## The end of the beginning

Dear club directors, club members and open source community,

Anyone who tries to run an club will know the problems that may arise.

##### — People —

DatePoll tries to fix all those problems (or at least the biggest ones) that come up with the administration of the club.

## What is DatePoll?

DatePoll is a club management software. Who don’t know those words, can be reassured, all obscurities will hopefully be solved with this post.

1) DatePoll is a database (Excel table) to collect all possible data of a club member in real time Problem:Member data is often outdated, not complete or wrong.

Our solution: You give members the possibility to enter and adjust their own data.

Result: Every board member has the latest version of their user data anytime and everywhere.

2) DatePoll is an appointment planner. Problem: It’s really complicated to get the information when and where which club members have free time. This can usually only be solved with paid products or huge tables.

Solution: Every member has a customized timeline with all events and rehearsals. Administrators have an overview per group (brass band, soccer teams etc.) and per subgroup (register, etc.) without having to give up setting options. For an event, several points in time (with meeting points via Google MapsTM) and different response options can be defined.

3) DatePoll is Open Source. Problem: Clubs are based on the basic idea to share something with other people (no matter if it’s a hobby or a passion) without receiving anything in return (see music clubs, voluntary fire brigades, etc.). With so much kindness and voluntary commitment it would be a shame to pay money for a premium management software

Solution: Open Source and DatePoll. Anyone can use, copy and modify the software as he wants, completely free of charge. No user has to pay to use DatePoll. The only thing you might need is a server administrator ;)

Maybe in the future there will be the possibility to get DatePoll through our servers. But this concept is still work in progress.

Why “The end of the beginning” you might ask yourself. This blog entry is the end of the beginning of DatePoll. DatePoll has been in development for almost two years now and is far from finished. We still have big goals in front of us which we can certainly reach together. As with clubs, people count, so maybe they are not the problem but the solution.

For the “highly interested” among you: DatePoll currently consists of two young and passionate programmers. DatePoll is our voluntary activity “by volunteers for volunteers”.

We hope you enjoy our software, your DatePoll team

For further questions: q-a@datepoll.com