New Service Providers Page

[David E Jones-2]

This is an email you don't want to miss... especially if you are a  
service provider offering stuff based on OFBiz.

As part of the web site refactoring we are moving various things from  
the old web site to the new wiki site.

The Service Providers sections of the services page are being moved  
over right now to this page on the docs.ofbiz.org site:

http://docs.ofbiz.org/x/JAM

IMPORTANT: If you have been listed on the ofbiz site in the past and  
wish to be listed in the future, please go there and add an entry for  
your company.

Rather than propagating entries from before, some of which have been  
around but inactive for years, this way we can start fresh and get a  
more recent and complete listing.

There is an example there for Hotwax Media along with an interesting  
announcement and you can follow or expand on  that pattern for your  
own listing.

Enjoy!
-David

[Ean Schuessler]

On Saturday 30 December 2006 00:52, David E Jones wrote:

> This is an email you don't want to miss... especially if you are a
> service provider offering stuff based on OFBiz.
>
> As part of the web site refactoring we are moving various things from
> the old web site to the new wiki site.
>
> The Service Providers sections of the services page are being moved
> over right now to this page on the docs.ofbiz.org site:
>
> http://docs.ofbiz.org/x/JAM
>
> IMPORTANT: If you have been listed on the ofbiz site in the past and
> wish to be listed in the future, please go there and add an entry for
> your company.
>
> Rather than propagating entries from before, some of which have been
> around but inactive for years, this way we can start fresh and get a
> more recent and complete listing.
>
> There is an example there for Hotwax Media along with an interesting
> announcement and you can follow or expand on  that pattern for your
> own listing.

Brainfood is the only premium service provider website that runs on OFBiz!

Do we get a bonus for that?

(Si! PHP! For shame!)

--
Ean Schuessler, CTO
[hidden email]
214-720-0700 x 315
Brainfood, Inc.
http://www.brainfood.com

[David E Jones-2]

On Jan 3, 2007, at 6:08 PM, Ean Schuessler wrote:

> On Saturday 30 December 2006 00:52, David E Jones wrote:
>> This is an email you don't want to miss... especially if you are a
>> service provider offering stuff based on OFBiz.
>>
>> As part of the web site refactoring we are moving various things from
>> the old web site to the new wiki site.
>>
>> The Service Providers sections of the services page are being moved
>> over right now to this page on the docs.ofbiz.org site:
>>
>> http://docs.ofbiz.org/x/JAM
>>
>> IMPORTANT: If you have been listed on the ofbiz site in the past and
>> wish to be listed in the future, please go there and add an entry for
>> your company.
>>
>> Rather than propagating entries from before, some of which have been
>> around but inactive for years, this way we can start fresh and get a
>> more recent and complete listing.
>>
>> There is an example there for Hotwax Media along with an interesting
>> announcement and you can follow or expand on  that pattern for your
>> own listing.
>
> Brainfood is the only premium service provider website that runs on  
> OFBiz!
>
> Do we get a bonus for that?
>
> (Si! PHP! For shame!)

No kidding, what's up Si?

Fortunately things aren't _quite_ as bad as they seem... Personally I  
guess I can forgive Si because he has a good production ecommerce  
site (Gracious Style) that is helping to PoC a lot of the back-end  
stuff too.

And yeah, you're right the Hotwax site is still static, but heah  
we're only officialy 2 days into the new company! But yes, rest  
assured, the hotwaxmedia.com site(s) WILL all eventually run on  
OFBiz, starting with the public site which will soon be just like the  
Undersun Consulting site, which runs 100% on OFBiz (albeit a bit of  
an embarrassingly old version!). We even have plans to migrate more  
"internal" tools to OFBiz like project management (we're currently  
using XPlanner, which is okay, but it's not OFBiz!), CRM, and even  
accounting and such.

It'll be fun working it into shape for a services company and if  
anyone else is interested in doing so but afraid to take it on alone,  
let's get together and go for it... in about 2 months. We're actually  
really swamped right now and our public site and such are obviously a  
little tough for us to get out of the way. Darn, 2 days and we still  
don't have it! ;)

More seriously though, it would be super-cool if we all jumped on  
this and really start eating our dog crap, or er, food.

