There are various CiviCRM events coming up in London this February, indeed there is 'something for everyone' regardless of your level of experience and familiarity with CiviCRM.  If you can't make it over to the US this April, you should definitley consider participating in one or more of these events...

Saturday morning I brought the McAndrew bros and later Gergö Tiszi to the train station, which ended a great CiviCRM code sprint in Apeldoorn. I think we had quite some progress on CiviMobile, which looks really nice on my Android. I would like to thank Peter, Rajesh, Michael and Willem for their contribution and Hemma for her enthusiasm. We also improved the test set up and did some testing, for which Michael, Gergö, Xavier, Hans and Michael deserve thanks. I tested the new API class, which was elegantly crafted by Xavier and solved some API issues.

Although the weather has not been that great during the sprint we have not let that get in the way of our CiviMobile testing. As you'll see, the sprinters have been using CiviMobile at every opportunity possible.  The picture below shows us leaving for the Goede De Woning offices on our 6-person rickshaw, tapping away at our phone screens.

Hello again World, here is the Code Sprint team at Apeldoorn checking in with your latest update.
 
Yesterday was Day 2, we're really starting to make progress on the CiviMobile and Web/Unit testing fronts.
 
We have a continued commitment to testing CiviMobile in the most challenging environments, as you can see here.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7033/6506760091_dcfaa5e725_b.jpg

Hello, CiviCRM World. Here we are at the European Code Sprint in Apeldoorn. As the official website http://www.apeldoorn.nl/smartsite.dws?id=127356 says: if there is one city in the Netherlands where living and working, commerce and recreation, natural beauty and urban style all come together, it must be Apeldoorn.  I'm inclined to agree!
 

Continuing our amazing productivity during sprints, we introduce our 9th and final sprint of the year. This sprint is being held at the offices of De Goede Woning in Netherlands from Dec 12th - Dec 16th. A big thanks to the sponsors  - De Goede Woning - for offering facilities, bosworX for installing WiFi and to Erik H and Erik B from EE-atWork for sponsoring the food, drink and accommodations.
This sprint we are trying something a bit different. In addition to the folks gathering in the NL, we will have a virtual sprint going on at approx the same time on the #civicrm IRC channel. Considering we have developers spread across different time zones (europe, india, US east coast, US west coast, new zealand), we should be going pretty good around the clock :) We'll have a virtual meeting on a daily basis @ 3:00 pm NL time (click on the link to find that time locally)
This sprint is focussed on these areas: Unit and Web Tests, Documentation, and CiviMobile.

 
Late last month, I attended a two-day code sprint in New York for CiviCRM, the free software constituent relationship management system. I want to say a few words about it because I thought it was a great experience, and a good model for other free software projects to follow (many already do!).
CiviCRM is a "graduate" of the FSF's High Priority Projects list. A system for nonprofits to organize their fundraising and communicate with supporters had been on the list for quite a while, because this was an area where many people told us they were still forced to use proprietary software.
Last year, we evaluated CiviCRM and concluded that it had achieved the set of features and level of stability that meant it could fill this need. At that point, the FSF also decided to switch its own operations to CiviCRM. Since then, CiviCRM use by others has been picking up, with EFF being one recent major adopter I noticed.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation kindly provided us with ALL of their new and very empty building to hold the CiviCRM Code, Usability and test sprint in the bay area. It was two tables, powerstrips, folding chairs, and three whole floors to ourselves, but we had a solid wifi connection, great coffee, members of the core team and the CiviCRM community, and a specially trained coding-companion dog!

With this set up the group worked on several fronts: Extending CiviCRM, Testing, Troubleshooting and Reports:

There will be a CiviCRM Euro code sprint in The Netherlands from 12 - 16 December 2011, and you can register here

The idea is to have as many community members present so we can achieve lots and make all of us happy!

Over the past few years the administration menu has grown quite a bit. Although I use it quite often, I find that I'm sometimes unsure where to look for a particular configuration option. We've heard the same comments  from both experienced and new users - so Xavier Dutoit and I thought it would be a good idea to take a stab at re-working the menu structure. The goals of the re-organization are: