CiviCRM Trainings / Code Sprint:

• Configuring, Customizing and Extending CiviCRM - New York: Sep 16, 2010 8:30 AM - Sep 17, 2010 5:30 PM
• CiviCRM User and Administrator Training - New York : Sep 16, 2010 8:30 AM - Sep 17, 2010 5:30 PM
• CiviCRM Code and Test Sprint - New York : Sep 18, 2010 9:00 AM Sep 19, 2010 5:30 PM

Following on from our training camps last summer, we are very pleased to announce another two training events in London this September/October. The first is aimed at users and administrators, and the second is aimed at integrators, implementors and developers.

We'll have folks from around CiviLand joining us for these trainings (Archduke Lobo, Grand High Wizard Dave Greenberg, and more) so you'll be learning from the experts.

Heading back from NTEN's national conference in Atlanta Saturday evening - both tired and stimulated. I was one of 1,500 non-profit "tech" folks (they come in all shapes and sizes btw). CiviCRM (and open source in generally) are clearly more on the radar at NTC each year - despite the bombardment of logos, banners and booths by the large commercial closed source vendors.

In a month, on March 25th and 26th, FairSay invites you all to Oxford, UK to join us for a two-track CiviCRM/Drupal and Plone Campaigning Camp (free with lunch and tea break included!).

We have quite a few paid training events lined up for this year. You can read some of the reports on prior trainings on our blog. Participants who have attended these trainings have remarked as to how much it has helped demystify CiviCRM for them (and their clients). Learn some valuable tips and tricks from the core CiviCRM developers and help the project! We offer a User training mainly for the CiviCRM end user / newbie, an integrator training for the CiviCRM administrator and a developer training for folks who want to extend and customize CiviCRM. Our current training schedule is:

• Integrator (Jan 21) and Developer Training (Jan 22) in Boston.
• Developer training on February 8 - 9, 2010 in Brussels.
• User (April 7), Integrator (April 11) and Developer (April 12) training in Atlanta.
• User (April 18) and Integrator (April 18) training in San Francisco.
• The first CiviCon - April 22, 2010 immediately after DrupalCon San Francisco. More details on this in future blog posts.

We're preparing a CiviCRM developer camp in Brussels on February 8th and 9th – right after FOSDEM 2010. Developer Camps are a place where CiviCRM developers, administrator and users can get together around CiviCRM. We'd like you to let us know what you want to see at the camp by commenting on the wiki page.

A passionate posse of folks interested in advancing the state of non-profit software gathered this week at the Non-profit Software Development Summit. CiviCRM was a sponsor of the event which featured a full "track" of Civi-related events. Some civ-highlights from the conference:

• Helping some current users solve problems and get up to speed on more advance features in the CiviCRM 201 session. Our community does pretty amazing things in the "cloud" - but I really love having opportunities to interact with users and integrators and developers "live and in person". The feedback on 3.0 usability improvements (especially the new navigation menu) was super positive and very gratifying.
• Participating in Lobo's "action-packed" 60 minute session on Extending CiviCRM without Hacking Core. The more I play with all the things that can be done with our evolving hook functionality - the more excited I get.
• Joining with a group of CiviCRM integrators (and a few users) to brainstorm about Building the CiviCRM Community. This session was organized by the folks at Dharmatech - and partly inspired by a really cool book - The Art of Community - written by Jono Bacon who is the community manager for Ubuntu (a popular open source operating system distribution based on Debian Linux). It was exciting to collaborate in thinking about how folks with different interests and skills can potentially contribute towards strengthening the CiviCRM community and accelerating adoption of the platform. If you're interested in the ongoing sustainability of CiviCRM - I would encourage you to read Jono's book and think about what "team" you can join and / or create.

Thanks to Gunner and the team at Aspiration for organizing a great event!

Hi all,

Following the success of the UK developer camp and meetup this summer, Michael, the Polish team of CiviCRM (Michał and Piotr) and myself have been discussing about organising one in Brussels.

We have chosen to organise it just before or after FOSDEM, that will happen this year on the 6th and 7th of February 2010.

This event is an opportunity 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.

Constituent Relationship Management for Civic Sector (CiviCRM) - Beginners, Intermediate, and Advanced