[hackerspaces] Member and event management systems

Thu Sep 15 00:30:30 CEST 2016

This is helpful - thanks!

It looks like a complete solution doesn't exist for all of our needs. We'll
be examining the options (which include contributing back code to some of
the open source projects) to find what fits our members, budget, and
capacity to build/support.

If anyone else is using something - even if it's incomplete - that hasn't
been mentioned yet, please share!

*Dominic Canare*
Immediate Past President, MakeICT

On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 4:10 PM, Dave Rowntree <dave at davidrowntree.co.uk>
wrote:

> We use GoCardless (but support bank standing orders too, begrudgingly) to
> handle recurring payments for dues, and also ad-hoc payments for things
> (like training fees) at So Make It. They are very friendly with the fees,
> and may well give you a zero fee as an introduction. They handle all that
> nasty card processing stuff, and money just appears in our bank account.
>
> You can inspect/fork our members area system, with all it's integrations
> here:
>
> https://github.com/somakeit/members-area
>
> although a few guys seems to be rebuilding it to make it more applicable
> to hackerspaces other our own:
>
> https://github.com/members-area/members-area
>
> I guess it might be of interest to some.
>
> Dave.
>
> On 10 September 2016 at 22:07, Edward L Platt <ed at elplatt.com> wrote:
>
>> 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
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>>> Discuss mailing listDiscuss at lists.hackerspaces.orghttp://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing
>>>>>>>>>> list Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org
>>>>>>>>>> http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing
>>>>>>>>> list Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org http://lists.hackerspaces.org/
>>>>>>>>> mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>> 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
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> Discuss mailing list
>>>>>>>> Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org
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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
>>>>>> http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Discuss mailing list
>>>>> Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org
>>>>> http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Discuss mailing list
>>>> Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org
>>>> http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Discuss mailing list
>>>> Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org
>>>> http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Discuss mailing list
>>> Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org
>>> http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> 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
>> http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Dave Rowntree,
> Director of Sobuildit Limited
> Trustee of Southampton Makerspace
> @rowntree_dave
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org
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>
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