Member Platform (Slack) Meeting on February 20, 2025 [#3505990]

0️⃣ Who is here today? Please post your Drupal.org username (for issue credit) if you have one, share a very long-term or wild and crazy feature idea for Member Platform, and/or tell us why you’re joining us.

beautifulmind	Bhavin Joshi (beautifulmind)
bsnodgrass (he/him)	Bob Snodgrass (bsnodgrass) Hello
Nico Grienauer	Nico (Grienauer)
VinmayiSwamy	Vinmayi (VinmayiSwamy) :wave:
Barbara Errickson	I am here (barbarae) - but we had a big power outage last night and I am still getting connections back
André Angelantoni	André (aangel)…looking at getting Campaign Kit running on Member
jdleonard	Nobody’s taking the bait? :upside_down_face:Share a very long-term or wild and crazy feature idea for Member Platform
André Angelantoni	We must be the pragmatic types :wink:
bsnodgrass (he/him)	I’m on hold until I see what’s already on that list… no need to duplicate (edited)
jdleonard	JD Leonard (jdleonard) and my crazy idea (just coming up with this now) is a lead targeting tool for MOs with defined geographic boundaries (e.g. neighborhood associations). Draw boundaries on an embedded map and receive a list of households and/or commercial addresses, which can be used to populate the CRM (to know who your potential targets are) and/or for direct mail etc. Map can then show non-members in need of conversion!
Brian	Brian Sharpe (ridefree).Primary reason I'm here is b/c I'm interested in a lean drupal based solution for orgs I'm connected to that want something better but can't afford it. 🙂I'm also thinking about other projects my team has in mind that could work alongside something like this. eg. a sociocracy tool, or impact report.
Eric (sikofitt)	Eric Wheeler (sikofitt). Just following along, curious how this may be used in higher education / university groups.
Walter Haas	I've had a lot of experience with volunteer groups, mostly environmental, with vanishingly small budgets. I've noticed that over the years a certain pool of people rotates through these groups in varying roles in related groups. The usual path seems to be working energetically on an issue, say mountain conservation, followed by burnout and taking a break, maybe getting a real job to pay the bills, then getting involved in a different issue, say desert conservation. This suggests to me that there would be value in keeping membership and role as a history, not just the status at the moment. This would give the organization a tool to see who has experience with certain issues and might be able to advise new workers in that area. It might also make it possible to ask members whether they have recovered from burnout yet.
mandclu	mandclu here. I'm curious to see how much overlap there might be between the Member Platform and the open-source Meetup alternative that everyone wants but no one wants to build
jdleonard	@mandclu I’m also interested in this. See #meetup-alternative which doesn’t have much happening in it. My gut reaction is that an instance of Member Platform would very likely serve the needs of any one Meetup.com group (except the promotion of events to the wider Meetup.com community, which is a real benefit). Relatedly, Meetup has an API, which could presumably be used to sync data between a Meetup group and a Member Platform instance, but it requires Meetup Pro, which is $55/mo ($47/mo with a 6-month commitment).
Walter Haas	Another phenomenon to consider is the active non-member. I've been a member of the Wasatch Mountain Club for 50 years. The club's policy is that non-members are allowed to come on trips, because how else would you know whether you want to become a member? The theory is that after a couple of trips you should either join and pay dues, or stop coming. Then there have been a small number of people who don't join the club, don't pay dues but continue to be active. It might be useful to have a way to keep track of people who do this.
jdleonard	@Walter Haas Do you have a Drupal.org username so we can credit your participation?
bsnodgrass (he/him)	@jdleonard I think those meetup.com costs you mentioned may be outdated. My non-Pro costs went from 99+ / 6 months to $170+ (edited)
jdleonard	@bsnodgrass (he/him) Here’s the sort of published pricing. Sounds like they’ve really done a number on you! Among many others…
Esmeralda	Esmeralda (Esmoves) Feature: being able to create your own group, like project groups, to collaborate through the website. Joining to connect #la_eu site project for local drupal associations with MOP
Nico Grienauer	+1 from me 🙂
junaidmasoodi	Junaid (junaidmasoodi) Hello, I can help with Accessibility, UX, Design and Front-end (edited)

1️⃣ Do you have any topics to propose for the meeting today? Feel free to propose them in this thread, and then I will give them their own unique threads for discussion. Conversation moving slow? Go ahead and open your own thread in the next numeric order.

2️⃣ Defining MVP (Minimal Viable Product). What’s the smallest set of work we should deliver for our initial (1.0) release? The idea is to keep it as small as possible, while remaining useful. We’ll expand on this minimal feature set in the roadmap. Please be detailed in your response!

bsnodgrass (he/him)	There is a Google Drive Folder for Member Platform, @jdleonard has a doc there for MVP https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y9W67Sm8sut373-61vbyRlw_vFyhBEiPL2d0...
bsnodgrass (he/him)	I had planned to get myself up to speed with past meeting notes before now, but with the security releases yesterday I got a bit delayed. Working on that now.
jdleonard	Yeah! So it’s extra tricky to host a Slack meeting in a Google Doc (no notifications for everyone, discussions not recorded). So for now that contains just my own notes. My goal is to distill what happens here in Slack into that doc then finalize on next week’s Zoom meeting. (edited)
André Angelantoni	Personally, I’d like to see an assessment of what’s already out there to understand which features are must-haves because every other system has them.For instance, I imagine a calendar with the ability to make repeating events is a must-have.
jdleonard	@André Angelantoni Agree this would be very helpful! Help needed! In the interim, hazard an MVP proposal?
André Angelantoni	“hazard an MVP proposal?”I always start these sorts of tasks by understanding what’s already out there. Otherwise there is just a lot of wheel spinning, in my experience.
bsnodgrass (he/him)	Looking over all the things written up so far, I’m feeling like are aren’t quite ready to define MVP. What do we think the goal is at this point? I think the timeline JD offered up last week was getting something ready for DrupalCon?That is very short timeline, I feel like presentation material is about all we could pull off.
André Angelantoni	Grok 3 responded to “What are the core features of an online (web-based) membership site?” with:
André Angelantoni	So it seems to me that these are the key :profile modulepayment module (stripe or similar)membership/subscription module (see section below)event calendarforum/posting (OpenSocial does this well by mimicking the Facebook wall)private messagingMy guess is that these Wordpress membership plugins all have at least the above items:1. MemberPress 2. Ultimate Member 3. Simple Membership 4. LearnDash 5. WP-Members 6. Restrict User Access 7. JetEngine 8. MemberMouse 9. Thrive Apprentice 10. Paid Memberships Pro 11. WishList Member 12. ARMember 13. SureMembers 14. Ultimate Membership Pro 15. WooCommerce Memberships(edited)
jdleonard	There is SO MUCH we could do for an MVP, but we could easily get swept up in all the possibilities. In my mind, providing a fairly full-featured solution is a non-goal for 1.0 so in some ways looking in detail at what is already out there could be a distraction from deciding what the first thing out the door should be so we can focus our efforts and get an initial success under our belts. I’m not expecting that we have a release by DrupalCon (but that sure would be cool!)
jdleonard	Clearly membership will be central to most of what we do. I propose that for 1.0 we target a release that simply lets an MO track its contacts and any memberships they have (a basic CRM including membership management). Perhaps they currently use a spreadsheet or a Word doc. Member Platform 1.0 would provide them with a more purpose-built, structured solution to track the information they already have. It wouldn’t provide anything to members; it would just be volunteers/staff managing data. While 1.0 on its own would probably not be enough to convince many (or even any) orgs to actually switch, the promise of an enticing roadmap that spells out what’s coming might get our foot in the door.
jdleonard	Perhaps it would be necessary to add a little more function to 1.0. One simple idea: ability to sync contacts to Mailchimp along with their memberships/tags.
André Angelantoni	“but we could easily get swept up in all the possibilities.”True. But you don’t think Grok identified the core items for any Member platform? (I used the new DeepSearch feature and it showed me the research it did. I did not include the pages of that here.) (edited)
jdleonard	I would hope that Member Platform would offer all those things. My opinion is that we don’t need to (and shouldn’t) provide all those “core” features for 1.0. I posit that it will take us longer to deliver those things if we don’t first provide a truly minimal viable product.
Cellear	To my surprise, I agree with Grok's list.Perhaps it would help to line up things that aren't suitable for MVP.The one that really jumps to mind is integrations of any type. There are too many of them, and they require a lot of tuning.
Cellear	(But a case could be made for nailing down the APIs needed to implement integrations.) (edited)
André Angelantoni	Then it seems to me that the next step is to have an actual MVP definition that we can all assess and discuss.Everything that isn’t in 1.0 gets listed in a separate section.
mandclu	A lot of work was done to prepare an events calendar for Drupal CMS, even though some of it still lives in contrib. Check out events_calendar, events_recurring, and events_registration. At least basic versions of these capabilities could be very quick to add into MP
Cellear	Would that make those recipes dependencies for MP, or would they be forked when they're included?
mandclu	I would lean towards making them dependencies
Brian	Great to have a good sense of the common required features, a lot of these make sense to me.Some additional thoughts...1. Who are we building it for and what are their needs?Clearly defining what the needs of the orgs we want to support is key. We have some of this already and I would like to put some effort into further refining what is [here]#3507591: Contribute use cases / requirements from real organizations) so that we have some clear requirements to help us prioritize.eg. I'm not clear that it's a high need to have membership entities beyond a user account. Perhaps the need is just to have a member (user) get notifications from the system and a way to represent what fees are owing and paid.2. What are our goals?Provide a lean/realistic option for low-resourced (staffed) member orgs.Offer a Drupal answer for this need. Not attempt to be a fully featured solution. Or at least that's what I'm filtering in to fit my views 🙂(a) is the reason I support this, (b) because I want to build on the work DrupalCMS is doing to regain broader appeal (and believe in the Drupal way) (c) b/c I believe it blocks (a)That said here is my list of what would go into an MVP. I'm trying to be a little solution agnostic here, though most of this is just site building captured by recipes imho. This is intentionally sparser than the Grok list 🙂Optional: Private access only (must be at least authenticated to see more than a login page)"Decently designed" login page"Decently designed" dashboard that has all content accessible2 member roles (beyond admin/anon) - Member Admin (for staff/admin), MemberPayment Tracking - This could be as simple as a content type that only Member Admin can edit, and reflects what dues have be collected. Optionally only Member Admin sees. It could also be a field on a user profile, with an accompanying view. Payment Link - Clear instructions and link to where to pay. (could be just a block where instructions are written)Documents - An easy way to upload, organize and access key documents (bylaws, notices etc) Content type and a view?Next additions:7. Upcoming events - Likely making use of the events recipe8. Notifications - Likely to email, though perhaps tricky with the need for relay setups (edited)
Cellear	@Brian - I love #2 -- that feels like something that almost every adopting organization will need, and can be easily extended if more roles than that were needed. (I generally try to discourage proliferation of roles, so if I was implementing I'd ask to see strong justification for more roles than that, and reassure the site owner that they shouldn't feel compelled to replicate their company's org chart.)For similar reasons I'm unenthusiastic about #5 and #6. For one, don't they overlap quite a bit? But more importantly, I think a lot of potential users of MP don't have paid members, and if they do that will often come with lots of requirements and existing infrastructure that will vary widely. Perhaps the payment needs can be covered by having the right APIs included in "Access Control" (to refer back to Grok's list)(#3 feels like a good candidate for a Drupal CMS recipe -- I think "Dashboard" already is.) (edited)
Cellear	(I see mixed messages about the state of the Dashboard in Drupal CMS )
jdleonard	Do y'all feel like content management (even a homepage) is necessary for MVP? (It can always be added separately via Drupal CMS recipe, for example)
Cellear	I think you need a sample use-case. That could come from an "add sample content" recipe if you think it would be distracting otherwise.
Brian	@Cellear re: #5 & #6. They certainly overlap in implementation. I kept them separate to not make assumptions though. Point taken re: the complexities of what a member is. It gets complicated really fast the more orgs you look at. Maybe a less opinionated way to say it would be:Member Status (Rather than payment tracking) : tbd but could include things like "paid up" or "good standing"Member Actions (rather than payment link) : tbd but could include link to pay, booking forms, etc. Maybe too much for an MVP, but do think we need something to distinguish it as a Member Platform. 🙂 (edited)
jdleonard	@Brianeg. I’m not clear that it’s a high need to have membership entities beyond a user account. Perhaps the need is just to have a member (user) get notifications from the system and a way to represent what fees are owing and paid.Unfortunately I don’t think it’s safe to assume that a member will necessarily have contact information (e.g. email address) and thus a way to receive notifications.For example, in many neighborhood associations there are (typically elderly) people without email addresses and people who don’t want to provide contact information. There are members who operate entirely offline, but they still need to be tracked as members, and there are non-members who still need to be tracked.To me a Drupal User is for logging in and being assigned roles to allow actions to be taken (and has some other associated baggage). To overload that concept to represent a Contact seems potentially unwise when building a general purpose system. Of course, there would be a need in many use cases to allow a User to seamlessly update their Contact information (and perhaps, for example, those of others in their household or those for which they are otherwise responsible for).While I think an argument could be made that just using a Drupal User would suffice for MVP, it feels to me like an example of something warranting a more extensible (complicated) architecture from the start. There are good reasons why CRMs track Contacts distinctly from those who log in. (edited)
Brian	That's a great use case example @jdleonard! My bias has been assuming more of a tool for all members to engage with. Which I suppose is less of a crm-liteand more of a basecamp-lite :wink: So we've got:member orgs needing a shared tool for all membersmember orgs needing way to track and manage members independently of the members
jdleonard	I would wager that for many use cases, most members would engage with the tool e.g. to join/renew (regardless of whether payment is required), but some would not engage and need to be managed by the MO.
Esmeralda	Maybe I missed it in this tread, but multi languagal is a must for most organizations
jdleonard	@Esmeralda It hasn't been explicitly written down, but it is certainly implied by the word "globally" in the project mission!

3️⃣ Feature Roadmap. Beyond MVP (1.0), it is helpful to align on priorities and sequencing of features to be delivered. At a high-level, what would you propose be delivered (in as many point releases as you care to offer + a long-term bucket)?

jdleonard	Example (not what I’m proposing myself):1.0 Administration manages contacts and membership records, can export etc1.1 Administration can import contacts and membership records1.2 Self-service dues payments for new and existing (e.g. renewing) members1.3 Outbound Communications (Mailchimp alternative)1.4 Event Registration (Eventbrite alternative, e.g. Event Platform)1.5 Donations (e.g. Campaign Kit)1.6 Content Management (Squarespace alternative)Long-TermMigrate to/from CiviCRMDonationsAccountingVoting
bsnodgrass (he/him)	I would add Group for Long-term
jdleonard	@bsnodgrass (he/him) Tell us more! What functionality are you proposing the Group module would be used to provide?
jdleonard	It might seem counterintuitive to draft a roadmap before the scope of the MVP has been agreed upon, but I’m purposefully proposing this as a brainstorming exercise to chart different possible paths, which may inform the definition of the MVP scope itself. I also think it can be helpful to keep people motivated to see [feature I’m passionate about / feature my org requires] in a more definite position in a roadmap than simply “sometime after MVP”. I hope we can define a high-level roadmap in concert with a detailed MVP scope.
bsnodgrass (he/him)	The group functionality I would envision would be to establish working areas for committee work. Most membership organizations I have been involved with have an executive committee, and many have standing committees for organization work where initiatives are worked on before the information is published for the organization as a whole.
mandclu	One other thing to consider as part of this discussion is which capabilities should be included by default (e.g. "MP core") vs being provided as optional add-ons. For example, MP core might include integration with a single payment processor, but MP could include recipes that aren't applied by default for integration with other processors
mandclu	Another big thing to consider is whether MP should include any AI-based capabilities
Brian	I was curious about how the AI capabilities might work for this. In the MVP discussion @Cellear pointed out that organizations have many different methods of how they do membership. An AI approach could be a set of guard rails that asks questions to build out a Member Status and Actions section?
Brian	I've also been thinking a lot about impact/annual reports lately and using standards with json-ld. One of the many "modules I'd like to build if I had time"
mandclu	I was thinking the AI chat agent could make it easy for less technical users to add membership fields etc, but it could probably use some workshopping
jdleonard	I think there’s enormous potential for AI here.
jdleonard	For a less technical user, I’m assuming that any AI interactions would be in their production environment and thus wouldn’t be used to (at least in the traditional sense) “add fields” or similar. A possible workaround would be having some predefined “custom” fields already present, but hidden and letting the end user unhide and set the labels for those fields (via UI or AI). Perhaps there’s a more elegant solution? (edited)
jdleonard	e.g. have Custom Text Field 1 through Custom Text Field 10 and Custom List Field 1 through Custom List Field 10 (and whatever other field types could be envisioned for general custom use without requiring config management). User could rename one to “Drupal.org username” for example. That’s a bit of a mess to expose in the UI and would benefit from AI. (edited)

