extensively and earning a degree in Political Science I’ve become more aware that we are part of a global community. I want to leave the world a better place than when I arrived. Yes, seriously!

Open Source enables us to DO GOOD at a higher level than our pure proprietary model allows. “To connect and organize the worlds’ people. Do good.” As goes the vision so goes the company. Enzo the (talking) dog in the amazing book The Art of Racing in the Rain says:

That which you manifest becomes you.

What Enzo was saying is that when you are driving a race car you can’t look at the wall to stay away from it. You need to look at the road way up ahead so you are prepared BEFORE you get there. And proprietary is limited by resources in ways that open source is not. We can manifest more good being open source.

Matt and Dries convinced me that we can build an open source product through a global community to change the world, AND still create jobs and make a profit. Thus after 14 years in business and having started programming Tendenci in 2001 (11 years!) I am ready to make the jump to open source.

What technology is behind it? It was originally written in ASP. Not anymore. On January 22nd 2009 our programming team convinced me we needed a complete rewrite because the only people who know the Tendenci 4 framework are people who work at Schipul because I never documented it. Ooops. So over the last three years we have done a COMPLETE rewrite of Tendenci from the ground up using the best-of-breed open source technology. At a technical level our programming team recommended the Django/Python/mySQL/Ubuntu “stack.”

That was a big decision. I’m committed and I am 100% positive this is the right path forward for us, our clients and NPOs everywhere. (We plan to have a github repository available by NTEN if not sooner. See you in San Francisco y’all!)

Thanks,

QUESTIONS? (POST IN COMMENTS WITH MORE QUESTIONS)

Is Tendenci really built specifically for non-profits and will memberships be included in the open source download?

Yes and yes. Memberships are included in the base download. As are membership benefits like pricing for events etc.

Can businesses still use Tendenci?

Yes, most definitely. In fact with the new plug-in architecture and the new templating system, you will have even greater flexibility.

For example, WordPress is used as a great CMS system and we build a BUNCH of WP sites for businesses, organizations, individuals, artists, and non-profit organizations. WordPress rocks. It has a ton of great add-ons. Yet its DNA is fundamentally a blogging platform. Tendenci is fundamentally a CMS for non-profits.

Will Schipul, the company behind Tendenci, continue to build and support Tendenci?

Yes. Absolutely. I LOVE THIS SOFTWARE! And our programming team is excited to be a part of the open source community. We are not going anywhere. Quite the opposite – we are getting even more energized about it!

While I like being able to download it if I want, I’d rather not deal with all of that. Does Tendenci offer hosting?

Absolutely. Visit www.tendenci.com and click the “Free Trial” button and you are up and running. Work with your own developer to configure it to your specifications or call us at 281 497 6567 and we can help.

We are a web design firm. Can we sell Tendenci sites and host them on our own servers?

Yes. That is how open source works. And we need design partners as well to help with clients who choose to host with us. And theme and plug in-developers too. You can find out more by checking out our Partner Programs.

How will you stay in business if you just give away your product?

I not only expect to “stay in business” but I expect our profit and revenue to go up through lower cost cloud based hosting at Amazon and increased volume. Lower costs means higher usage pretty much in every economic model I have ever seen.

And Tendenci being open source creates an ecosystem for other developers to develop apps on that meet the needs of their specific clients.

Why make Tendenci Open Source now, in 2012? Why the timing?

What better time? Thanks to our clients we grew another 20% in revenue and earned a fair profit last year. We have been profitable since 2002 and are completely self funded so I didn’t have to call a banker or a board that doesn’t understand SaaS and open source to get approval to make this decision. I simply listened to our clients. I listened to our employees. I listened to our stakeholders. I listened to Matt and Dries. And I made a decision that is best for everyone including non-profits all over the world given Django is multi-language.

And hey, financially we are strong and what better time to give to the open source community than during a recession and at a time of strength? I would have done this years ago but you can’t build an open source community around a proprietary technology like ASP (what I originally wrote it in). It was the rewrite of Tendenci by our young and talented programming team that is allowing us to make the move now.

Why is open source so important for NPOs? Do they really care?

Yes, yes and more yes. Just ask them.

According to the NTEN 2011 survey 33% custom built their web sites (perhaps on top of open source), 10% used proprietary products, cloud based or not. The remaining 57% strictly use open source software. Excluding non-profit hospitals and other niche verticals, I believe open source web technology probably accounts for close to 70% of the market by number of NPOs. PHP based CMS systems like Drupal, WordPress and Joomla currently fill this need, and they are great products.

I believe opening Tendenci up as open source provides a fourth viable option to meet the specific needs of non-profit web sites. And Tendenci is built in the Python programming language on the Django framework which opens opportunities up to developers who prefer Python.

Or to put it another way, I believe proprietary SaaS products that target the non-profit community will only survive if they focus on very specific niches because they are excluding almost 60% of their target audience. As a VC would say, that sort of limits your “addressable market.” Our proprietary competitors don’t share this belief. And I didn’t either last year. I’m a convert. And I ask you,

Would YOU rather know you can download all of the technology for your site if you wanted to?

Of course your answer is yes. You want open source because you want and deserve to control the destiny of your web presence.

That is why my personal blog and this blog are on WORDPRESS! I believe WordPress is the best blogging platform around. I love it. I started with a paid hosted site at www.wordpress.com. And at some point I wanted more control so I migrated to my own server (we have a few. #heh). Shouldn’t you have that same freedom as a non-profit?

Well, now you do.

How can I get a copy of the source code and start working on it now? (I’m writing this on 3/15/12 – the Ides of March indeed)

We hope to have a public repository available on github by NTEN next month. The (slight) delay is simply because we built our hosted environment to use three distinct servers, search index, web server and CDN. That won’t make sense to 99% of the people reading this. In English it means “we built it for BIG HUGE SITES. We need to make that part optional so a small NPO can download and run it on their own web server without having to buy three slices at Amazon. We’re working on it! And I can’t wait!

In the meantime, you can sign-up on our website and we’ll be sending an email with the download link to you as soon as it is ready.

(Note: We do have a few select beta testers with early access working on the SpacePoints site. We’ll get it available to everyone soon.)

What other questions do you have? Hit us up in the comments below!

#peace

https://www.tendenci.com/help-files/topic/94/

2011-03-15

PyCon 2011

This year Glen and I were asked to go to SXSWi. Thank you Schipul.

We turned it down for the opportunity to go to PyCon (the Python Conference).
Once again, thank you Schipul.

It was, in a word; amazing.

In it’s simplest form, Python is a programming language. It’s what we’re using to build our brand spankin’ new Tendenci 5 technology.

Python was not originally designed for web development. It’s capable of so much more, but we’ll get back to that later.

This year the conference was 8 days. March 9th-17th. The first 2 days focusing on training, 3 days on conferencing and the remaining days left for sprints.

Sprints are coding sessions: problems are given out and we use your mad skillz (z for emphasis) to solve what we can. Glen and I only attended from March 9th through the 13th. It was our first run and we wanted to get our feet wet. We’re hoping to get the full affect next year, but simply attending is epic.

Oh man, where to start.

We would wake up every morning around 7a and take the warp speed elevator down to the Ballroom where the conference was being held; convenient — oh yeah.

All rights reserved by kennethreitz — Hyatt Regency Elevator - Photo taken by Kenneth Reitz

The conference this year was made up of about 1400 Pythonistas. That’s what we call ourselves. I’m not making this up.

Every day started with a nice healthy breakfast and mingle time. When we had training days we went straight to training.

Our Keynote was Hilary Mason, lead scientist at bit.ly. She’s a computer science professor with a background in machine learning and data mining. Bit.ly is a URL shortener. Learn more about URL shorteners.

We also heard from Rian Hunter. An Engineer for Dropbox. If you’re not using this, do it now. I’ve used Dropbox for over a year and it’s made my life so much easier.

Guido Van Rossum. He’s only the guy who CREATED the language. Also known as the Benevolent Dictator for Life (BDFL). I’m not joking. Google it.

We also heard from Threadless, Disqus, and OpenStack. Amazing companies all using Python in amazing ways.

The smaller sized sessions would start at about 10a.

Sessions lasted between 30 to 45 minutes with about 15 minutes to walk between rooms. It was all located in the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta, Georgia.

Then lunch. Unlike most conferences, the food arrangements where the best I’d ever seen. We’re talking white linen, gourmets meals, and waiters. We would also get in-between snacks like parfaits, mMmMmm yommi.

Somewhere between ’97 (~ the time that I started) and 2011 things matured. I remember getting excited about markup, styles and javascript. Then fainting at the idea of sprites, caching, indexing, and load-balancing. Only to find myself today hearing buzzwords like coroutines, configuration managers, event based programming, and continuous integration.

It’s not fair to call all of this stuff new age, because many of it has been around for some time. There’s a difference between hearing the jargon and seeing it in action. Let alone getting trained on it.

This conference has definitely opened my eyes to what I don’t know. The initial hit is intimidating, but like most scary things in life it quickly turned to interesting. Well aware that we’re more than capable of working and benefiting from these technologies.

For those of you want to see the sessions in action. You can find most of the PyCon videos at http://pycon.blip.tv/posts.

Overall we had exciting time and made some new nerd friends along the way.

Check out this Video recorded by Glen. Python along with Xbox Kinect being used to make eyeballs that follow you. Web development is only one of Python’s many powers.

Tag: Tendenci

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