[hackerspaces] Member and event management systems

Sat Sep 10 23:07:08 CEST 2016

Dues payment is a good example of why there isn't a single good solution
right now: it's a moving target. You need a steady stream of active
volunteers and/or funding in order to keep up with the newest
paypal/amazon/wepay/venmo/dogecoin API. So I'd say, find something that
exists that works well enough (Seltzer, CiviCRM, maybe even straight-up
Drupal) *or* work on getting a committed team together to build something
that won't be obsolete by the time its debugged.

Ed

On Sat, Sep 10, 2016 at 3:20 PM, Dominic Canare <dom at makeict.org> wrote:

> Can we move questions/discussion about National Organization of Makers to
> a separate thread?
>
> Our primary needs including handling automatic recurring dues payments and
> event registrations and payments - preferably with more options than
> PayPal, as we have a number of members who refuse to use it or it's
> problematic. The system needs to supports event discounts for active
> members and allows monthly-addons for dues (such as an additional monthly
> donation, locker rentals, etc).
>
> We looked at Seltzer in the past, but I don't think it had any support for
> events and RSVP's. Looks like that's still the case?
>
> *Dominic Canare*
> Immediate Past President, MakeICT
>
> On Sat, Sep 10, 2016 at 8:57 AM, bownes <bownes at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> At the Center of Gravity we use Seltzer with quite a few add ons to
>> handle badges, access control, and billing.
>>
>> The On Sep 10, 2016, at 07:45, Arthur Guy <arthur at arthurguy.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> I built a system for the Brighton (England) Makerspace a few years back.
>> Its very specific to us but it has a good feature set and is forkable.
>> https://github.com/ArthurGuy/BBMembershipSystem/
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Arthur
>>
>> On 10 September 2016 at 11:34, Altin Ukshini <altin.ukshini at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I've started one here: https://github.com/altinukshini/hackerspacecrm
>>> But it'll take some time to be useful. I'll be working on it for another
>>> year for sure as it's also a school project and we need for Prishtina
>>> Hackerspace too (we use Seltzer)
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Altin
>>>
>>> Sent from my phone. Please excuse any typos.
>>>
>>> On Sep 10, 2016 4:30 AM, "Edward L Platt" <ed at elplatt.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> It's worth mentioning that several of us worked on developing a
>>>> free/open-source system to do this called Seltzer, with mixed success. It
>>>> never made it to 1.0, but has been successfully used at a number of spaces.
>>>> The project is currently maintenance-only, but I do plan to devote more
>>>> effort to decentralized free/open software for organizing communities at
>>>> some point.
>>>>
>>>> It's a hard problem, but mostly for non-technical reasons. Some
>>>> challenges we found that might not be obvious:
>>>>
>>>> 1. It's not a sexy topic, so it's hard to attract volunteers, and it's
>>>> hard to raise money.
>>>>
>>>> 2. On a related note, member management systems are long-term projects,
>>>> which means whatever stack you build the technology on, it will spend most
>>>> of it's life cycle being "old, boring" technology.
>>>>
>>>> 3. Everyone does things differently. One approach is to build a tool
>>>> that can be configured to do anything (CiviCRM is a good example) but the
>>>> downside is that it gets very complicated and difficult to use. Another
>>>> approach is to make a lightweight core that can be extended (we tried this
>>>> with Seltzer).
>>>>
>>>> 4. It's difficult to build collaborations across spaces. Different
>>>> spaces stumble across or create their own solutions, which makes pooling
>>>> resources difficult.
>>>>
>>>> Happy hacking,
>>>> Ed
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Sep 9, 2016 at 10:01 PM, Derek H <dh405okc at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> How does one request an invite to that slack?
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, Sep 9, 2016 at 8:56 PM, Matthew "mirage335" Hines <
>>>>> spamfreemirage335 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> National Organization of Makers is the name increasingly adopted by
>>>>>> the large group of Makerspace leaders continuing to collaborate following
>>>>>> the recent White House sponsored meeting, as well as a possible future
>>>>>> conference with a similar agenda.
>>>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Didwk6Td7M
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 09/09/16 09:48 PM, Edward L Platt wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What is the National Organization of Makers?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, Sep 9, 2016 at 8:46 PM, Joshua Pritt <ramgarden at gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Melbourne Makerspace has been using the open source Seltzer (built
