2013, year of the product.
MountainRiver CMS built a number of things that look like they solve a problem common to an industry. While we have great skills building new things we have found that a cost-effective way for people to get a lot of capability for fewer dollars is to reuse things. This is the rationale behind using frameworks like Drupal, CiviCRM and Grails in the first place. Better still is a tool that solves some industry problem effectively, in a well conceived way.
All products are listed on our products site http://www.interlated.net.
Meeting Manager
Meeting manager is one of these tools. Every association, group, organisation has meetings and all of them want to be able to schedule meetings, request agenda items in an open and transparent way without too much gaming or loading of the agenda. All have the requirement to record minutes and track actions and communicate openly with non executive members of the organistion. The Meeting Manager has been provided as an online service to do exactly this.
Community Media Manager
The Community Media Manager tool was also created for the Ecological Society of Australia. It's purpose is to publish topical articles in a way that is backed up by the full resources of the organistion. This is important for scientific publishing. The Community Media Manager does this with a system for article suggestions, publishing workflow that enables a publishing committee and way of soliciting substantiating research from a whole community. We use our standard mailing tools to promote the articles to the media via email.
Loaded Sites
Starting with a 'loaded site' and then customising is a great way to go. There are two possible paths, and either of the following might apply to you:
a) I have a strong idea that my competitive advantage is through unique online systems, I am experienced in working with the development of technology products and the technical building of the product is focused enough that it can be built within a reasonable means. If this is the case we will put on our Interlated cap and if the business proposition is strong enough maybe take a stake in the company developing the product.
b) My service to humanity isn't particularly related to technolgy. I want to promote my organisation or deliver an online capability that can be fitted into categories such as publishing, online shop, membership site or subscription service and I want to have the highest level of capability as quickly and with consideration for cost.
In the second case, even if there are parts that might involve software that hasn't been written before, it might be best to pick the 'low hanging fruit' and use as much of an existing system as possible. In this case MountainRiver CMS will provide you with as much of the solution from our version management repository of built things. Even better, if you can let the custom parts 'bake a little' take one of our sites that fit common solutions that we use and work with us in leveraging it. In this way any customisation that needs to be done can be tied in with both our learnings regarding your business and gained experience of how solutions can be readily slotted into the publishing frameworks. We have sample corporate sites, campaign or product sites and membership sites. Best of all getting a site this way is fast.