Soapbox Engage Blog

For the past 15 years, I've dabbled a bit in the world of open source software. During most of that time, I've worked within communities free of corporate structures, many of which have produced some of the best software the world has ever seen without any corporate governance.

The background explains why I'm so interested in seeing things done in a different, corporate structured way, in the Salesforce.com world this week. Starting today, the Salesforce Foundation is bringing together a small team of developers to Washington DC for code sprints on the Nonprofit Starter Pack, a set of tools that organizations can use to more effectively use the Force.com platform for fundraising, contact management, and more.  I'll be among those folks contributing ideas and code to the project, and looking forward to collaborating with my buddies in the Salesforce world.

Make no mistake about it: the Nonprofit Starter Pack is the single most important open source contribution Marc Benioff has put his company's 1/1/1 giveback model towards supporting. And, with the not-so-new-but-still-new-to-me code repository (hello to GitHub) and great leadership, the project is moving down an exciting path that I foresee disrupting the nonprofit CRM marketplace in a very positive way.

I'll be attending this week's code sprint in DC because I believe the Nonprofit Starter Pack community is making an important turn in the right direction, and I'm eager to see it with my own eyes.

For most of its existence, the project has rested in the steady hands of a small group of dedicated individuals, and most recently the Foundation has put the likes of Steve Andersen, Kevin Bromer, and Nick Bailey in the driver's seat. Those folks, in turn, see the valuable opportunity that they have to grow the project further, and are continue the process of fostering a larger community of individuals to support the effort.

Let's just say I've seen this open source community building movie before, and I like what I see.

As the Nonprofit Starter Pack development sprint rolls on this week, I'll share resources that can help you learn more about the project. While I'm happy to write some code, I'm much more eager to see more people contributing to this great project, as the more that is contributed, the higher the floor is set for the non-profit Salesforce community as a whole.

The community's growth is dependent on the success of recruiting the next generation of developers, bug testers, documentation writers, and users. I'm definitely looking forward to watching this community grow and having the PICnet team contribute to this endeavor.