Thomas Wittich and Mich Wyser will give a Cyclos demonstration at the OpenExpo conference in Zurich (24-25 Sept).
A special demo version of Cyclos has been created for this event.
The demo version is a complete installation (in German).
Cyclos: OpenExpo-Report (Thomas Sam Wittich)
CH-Winterthur, 24.-25.09.2008
The software exposition OpenExpo took place in Winterthur from 24th to 25th Sept. 2008. TopSoft was organizing this exposition. They cared very well for all participants providing free food, drinks and coffee. Besides conventional solutions of many IT-companies there was an area for Open-Source-Projects only.
Mich Wyser is a contributor to the German speaking Cyclos-Support-Network from Switzerland. He managed the signing up for Cyclos as a innovative software project. As a result, a stall has been sponsored by the organisers. Like most of the open-source projects, we shared our stand with the very interesting hardware and low-level-sofware project 'Coreboot'.
The OpenExpo offered the opportunity for contacting other software projects. Two of them, Drupal and SQL-Ledger, have already been considered for cooperation by the cyclos development team.
Drupal is a well known community-orientated CMS. It can make use of OpenID, which is a free, open-source based single sign on system (to sign in in many different Drupals with just one and the same account).
Further, in Drupal exists a module named 'Marketplace' – a small implementation of a market place with the ability to make payments from drupal-member to member. I contacted Matthew Slater, the author of the tool, to ask him for a module for Drupal providing a cyclos market place there.
Similar was the contact to Typo3. SinceThomas Waggershauer has already announced a marekt place module for Typo3, there was the chance to introduce each other. For instance, shortly spoke with Robert Lemke, project leader of Typo3's complete write-it-from-the-scratch branch (Version 5.0). Oliver Hader, a core developer, showed interest for the cyclos project, since another core developer, Ingmar Schlecht generally is close to the German Regional Money Movement.
SQL-Ledger, a free webbased accounting / book keeping Software with an ERP within, surprised with a cash- and PoS-solution. This contact was particularly interesting because SQL-Ledger has been potential cooperation partner for Hugo van der Zee. Cyclos needed a solution for a similar paydesk / office-desk-scenario (Solution within upcoming version 3.5)
Due to its uncommon, non-technical background Cyclos was one of the highlights of the open-source section. Social money, accouting and transaction of compelementary currencies and its commitment to NPO's / NGO's has been quite exotic for most 'hackers' at the OpenExpo and was therefore very attractive.
The Cyclos-DEMO-CD was well received. Mich Wyser and Thomas Wittich produced it for the OpenExpo. The two sponsors RegioSTAR e.G. and Sunflower Foundation supported the project.
Further interesting discussions took place with the projects eGroupware, Ingres, Limbas.
The very impressive presentation of the Apache Softwware Foundation (ASF) – probably the world's largest foundation for free and open-source software – explained the structure and organisation of such an incredible initiative. The core community has 2,000 people world wide. Countless others work on the code of this project as well.