Those that missed out on the last three days of CiviCRM fun in London (and those for whom three days just wasn't enough) will be pleased to hear that this July's London Net Tuesday will be focused on CiviCRM. Nic Rodgers from Enable Interactive and I will be there to answer your questions and talk about how organisations in the UK and further afield have been using it.

Lunch time of day two stands out as a high point of the book sprint. We'd spent the first day working relatively independently - brain-dumping the chapters about areas of CiviCRM that we knew the best and by Tuesday, it was clear the chapters making up our introductory section needed a re-think.

Registration is now open for the UK/Europe CiviCRM developer camp in London. We had a decent response from the survey and pretty excited about the camp.

Registration is handled via CiviEvent and you can pay in either Euros of Pounds Sterling via a custom hook courtesy of Lobo and Ken (mrfelton on #civicrm).

A quick reminder that the week long CiviCRM book sprint starts this Monday and you're welcome to participate by writing, reading and commenting on chapters and sections.

We'll be using the Floss manuals infrastructure. The best way start is by saying hello in the IRC chatroom which is available on the Floss manuals site or via an IRC client at #flossmanuals on irc.freenode.net.

We're in the midst of preparing for a UK developer camp and meetup this June - an event where CiviCRM developers, administrator and users from the UK and Europe can get together around CiviCRM - and we'd like you to tell us what you want to see at the camp.

The developer camp is aimed at those that want to learn more about CiviCRM from the people involved in it's development. If you are interested in improving your CiviCRM admin skills, learning more about developing with CiviCRM or helping improve the product in any other way, then this camp is for you.

Dave Greenberg recently posted about our upcoming book sprint saying "almost every week folks ask whether there is a CiviCRM Book they can read".

So there must be something missing from the documentation. And given that the book will be in addition to what is on the Wiki - not a replacement for it - the two questions I am asking myself are:

'What are we missing in the documentation? And how should the documentation and the book complement each other?'

Last Thursday we had a developer meeting aimed at organisations and individuals developing with CiviCRM in the UK. Nine of us made it out. I'll try and give a flavour of the participants...

• 4-3-2 Drupal - Joomla - Neither
• 5-2-2 Experienced - Some experience - Just interested
• 4-2-3 Developer - Client - A bit of both

...and a couple of profiles: Ian McDonald from Greennet has been implementing CiviCRM installations on Drupal with different clients over the past couple of years. David Florence from Anthem ICT has done a couple of CiviCRM test installations. Peter Chauncy from Conflict and Change has had lots of success using CiviEvent with his team for event management. Peter Dunn, North West ICT champion, shared thoughts on what would make CiviCRM more appealing to small groups. A few people who wanted to come couldn't make it in the end - look forward to meeting them next time.

Dave Moreton and I have organised a meeting for UK developers and consultants working with CiviCRM in the UK. We want to have a discussion around the following ideas:

1) Localised development and support for non profits that use CiviCRM in the UK, and

2) Improving the links between developers and end-users in UK and the CiviCRM core team.

Thanks to Oliver Gibson (ICT champion for North West England) for finding us a venue for the next CiviCRM UK usergroup: Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisations (GMCVO) from 2.00 to 4.30pm on 30th September.

There have been a few interesting developments with CiviCRM in the UK over the past few months, so this should be an interesting meeting and a good chance to catch up. Like last time, the agenda will be quite open, and a report from the meet up available on the CiviCRM Wiki afterwards.

Yesterday afternoon the CiviCRM UK usergroup got together for their first proper meeting in Bristol. It was a great chance to meet other users in the UK and be involved in interesting discussion about how we use - and want to use - CiviCRM. It was also nice to go to the dockside afterwards, catch the last of the sun, and watch hot air balloons flying over the city (though at that point, the discussion did move on from constituent relation management).