So, the Brainfood site is running on OFBiz? That's cool. Did you  
mount the webapp and the control servlet on "/" or something? The  
URLs are way more disguised than we tried to do with the Undersun site.

Okay forget I just said that, I'm an idiot. I remember now that you  
guys have a slick front end piece as an alternative to the  
ControlServlet and such and that's probably what you've got going there.

If you want to add your site to the list of public facing OFBiz-
running sites it's now on an open page in Confluence (you just have  
to have an account to edit):

http://docs.ofbiz.org/x/ZQM

Also, we've recently move the service provider listings to Confluence  
too, so you might want to update your listing here:

http://docs.ofbiz.org/x/JAM

-David

[Ean Schuessler]

On Thursday 04 January 2007 00:08, David E Jones wrote:
> No kidding, what's up Si?
>
> Fortunately things aren't _quite_ as bad as they seem... Personally I
> guess I can forgive Si because he has a good production ecommerce
> site (Gracious Style) that is helping to PoC a lot of the back-end
> stuff too.

Its true. Gracious Style is definitely one of the shining lights of OFBiz
implementations. I just like to harass Si because I know he can take it.
(Only expect gentleness from the strong... etc)

> And yeah, you're right the Hotwax site is still static, but heah
> we're only officialy 2 days into the new company! But yes, rest
> assured, the hotwaxmedia.com site(s) WILL all eventually run on
> OFBiz, starting with the public site which will soon be just like the
> Undersun Consulting site, which runs 100% on OFBiz (albeit a bit of
> an embarrassingly old version!). We even have plans to migrate more
> "internal" tools to OFBiz like project management (we're currently
> using XPlanner, which is okay, but it's not OFBiz!), CRM, and even
> accounting and such.
...
> More seriously though, it would be super-cool if we all jumped on
> this and really start eating our dog crap, or er, food.

You can count us in on that action. One of my New Year's resolutions is to
migrate Brainfood's customer interactions to (as much as possible) automated
systems based on OFBiz. I'm DONE with producing progress reports and other
communication tools by hand using Open Office. At least, Open Office
controlled by my fingers anyway.

> So, the Brainfood site is running on OFBiz? That's cool. Did you
> mount the webapp and the control servlet on "/" or something? The
> URLs are way more disguised than we tried to do with the Undersun site.
>
> Okay forget I just said that, I'm an idiot. I remember now that you
> guys have a slick front end piece as an alternative to the
> ControlServlet and such and that's probably what you've got going there.

Yep. Another New Years resolution is to get that Wiki functionality packaged
into a form that is readily consumable by the community and get the source
out on webslinger.org. Stay tuned for that... we're trying to get it into a
presentable form.

Humane URLs is one of our focuses. As much as possible we want to get URLs
into a form that one human can say them to another human over a bad cell
phone connection and retain link integrity.

> If you want to add your site to the list of public facing OFBiz-
> running sites it's now on an open page in Confluence (you just have
> to have an account to edit):
>
> http://docs.ofbiz.org/x/ZQM
>
> Also, we've recently move the service provider listings to Confluence
> too, so you might want to update your listing here:
>
> http://docs.ofbiz.org/x/JAM

Which raises the interesting spectre of Confluence/JIRA itself. Wouldn't it be
productive if there was an Open Source product like JIRA that tracked your
activities and man-hours and made it dirt easy to associate them with work
orders and invoices. Wouldn't it be even better if that tool let you link
together with other shops using the same tool to form virtual organizations
with consolidated activity tracking and billing? Such organizations would be
capable of attacking large scale implementation activities. Wouldn't that be
interesting and fun?

--
Ean Schuessler, CTO
[hidden email]
214-720-0700 x 315
Brainfood, Inc.
http://www.brainfood.com

[Adrian Crum]

Ean Schuessler wrote:
> Which raises the interesting spectre of Confluence/JIRA itself. Wouldn't it be
> productive if there was an Open Source product like JIRA that tracked your
> activities and man-hours and made it dirt easy to associate them with work
> orders and invoices. Wouldn't it be even better if that tool let you link
> together with other shops using the same tool to form virtual organizations
> with consolidated activity tracking and billing? Such organizations would be
> capable of attacking large scale implementation activities. Wouldn't that be
> interesting and fun?

