Last Thursday, a dozen local CiviCRM users, developers and persons interested in learning about the system met at the NEXUS Resource Center to discuss the Boston CiviCRM training and challenges that we each have faced during implementations. Thank you to the The Green Roundtable for allowing us to utilize their space for this meetup.

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!).

CiviCon - the first ever 'global' CiviCRM conference - is coming to San Francisco on April 22nd. We're getting really excited about the fantastic array of speakers and sessions already on the agenda ....

• Nathan Yergler, Creative Commons CTO will be kicking off the day, sharing his thoughts about the importance of open source software like CiviCRM to the success of non-profits and grass roots organizations, why Civi is important to Creative Common's mission, and what the horizon looks like.
• Cedric Brown, Director of the Mitch Kapor Foundation, along with Mitch Kapor (via video link) will be closing the day with their thoughts on the benefit propositions of open source software.
• In between, there will be a lots of great user AND developer oriented sessions including:
  

I am very excited to announce the first CiviCon! The day after DrupalCon this April, stick around in San Francisco for CiviCon. We'll have celebrity speakers, breakout sessions highlighting real-world examples of people making non-profits rock with CiviCRM, and ample opportunity to ask questions, meet people, and generally max out your CiviCRM fu. If you're reading this, you need to be there!

Here's the details: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/CiviCon+April+2010

It's 19.50, I'm in the train from Brussels to home, on my way back from the CiviCRM developer camp. Erik Brouwer has just left the train, Eagles on the headphone and there's a multicolored display of non-identifiable ligths thru the window.....just another 90 minutes and I will be on the couch with a glass of red, cats purring on my lap and telling Floor all about the two days. So what was it like, this developer camp?

Last Wednesday was a packed usergroup with more than 25 people squeezed into our meeting room in Scrutton Street. We were split more or less evenly between end users and developers/implementors, and between current and new users. There was a definite Drupal bias in the room, but there were some vocal Joomla implementors too. It was good to see familiar faces from last years developer camp and user training, as well as people that have started using CiviCRM in the past few months, and those that are just starting out.

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.

Here’s a group posting from Alice with Progressive Technology Project, and Kyle and Sacha with Rayogram:

Once again Rayogram’s staff stepped it up with hosting our NYC meetup, provided wifi access, with Sacha and Kyle taking leads in facilitating advanced user and developer hands-on break outs. I facilitated the newbies’ hands-on and demo break out, where we were able to use training sets fashioned by the Civi core team.

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.