Steve, Wayne, John, Alan, and Brandon on a meeting to talk about servers, special needs, and how sales tax runs and plays through the mix. Some of these states are really trying to get a tighter grip on the real-time sales tax tracking. They are losing millions. The need is big enough that they, the states, are willing to pay for new software or new development from sales tax revenue.

John was recording some notes. Wayne was asking questions on how deep do they want to go and can we really require some of those things that they are proposing. Wayne was proposing that any POS (point of sale) system could send their transactions to the some entity and we could help them (that entity) control the backend API socket system.

The preferred solution might be to create a separate entity that gets the majority of the load and the traffic. We use adilas and then push to that other entity through an API socket that we create. In computer language, that is called "eating your own dog food" (using and consuming your own API sockets).

Steve was proposing that the state wants to mix what adilas has right now and what eXpo has (a third party solution that does some banking and payment solutions) right now. They are looking for the whole system that works and plays together. Some of the biggest needs are on full inventory tracking, sales tax reports, and other compliance stuff.

Alan was chiming in and giving some ideas. Basically, use any POS system that they want, but you have to play a certain way to handle the state compliance. The state compliance pieces would be virtually mirroring what we are doing inside of adilas and how we do it. Once again, sales tax and inventory tracking are the biggest pains. It comes down to needs, requirements, and scalability (how big/small can you be and how quick).

Small observation - Good mix of ideas and suggestions. Mixing Wayne on backend servers and new tech, Alan on backend development and observations, John on general flow (backside and frontside) and taking notes, Steve stating dreams, sales, and requirements, and Brandon trying to illustrate and help the different people get their point across. Interesting mix.

The cool thing is, adilas already has a ton of these things already built-in. It is exciting to be able to replicate things and then go from there. We don't have to start from scratch... We already have and do a bunch of the things that are needed.

Wayne was proposing a small sample (an MVP - minimal viable product type approach) then see if they like it or don't like it. If they do like it, we could then build it in and deploy it quickly. Basically a foot in the door or experiment type process. As we got deeper into it, there is a whole other side to that to get all of the other supporting pieces that are needed (worlds, corporations, locations, users, permissions, settings, etc.). It is always deeper than you think (cause and effect relationships) once you bring in the supporting pieces and variables.

From Wayne - What is the end report or output that you want? Ok, let's go build that. That gives us a goal and a target. Let's start with that. It could expand from there vs trying to get the whole picture all at once. That's the way that we should be developing software.

From Alan - What if we build them a report from our existing data and system right now? Then, if they like it, we duplicate it and make it scalable.

From Steve and Wayne - What if we show them what we currently have and then ask, what else would you want or need? Pretend that it is the sales tax portion. Basically, give them a good starting point and then let them dream. We could put in some dummy data (or even use real data) and then show them some simulations. We could even show an outside party usage (using API sockets) and how it play into the mix. Let them see what is possible based on existing reports and options (out of the box). That would be pretty cool!

From Steve - Even seeing the possible vision of what we are proposing for scaling for this current project (all of the stuff above) may help us all out, even with our normal adilas stuff. This idea of a separate API socket that sums things up could really be super helpful. Similar to the business intelligence or enterprise level corporation (world or entity) - a common place to hold, store, aggregate, and sum things up (BI - business intelligence stuff). Pretty cool to see where it could go.