How soon will you have that ready for us?  ;)

[David E Jones-2]

> Yep. Another New Years resolution is to get that Wiki functionality  
> packaged
> into a form that is readily consumable by the community and get the  
> source
> out on webslinger.org. Stay tuned for that... we're trying to get  
> it into a
> presentable form.
>
> Humane URLs is one of our focuses. As much as possible we want to  
> get URLs
> into a form that one human can say them to another human over a bad  
> cell
> phone connection and retain link integrity.

Do you still have any interest in possibly getting this into OFBiz  
itself? You guys are already under CLAs, so it should be pretty easy  
from a legal perspective at the ASF.

That is, IF you want to of course.

On a side note, if this is a direction that interests you I briefly  
discussed this with my partners and we do have some time on current  
contracts where if this meets their needs we could get involved quite  
a bit in reviewing, helping with improvements/cleanups, and getting  
it added to OFBiz.

Anyway, think about it and if it is of interest we should maybe get a  
conference call going to talk about timing and details (sorry  
everyone, I know that isn't very open of me to propose, but getting  
funding on our side will require some planning and coordination  
involving non-public information, etc).

> Which raises the interesting spectre of Confluence/JIRA itself.  
> Wouldn't it be
> productive if there was an Open Source product like JIRA that  
> tracked your
> activities and man-hours and made it dirt easy to associate them  
> with work
> orders and invoices. Wouldn't it be even better if that tool let  
> you link
> together with other shops using the same tool to form virtual  
> organizations
> with consolidated activity tracking and billing? Such organizations  
> would be
> capable of attacking large scale implementation activities.  
> Wouldn't that be
> interesting and fun?

YES. In addition to interesting and fun, helpful, convenient, slick,  
satisfying, and cool come to mind...

Eventually I think we could and should get OFBiz running on OFBiz for  
project and content management. This has come up a few times as we've  
moved from one tool and hosting situation to another, but we just  
haven't had the resources to fill in the gaps in OFBiz in order to do  
so... yet...

My thought on this is that at least 2-3 of us should commit to  
getting our own companies running on it in the next few months, and  
then once this has stabilized for us who are using it we should be  
_close_ to the point where it will be happy for something like OFBiz.

I can't WAIT to _finally_ have a separation between requests,  
requirements, tasks, etc rather than having everything handled as an  
"issue"...

For our company right now we are already in a situation of system  
bloat. We don't cycle through a lot of clients/customers, but for  
each one we have to enter them into:

1. CRM system (including calendaring, etc)
2. planning/project system
3. accounting system
4. communication systems (non structured, and not statused, ie stuff  
like chat and vanilla email)

And that's not to mention things like SVN repos and such that we  
don't plan to merge into the "big" system.

Most of these systems don't communicate with each other much, or at  
all, but some of the ones we use do communicate with things like  
desktop calendaring and contact info mgmt, and that would be really  
cool to add to OFBiz. I find that sort of thing not to be too big a  
deal, but something lots of people like, and it's certainly super  
techno-hip, so we should do it sooner or later.

-David

[Ean Schuessler]

On Thursday 04 January 2007 15:25, Adrian Crum wrote:
> How soon will you have that ready for us?  ;)

July. :-)

--
Ean Schuessler, CTO
[hidden email]
214-720-0700 x 315
Brainfood, Inc.
http://www.brainfood.com

[Ean Schuessler]

On Thursday 04 January 2007 16:20, David E Jones wrote:
> Do you still have any interest in possibly getting this into OFBiz
> itself? You guys are already under CLAs, so it should be pretty easy
> from a legal perspective at the ASF.
>
> That is, IF you want to of course.

We do! We do! The infrastructure does many things nicely but there is still
quite a bit of confusion/complexity in the codebase that we aren't happy
about. I guess the best way to get rid of that is to get more eyeballs on it
so we should just bite the bullet and put it out there.

