I wrote in my post about DreamForce conference about SalesForce.com that I met.
Khadijah from MassCOSH (the Massachusets Coalition for Ocupational Saftey and Health). She had a great story of frustration that speaks to the reality…she went with Drupal and and was optimistic about the potential of the platform but was totally disappointed by the tool and the ability to MAKE IT WORK well for her organizational context. As she said we are hoping this group of 19 year old developers will improve the platform…Well the fact is they haven’t really done it and disappointed a lot of folks. (I had high hopes too invested some money in customizing it for my constituents..but it never really got there). She was like SalesForce saved my ass. It is so good and I can get my 8 staff who need to use it to use it. She believes in open source still but needs it to work now…SalesForce solves that problem.
I like David Geilhufe and all that I have heard good things about CiviCRM a project he founded. I have heard developers I trust say “it is one of the best run open source projects I have ever seen.” He moved over from that project to CivicSpace and I have some hope that the fire an be stoked so the dream can be a reality.
The dream of “19 year old developers” meeting the needs of 1M+ nonprofits and a far greater number of civic and political groups is over. Now there are real companies, seasoned leaders, senior developers and private capital backing the dream.
CivicSpace reorganized in May That is why we now have CivicSpace On Demand in BETA. No downloads, no need to understand MySQL and Apache, just a focus on making complex open source work for regular people.
And that is why you will see us slowly stoke the fire that is the dream over the next years… highly affordable, nonprofit-centric open source solutions delivered by a sustainable ecology. The perfect solution isn’t here today. But with a community of supporters, a pretty great open source solution will be here tomorrow.
David Geilhufe
Managing Partner, CivicSpace