Monthly OCA Open Lives
Since May 2024, our Executive Director has organized a monthly live session open to anyone curious about the Odoo Community Association. The goal? Share ideas about the future of the OCA, ask questions about the OCA processes and governance, exchange knowledge and practices related to our common ecosystem around Odoo.
Each time, a dozen of participants attended the meeting and were happy to discuss. Several participants even came back a second time, which was unexpected and really a good sign. It is heartwarming to see that our community is present in the whole world: we had people from Japan, India, Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, Morocco, Nigeria, Argentina, Bolivia, Canada! We try to change the time and day to get more people from everywhere on the globe.
It seems that the OCA contributors, members and sponsors want to get in touch and share their concerns and ideas synchronously, in addition to the usual asynchronous communication through PR’s on Github, emails on the contributors mailing list or on our Discord server.
Want to give it a try? We share our next sessions in our newsletter and on our social media (/16)
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This is our second blog post on this topic. Didn’t read the first one? Find it here.
Hot and recurring topics
What’s the OCA strategy for the future?
This is a fundamental question, one that has been discussed a lot within the Board Meetings the past years.
The focus now is to make the OCA better known and that people think of the OCA as the only way for stable, reliable and suitable Odoo implementation.
Participants shared their opinion about the OCA and what they use as a sale pitch to their customers or in general to promote the OCA. Here is a selection:
“OCA is the best way for medium and big companies”
“We need to have a discourse about the vendor lock-in risk and explain to customers that working with OCA integrators means that there is the backup of a strong community. It is not only “Fabien’s bright ideas about a new pricing strategy”.
“Right now as a Community we have an inferiority complex compared to Odoo, but we are doing amazing stuff.”
“The best capable developers are in the OCA ecosystem.”
“As an Odoo integrator, you can earno more money with the Community Edition (working with the OCA) than selling Enterprise Edition licences”.
“Working with OCA is not cheaper but it’s more stable, reliable, and suitable.”
“Create a mantra in the Odoo world: when thinking “high quality”, OCA must come to mind.”
“If OCA is strong, as an integrator, I am strong.”
“Make the OCA sexy”
But there is the chicken and egg problem: the OCA needs money to do all this background work.
What business model for an Odoo Integrator working with the Community Edition?
Some participants wonder what is the best way to earn money while selling services on top of the Community Edition. As the OCA is providing a lot of features, if you invoice the time spent, it may only take 15 minutes max to install and configure a small OCA module. How to make a living from that?
The answer given was about showing to your customers that it’s your knowledge of the software and its ecosystem that allows you to answer quickly to their questions. You should invoice independently on the time spent.
In 2022, Pedro M. Baenza presented his point of view about the Odoo ecosystem and how an Odoo Integrator could fit. Let’s (re)discover his opinion here:
Communication and Event
We all agree with the fact that the OCA should improve its communication and be present on social media but also in real life at as many events as possible in the Odoo ecosystem and the Free and Open Source Software world. We proposed a talk at the OdooXP 2024 - make sure you attend: Discover the Odoo Community Association: how we cooperate to build top-notch open source Odoo addons and learn from each other.
At a participant’s request, the OCA has a Mastodon account in the Fediverse. Follow us here: https://fosstodon.org/@oca
Regarding OCA branding, suggestions went into different directions:
OCA modules branding: a PR has been opened to start this.
Advertise OCA great modules
OpenUpgrade: what did it cost to the OCA and how can we fund it to get the scripts ready faster in the future?
OpenUpgrade is one of the foundations of our community. IT aims to provide an Open Source upgrade path for Odoo.
This project was historically funded by the OCA launching an RFQ to get its Odoo database upgraded. This work would thus include the creation of the OpenUpgrade scripts for the standard Odoo modules used (Purchase, Sale, Ecommerce, Accounting), the migration of the custom code and finally the migration of the database itself.
This was started in 2017 with the migration from version 8 to version 10. To migrate to version 12 and 13, it took more time so the money was spent over two years. The average migration cost is around 25.000€, as we can see here:
Important information: the integrators who did the job usually offered a very nice price to the OCA in order to keep the costs as low as possible, our revenues exclusively coming from the membership, sponsoring and donations.
In 2023, the OCA Board made the decision not to migrate the database and to think about a new way of funding OpenUpgrade. This is still on its way and we will share our propositions next September during the OCA Days in Liège.
What should be the next big OCA features?
Currently, there is no strategy from the OCA to organize and fund features, except from OpenUpgrade. We hope, in the future to be more able to be more proactive and follow the Spanish Odoo Association (AEOdoo) which funds new nice features, like the Whatsapp Connector or the Automation tool.
Conclusion
We are amazed about the quality of the exchanges we have during those sessions. We will certainly continue to share our discussions here in the future.
Don’t hesitate to join us on the next sessions!
No need to register - just join the meeting on the link below
Friday 30th August - 3:30pm CEST / 1:30pm UTC
Join here: meet.google.com/xmt-sqpd-ixp
