A letter to a friend…
The primary reason that I started working on software for the Independent Living movement is my friend, David Caufield. David worked at the Suncoast Center for Independent Living, and recently resigned.
While working with them on their old application, I discovered what IL was about and how badly it needed good process software. Not to say that there isn’t good software out there, but there isn’t anything that really pushes business style work meme’s into this space.
David emailed me recently to ask about progress and direction with Circil, asking if I was writing an application that was specific to SCIL or more generic, and I thought I would share with you the content of that email:
David:
The intent all along was to develop an application that did 100% of what datamanager does, plus another 50% of what it doesn’t do. The goal is to write a system that does what 90% of all ILC’s do, and let the individual ILC’s help write the rest of it.
Its an evolutionary & revolutionary process. The revolution is in the application of fortune 500 style process to the non-profit space (workflow, planned management, process development), and the evolutionary part is that the system will grow incrementally both through client-wide changes (changes that we make to the application and apply to all customers) and client specific changes.
The cool thing that we are doing with the client specific changes is this:
If an ILC has a process that they want the system to represent and manage, they can hire activ8 to write that functionality as a module. We will, of course, charge them for this development. When the module is complete, we will offer it to all ILC’s that are customers for half of what the original ILC paid to have it written. If another ILC buys it, we will plug the module into their instance of the application, and all monies collected go back to the original ILC that funded the module’s development.
Through this, we see our system as a means to help all ILC’s that are on the system share their processes with other ILC’s. Through this process sharing, smaller ILC’s can learn from the larger ones, and older ILC’s can teach the newer ones, etc. etc. etc.
To be honest, I don’t see Circil (what we have named the app) as an application that will make me or my company rich. It will, however, provide me with other benefits for projects / products that I am planning to write post Circil. Also, after going to the conference and learning from the folks that I met there, this is likely going to be our ‘Community’ application, something that we do for little or no profit as a way of giving back to the community.
Posted in circil — Comment this entry »