The Quaker Portal idea got some heads nodding (nodding off?), perhaps prototyping as a sandbox (a simulation) using only fake data to begin with, giving Friends something to talk about (a conversation piece, a first draft). Lots of randomizing web services provide such infill automatically:
Lorem ipsum in legimus apeirian quo, mea in elitr percipit dissentias. Noster sententiae inciderint mel an, qui quot albucius at. Disputando adversarium cum in. At delicata salutandi efficiendi quo.The Directory is another perennial challenge. Some just want their email addresses listed, whereas others specifically don't want that shown (because of spammers mostly).
Ed is quite familiar with the issues involved, heads up our IT committee. He's been focusing on the General Secretary position and the need for encryption on laptops, which might be lost or stolen.
Running a secure data center is a separate can of worms in some ways, although not if you're using the laptop as a front end only, saving nothing special on the local drive, keeping anything sensitive at the central office, connecting by VPN or whatever encrypted tunneling system.
