[Rubyforchange-talk] TROSA

[Evan David Light]

Well said.  Sounds good to me.

On Sep 13, 2007, at 5:25 PM, Bruce Tate wrote:

> If they have strong requirements, a motivation to work with us, and  
> a strong need, it sounds like a good customer.
>
> -bt
> On Sep 13, 2007, at 3:51 PM, Justin Gehtland wrote:
>
>> Trying to reply to this (seeing if it makes it through, now):
>>
>> That organization is still searching for the right people to build  
>> the app, and I think would relish having the help of this kind of  
>> group.
>>
>> Justin
>>
>> On Sep 13, 2007, at 4:29 PM, Chad Fowler wrote:
>>
>>> Here's the email Justin Gehtland has been trying to send.  Getting
>>> stopped somehow:
>>>
>>> Recently, we were approached by an organization in North Carolina
>>> called TROSA [1].  They are a residential rehabilitation  
>>> organization
>>> for substance abusers who have several businesses that the "clients"
>>> work in during their rehab in order to gain work experience and be
>>> part of a structured organization.  For example, we used them to  
>>> move
>>> our furniture when we moved, and we buy our Christmas trees from  
>>> them
>>> every year.
>>>
>>> The scenario is this:
>>>
>>> They have essentially "enterprise-level" needs.  They need an
>>> application to track their "clients", including things like medicine
>>> schedules, meetings with doctors and parole officers, tracking the
>>> admit process and the questionnaires they need to fill out,  
>>> interface
>>> with government organizations, provide reports for the donors, etc.
>>> etc. etc.
>>>
>>> Their current infrastructure is based on 11 separate Access and/or
>>> Excel "applications" strung together will baling wire.
>>>
>>> Two years ago, they got a grant from (I think) the Kellogg  
>>> Foundation
>>> to upgrade their infrastructure.  They found a company who said they
>>> would develop it in .NET Nuke. They spent two years and the entire
>>> grant and have no code to show for it, but they have very clear  
>>> system
>>> requirements for what the application needs to do.
>>>
>>> It is very module, and could easily be tackled in small pieces, and
>>> those pieces have a high degree of possible reusability across
>>> charitable organizations.
>>>
>>> They have a small budget for this, since the whole grant was wasted.
>>> They also had unbelievably unrealistic timelines.  When we looked at
>>> the spec, we said it would be easily 9-18 months. Their original RFP
>>> (from two years ago) gave two months for dev.  Needless to say, they
>>> chose not to engage us to build the app.
>>>
>>> So, they are an ideal candidate because I don't think there is  
>>> any way
>>> they are going to get something useful through normal commercial
>>> channels, due to the lack of funds compounded by lack of  
>>> understanding
>>> of the nature of the beast.
>>>
>>>
>>> [1] http://www.trosainc.org/"
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Rubyforchange-talk mailing list
>>> Rubyforchange-talk at rubyforge.org
>>> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rubyforchange-talk
>>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------
>> Justin Gehtland
>> justin at thinkrelevance.com
>> www.thinkrelevance.com
>> 919.824.5409
>>
>>
>>
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>
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>
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>
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