[SimonKoppel]

I didn't make a lot of notes during the conference so this will be in the nature of a brain-dump - a few things that I think will be interesting or useful for you to know.

First things first - the chocolate fountains yesterday lunchtime were excellent, though clearly designed to embarrass everyone by making sure we all ended up with chocolate down our chins. I also enjoyed the "Highland Fling" reception - kudos for providing the choice of vegetarian haggis - though I was slightly underwhelmed by the choice of whiskies available (didn't stop me drinking plenty, of course!). I would also have paid good money to have seen Shaun Sullivan in a kilt.

Keynote speakers were Marc Chardon and Chris Moon. Chris's description of the day his artificial hand jammed shut around his left testicle is not something I will forget in a hurry. Seriously, though, he was an excellent and motivational speaker.

Product news (don't think I'm giving away any trade secrets here, but if anyone from Blackbaud reads this and thinks I've said more than I should, I'm sure that the captain will edit out any offending items). It's beginning to look likely that 2008 will see the release of RE8. This will be built on the new Infinity platform. It will be massively faster and more powerful, and much more customisable, allowing people in different roles within the organisation to see totally different screen and menus. Contrary to what was suggested last year, this won't just be something for the big, multi-user organisations, though it will benefit those most. There is, however, no suggestion that RE7 development and support will cease.

RE7.81 is due out in the next few weeks. Major features include changes to security and encryption, changes to product installation, support for Crystal XI. For UK users, there are some major and long-overdue enhancements to Gift Aid processing.

The first product to be released on the Infinity platform will be Blackbaud's new Direct Marketing tool. This is intended to be a one-stop shop for managing all direct marketing activities, from planning new campaigns, managing internal and bought-in lists, reporting on ROI, etc. This is intended to do much more than The Information Edge, and will probably be free to anyone who currently has the marketing segmentation module within TIE.

That's all that comes to mind right now. It's a lot smaller than the Charleston conference - only two days, and about 250 delegates.

[DavidZ]

It is interesting. At one time, before Infinity was just the platform, Blackbaud were suggesting that the product would be aimed at enterprise customers mainly. Then came the name Galilieo as the name of the product and the news that RE7 would continue but whether that was ported over to the Inifinity platform was undecided. Recently however, we seem to be hearing less about RE7 future development, more about RE8 being on the Infinity platform and less about Galileo as separate product. I am wondering if BB are actually intending to just release RE8 on infinity as the end product.

Much of the benefit of the Infinity platform relates to using the native functionality of SQL Server 2005 amongst other areas, for fast bulk loading of data and for auditing changes. These were serious requirements for the enterprise clients. Now that RE8 is being released on the Infinity platform I wonder what else the enterprise clients would want from supposed separate application that has the capabilities Infinity already addresses.

Will there therefore be two separate fundraising applications or in the end will there just be one following the current model?

Interested to hear your thoughts

David

[DrewAllen]

I've been doing usability testing on the Infinity platform and they made it a point to say that the Galileo is most definitely NOT RE8. Obviously there is some communications failure at BB if two different groups are giving the exact opposite message.

Drew

[DavidZ]

I wasn't suggesting that they were giving different messages. This is simply the impression that I have got. That is why I wanted to hear some other feedback about it.

David