Cory Collier

The lot of us here at NFi Studios have recently release the 0.1 Beta version of MemberFuse , a Social Network designed and developed specifically for Associations. I’d like to personally thank the team I work with at NFi, especially Sterling Raphael , Lynda Raphael , and Elizabeth Baranik for helping create the opportunities and goals for our development team to accomplish.

MemberFuse, as stated before, is a Social Networking package built on open source software that helps existing Associations provide value for their members outside of the usual, and sometimes outdated methods they currently employ. The goal for any Association is to give it’s member base something tangible and usable. We at NFi have worked exceptionally hard to produce something that is both useful and valuable.

The process to develop MemberFuse has been an amazing learning curve for me. I’ve always stressed concepts of design patterns and convention when speaking with other developers. This is especially crucial in open source software development, where the developer is often left to his / her own devices when it comes to creating applications. However, some of the features necessary for MemberFuse really pushed the limits of what had previously thought possible before.

One of the coolest things I got into with MemberFuse was the integration with Trac and SVN and Eclipse. I’m going to write a tutorial on how to make the most of this pretty soon, so be on the lookout for that. I can say in advance though, that it has made my life in team software development far easier and more manageable than ever before.