One of the things we definitely want to do right away is build ScreenWidget
bindings for Webslinger so that you can just drop a screen widget declaration
in place in the file system and have it go. We'll work on getting something
publicly accessible in the next few weeks.

> Eventually I think we could and should get OFBiz running on OFBiz for
> project and content management. This has come up a few times as we've
> moved from one tool and hosting situation to another, but we just
> haven't had the resources to fill in the gaps in OFBiz in order to do
> so... yet...
>
> My thought on this is that at least 2-3 of us should commit to
> getting our own companies running on it in the next few months, and
> then once this has stabilized for us who are using it we should be
> _close_ to the point where it will be happy for something like OFBiz.

I am committed to getting client control and subcontractor control encoded
into a system that Brainfood can internally improve and I want it done this
year. The sooner the better. We want to collaborate. Having more people
involved will insure that the solutions are more generalized and, therefore,
more suitable for a variety of external client solutions.

--
Ean Schuessler, CTO
[hidden email]
214-720-0700 x 315
Brainfood, Inc.
http://www.brainfood.com

[Si Chen-2]

Ean Schuessler wrote:

> On Thursday 04 January 2007 16:20, David E Jones wrote:
>  
>> Do you still have any interest in possibly getting this into OFBiz
>> itself? You guys are already under CLAs, so it should be pretty easy
>> from a legal perspective at the ASF.
>>
>> That is, IF you want to of course.
>>    
>
> We do! We do! The infrastructure does many things nicely but there is still
> quite a bit of confusion/complexity in the codebase that we aren't happy
> about. I guess the best way to get rid of that is to get more eyeballs on it
> so we should just bite the bullet and put it out there.
>
> One of the things we definitely want to do right away is build ScreenWidget
> bindings for Webslinger so that you can just drop a screen widget declaration
> in place in the file system and have it go. We'll work on getting something
> publicly accessible in the next few weeks.
>
>  
>> Eventually I think we could and should get OFBiz running on OFBiz for
>> project and content management. This has come up a few times as we've
>> moved from one tool and hosting situation to another, but we just
>> haven't had the resources to fill in the gaps in OFBiz in order to do
>> so... yet...
>>
>> My thought on this is that at least 2-3 of us should commit to
>> getting our own companies running on it in the next few months, and
>> then once this has stabilized for us who are using it we should be
>> _close_ to the point where it will be happy for something like OFBiz.
>>    
>
> I am committed to getting client control and subcontractor control encoded
> into a system that Brainfood can internally improve and I want it done this
> year. The sooner the better. We want to collaborate. Having more people
> involved will insure that the solutions are more generalized and, therefore,
> more suitable for a variety of external client solutions.
>
>  

Ean,

Thanks for making fun of my site.

Actually I have thought a few times about moving it all over to
OFBIZ/opentaps.  The Financials module should handle most of what a
consulting services company would need at this point, and having a real
CRM system would be nice.  But, as you can see, we're pretty busy, so
I'm just going to wait for all this great stuff you'll be doing.  :)

Happy new year.

Si

[Ean Schuessler]

On Friday 05 January 2007 19:56, Si Chen wrote:
> Thanks for making fun of my site.

Sir! Of course! A pleasure!

> Actually I have thought a few times about moving it all over to
> OFBIZ/opentaps.  The Financials module should handle most of what a
> consulting services company would need at this point, and having a real
> CRM system would be nice.  But, as you can see, we're pretty busy, so
> I'm just going to wait for all this great stuff you'll be doing.  :)

Actually, I'm going to distribute it as a separate version of OFBiz called "Webslinger Pro" under the GPL and pull in your Opentaps stuff. I think with my brother's CSS overhaul that no one, including the main project, will be able to compete with me.

Just kidding... ;-D

We'll be rolling our stuff into the main distribution.

> Happy new year.

It just might be!

--
Ean Schuessler, CTO
[hidden email]
214-720-0700 x 315
Brainfood, Inc.
http://www.brainfood.com