Townsquare: Process-driven application development

Townsquare is a Drupal 7-based application developed by FreeGeek Chicago that helps community-based organizations manage volunteers, track program participation, and share institutional knowledge and skills.

Townsquare is an alternative to heavy, one-size-fits-all constituent relationship management systems (CRMs) like CiviCRM, Blackbaud products, and Salesforce. Townsquare provides a basic wiki (still in heavy development, about all we've got is an awesome editor) and a powerful volunteer management system.

In this round-table conversation, we'll discuss:

• Townsquare past: Years of failure.
• Townsquare present: Drupal 7 nirvana (more honestly: "this is actually feasible now for a variety of reasons").
  • Volunteer manager philosophy: Why don't volunteers self-report hours?
  • Volunteer manager construction: Overview of how data model and UI are built using entities and Javascript. Omega theme + Less CSS are incredibly powerful.
  • Managing sensitive information: How does technology define our organizational roles?
  • TinyMCE + Markdown editor: It rocks.
• Townsquare future: Fix up crappy code (I have a 9-5! I did this on the train!), functional install profile, useful wiki based on our extensive note-taking experience, notifications and feedback to volunteers based on FreeGeek Chicago's process, abstracting inline-edit functionality from volunteer manager into generic library, better use of entity API. We need help!
• Strategic questions and conversation
  • Recent Drupal projects: Lots of great stuff! Open Outreach, CityGroups, SpringBoard, Watershed Now, Open Atrium, and the possibly defunct RedHen CRM.
  • When does it make sense to use a monolithic CRM like CiviCRM? When does it make sense to develop to create a Drupal distribution? When should you consider a framework like Rails or Django?
  • What are the common barriers to creating Drupal distributions for organization or domain-specific purposes? Should we pursue many small projects with a shared set of best practices (represented by projects like Townsquare and Watershed Now) or contribute to larger efforts like Open Outreach. How should we balance the need for abstraction with the need for domain specific solutions?
  • How can organizational process inform application design and development methodology? How can non-coders be engaged, effectively contribute to such projects, and articulate their needs? (Watch us fumble in our issue queue!)

David Eads is a Drupal developer whose past work includes development and design for The View From The Ground, contributing to the creation of FreeGeek Chicago. Recent work includes E-Center, a Drupal-based network performance analysis tool for Fermi National Accelerator Lab and Townsquare for FreeGeek Chicago.