Beginning thoughts on the Agenda for Conference 2018

[lalnco]

Thanks & Kudos to @MichaelPinkowski for putting these thoughts together. I agree to the most part of it and this may set the tone of the Conference 2018.

Some comments from me:

@MichaelPinkowski

Security: Our own instances were hacked a few weeks ago. Thanks to some outstanding partnership from one of our premier development teams (shoutout to Greycube), we were alerted to the issue, received some excellent guidance on counter-measures and we were able to quickly seal the breach. But it highlighted the risk that we were at and how unprepared we were. This seems like an area where we could all benefit from the sharing of information and rallying to each others aid in times of crisis. There are qualified teams of ERPnext experts at work every hour of every day (Frappe released V10 on Christmas Day!). Whenever an attack happens, there are smart people that can help. How do we systematize that incredible resource?

This is critical importance and must be talked about. Maybe everyone here including the stalwarts who worked on patching it up can suggest/discuss the way around making it systematic and formalized. Something like a team of dedicated rescuer to assist in case of such incidences.

@MichaelPinkowski

GDPR: When the EU rolled out its new regulations I felt lucky that none of my systems were live yet! But that day is coming and I have no idea what it will take to bring a Frappe/ERPnext instance into compliance. It is even trickier for us because our clients have clients who have information that might be covered by the regulations. You might too! We should work on solving this together.

GDPR being a specialized topic. Someone who is subject matter expert within us, OR maybe someone facing the heat of GDPR strongly pays to get the specialization to work on making ERPNext GDPR compliant.

I keep noticing there are numbers of expectation shared on discuss post, but we all have to agree that, on the other end–to fulfill those expectations–no one but we ourself are standing.

@MichaelPinkowski

Immutable accounting: I found this discussion earlier this year fascinating. How do we remain relevant to the small, even embryonic businesses that want to embrace systems and technology (but still need a certain amount of “flexibility”) while still providing the medium and even large clients with world-class compliance? Are there systems, settings, or switches that we can set that will allow ERPnext to be the only accounting system that a company needs regardless of where they on their growth curve?

I have a different perspective on this. Being an auditor and finance person by training, I feel having immutability is the most important thing. It will increase the stability and reliance on the ERPNext for the external eyes. Flexibility is a good thing, but I guess when we think of ERPs, it is essential to have a system which does not allow changing records.

IMHO, I feel using ERPNext only for Accounting and not using the other parts of the system makes it bulkier to use. The training of an accountant on any new system is time-consuming and long-term activity. So, if one wants to use ERPNext only for accounting, one would be better off using the commonly used tools (ex: QBO for North America [even its picking up in India] and Tally for India), because finding trained talent is not a challenge.

@MichaelPinkowski

its an App and it isn’t welcome on stage. Yeah, see, we needed it pretty fast and it is a big chunk of code and there are a ton of questions about how it will work in real life.

But will it be available on GitHub for anyone else to integrate it with some basic instructions on how to use what your team has done?

@MichaelPinkowski

(Full disclosure, we are holding some code that we won’t release for at least 2 years.)

This is a controversial matter. I just want to understand, what could be the rationale of not sharing it? If its business criticality factor or legal issue or NDA obligations, one can understand.

Once again, thanks for taking the lead of writing your thoughts and initiating this conversation.