4️⃣ Call for case studies / requirements for real organizations. We have a few already, but could use more diversity of organizations and their varying requirements. Comment on this Slack thread with the name of a membership organization you could perhaps write up some requirements for!

jdleonard	Austin Drupal Users Group
jdleonard	Zilker Neighborhood Association
bsnodgrass (he/him)	I have some current clients I can poll
Brian	I commented in the ticket earlier. I'll see what comes from here and if I see another type of org I've been part of with enough of a dif set of reqs I will write it up.

5️⃣ Call for input on CRM project’s membership data model. While it’s not certain that Member Platform will leverage the CRM project, its maintainer is already planning to include relevant functionality there. Best to get in on the ground floor with thinking through the use cases for tracking memberships and how the proposed model could be improved. (Slack meetings are awkward so) feel free to share any initial thoughts in this Slack channel for feedback during the 24 hour meeting before migrating them to the linked issue.

bsnodgrass (he/him)	I think some CRM basic functionality is important. I think I have seen some schemas out in the wild we should also look at.
Brian	Don't have strong opinions on this atm. But would am always interested seeing schemas if you plan to sahre @bsnodgrass (he/him)

6️⃣ Contributor roles. In last week’s Zoom meeting, we came up with the following list of contributor roles for this project (bold are those for which no volunteers have yet been identified)Project managerBusiness analystDesignerMarketingArchitectSite builderFrontend developerBackend developerUser experience specialistInternationalization specialistAccessibility specialistTesterCustomerCommunity liaisonEach person also volunteered which roles they could fill (or contribute time toward). If you didn’t contribute that on the Zoom meeting (or wish to revise), I invite you to volunteer yourself here.

jdleonard	From last week:Barbara - Architecture, site builder, requirements definition, CiviCRM expertise, testing, user experience, migration between CiviCRM and CRMBhavin - Development, testing, project management, Architecture, internationalization Andre - Would like to investigate integrating Campaign Kit into MemberSuggested to Brian that we start work on a recipe to install CK into MemberBob Snodgrass - project manager, site building, architecture, project browser and recipes initiatives, market testing with potential clientsBrian - project management, architecture, translating client needs to requirements, site building, some development, interested in working with recipes, helping refine user case, internationalizationKathryn - site building, works directly with a couple of nonprofits using CiviCRM + Drupal Webforms+Views, keeping members out of CiviCRM, getting the Drupal community to use / promote without Drupal (working on DrupalCon Community Summit), on Advisory Council for Drupal CMS (community liaison)JD - Architecture, back end development
bsnodgrass (he/him)	:heavy_check_mark:
jdleonard	@junaidmasoodi wrote "Hello, I can help with Accessibility, UX, Design and Front-end" :robot-dance:

7️⃣ I’m exploring the possibility of the Member Platform initiative being under the fiscal sponsorship umbrella of MOSA. Thoughts?

jdleonard	MOSA is a 501(c)3 non-profit that facilitates a number of regional Drupal conferences as well as the Drupal Diversity and Inclusion initiative and the Live Captioning Initiative. Chief benefits I see would include 1) a way to receive (US federal tax deductible) donations to offset costs; and 2) access to free and discounted services due to 501(c)3 affiliation. Responsibilities would include appointing an at-large board member to MOSA who would attend quarterly meetings and contribute time to the organization’s processes/policies/operations. I’m attending the MOSA board meeting next Thursday, Feb 27 at 3pm CST to learn more. Anyone want to join me? (edited)
beautifulmind	If it is online, please count me in.
Eric (sikofitt)	MOSA is great. We use them for Stanford WebCamp. Everybody involved are amazing folks.
Brian	Don't really have a sense of how useful vs. time commitment it would be at this stage, but if you are excited about it then great!
jdleonard	I’m also not sure of that yet 🙂

Participants:

beautifulmind, bsnodgrass (he/him), Nico Grienauer, VinmayiSwamy, Barbara Errickson, André Angelantoni, jdleonard, Brian, Eric (sikofitt), Walter Haas, mandclu, Esmeralda, junaidmasoodi, Cellear