>>>>>>> at another hackerspace!) specifically for running 'spaces with little to no
>>>>>>> training and volunteer time.
>>>>>>> I am currently trying to build a member photo module that lets other
>>>>>>> members pull up the photos of a selected member since we have so many
>>>>>>> members now it's hard to remember their names!
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> https://github.com/elplatt/seltzer
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I wrote some PHP that queries the Seltzer database that is called
>>>>>>> from a Python script I wrote that runs on a raspberry Pi with an RFID
>>>>>>> scanner we use for our front door lock.
>>>>>>> It's been working great for over a year now!
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> https://wiki.melbournemakerspace.org/projects/RFIDDoorLock
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Fri, Sep 9, 2016 at 8:15 PM, Matthew "mirage335" Hines <
>>>>>>> spamfreemirage335 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> You may wish to request an invite to the National Organization of
>>>>>>>> Makers slack channel. This has been recognized as a unsolved problem in
>>>>>>>> need of dedicated technology. An active development effort is underway to
>>>>>>>> begin an extensive Odoo based platform without lock-in.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On 09/09/16 08:03 PM, Dominic Canare wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> It's been a little while since we talked about this, and I wonder
>>>>>>>> if new information or tools are available.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> What are people using to manage their members, payments, equipment
>>>>>>>> authorizations, events and signups, donations, etc?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> We've been using WildApricot for the past few years. It does many
>>>>>>>> things, but all of them are a little lacking. We have a bunch of
>>>>>>>> work-arounds and custom tools built around their API's to make it easier
>>>>>>>> for our administrators, but it's become a bit cumbersome to maintain, and
>>>>>>>> the price keeps going up.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Looking for suggestions!
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> *Dominic Canare*
>>>>>>>> Immediate Past President, MakeICT
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing
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>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Edward L. Platt
>>>>>> PhD student, University of Michigan School of Information
>>>>>> https://elplatt.com
>>>>>> @elplatt <http://twitter.com/elplatt>
>>>>>> KC1DYK
>>>>>> Tips for stopping email overload: https://hbr.org/2012
>>>>>> /02/stop-email-overload-1
>>>>>> This digital electronic mail message was sent from my general-purpose
>>>>>> desktop personal computing machine.  Please forgive any overly-verbose,
>>>>>> long-winded, rambling prose.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Discuss mailing listDiscuss at lists.hackerspaces.orghttp://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Discuss mailing list
>>>>> Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org
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>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Edward L. Platt
>>>> PhD student, University of Michigan School of Information
>>>> https://elplatt.com
>>>> @elplatt <http://twitter.com/elplatt>
>>>> KC1DYK
>>>>
>>>> Tips for stopping email overload: https://hbr.org/2012
>>>> /02/stop-email-overload-1
>>>>
>>>> This digital electronic mail message was sent from my general-purpose
>>>> desktop personal computing machine.  Please forgive any overly-verbose,
>>>> long-winded, rambling prose.
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Discuss mailing list
>>>> Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org
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>>>>
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Discuss mailing list
>>> Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org
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>>>
>>>
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>>
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>>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org
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>

-- 
Edward L. Platt
PhD student, University of Michigan School of Information
https://elplatt.com
@elplatt <http://twitter.com/elplatt>
KC1DYK

Tips for stopping email overload:
https://hbr.org/2012/02/stop-email-overload-1

This digital electronic mail message was sent from my general-purpose
desktop personal computing machine.  Please forgive any overly-verbose,
long-winded, rambling prose.
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