Apropos of Schoolhouse Rock, listen to the clip below. It might get you in a forgiving mood before you read my next post. Just click on the right-pointing triangle to get started.
Ok, ok, I KNEW I was going to get things wrong. You can’t get details right just from a PDF of a Powerpoint presentation and a brief call with Blackbaud rep. At the very least, I put in a caveat with my last post. So Blackbaud tells me the following:
1. RSS has nothing to do with the dashboard.
2. The API isn’t “free” (as in beer). It’s part of the Infinity platform. You have to buy Infinity in order to get access to the API. The question is, is Infinity something new nonprofits have to pay for or is this a maintenance release of RE? Let’s hope it’s the latter.
3. ClickOnce is Microsoft’s technology. Go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/05/ClickOnce/ for more information.
4. Blackbaud thinks NetCommunity is Blackbaud’s response to Convio and GetActive.
5. Bull’s Eye is Blackbaud’s code name for a new product — Blackbaud Direct Marketing. I guess Marketer’s Edge was out of the question?
6. Blackbaud is NOT committing to releasing a case management or any other kind of custom application other than Blackbaud Direct Marketing.
As I’ve stated before, I really really think Blackbaud needs to start giving away developer CDs for its API and Infinity (perhaps Infinity-lite). I’m also hoping that Blackbaud releases the CDs in beta version before the system is released beforehand. They really need to start advocating for their developer community in a serious serious way. I’ve started playing with salesforce.com and let me tell you — salesforce.com is going to eat Blackbaud alive from the bottom of the market where Raiser’s Edge is too expensive. And eventually, once people realize how frickin’ cool salesforce.com is from the standpoint of an open API. Blackbaud will have to go there too.
OPEN API Alert! For what it’s worth, here’s an extra hint Blackbaud. Get someone to create an RubyOnRails ActiveRecord adapter for Blackbaud just like these guys did for salesforce.com. I just tried it out — FANTASTIC. I wish there was a version for Blackbaud now. I’m going let you smart folks figure out the ramifications of that kind of development on your own. I hope to write about this later though.
Loading ...
