This blogpost is
- a quick reminder that CiviCamp Manchester is just 7 weeks away
- a call out for anyone interested in speaking or presenting
If you want to deliver a session at CiviCamp, please drop a line to William Mortada or Rose Lanigan, giving them an outline of what you'd like to present.
They will be in touch to find out more about your presentation and, once agreed, they'll add your session details to the programme for the day.
For further information about presenting at CiviCamp please read on...
What is CiviCamp?
As other people have more eloquently expressed, CiviCamps are opportunities to:
- explore what CiviCRM can offer your organisation
- expand your own understanding and skills
- make connections in the CiviCRM community
At CiviCamp Manchester we'd love to hear from as many community members as possible. Whether you're a gnarled and grizzled veteran of The Clone Wars , sorry, previous CiviCamps, or you are considering presenting for the first time.
We want to hear your take on what Civi can do, how to get the most from Civi, or getting involved with the Civi Community.
If this is your first time (or first time in a while) public speaking please remember that:
- CiviCamps are relaxed, friendly occasions and are supportive environments for all speakers.
- Discussions from a user-led perspective are as valuable as presentations on more technical topics.
What to talk about
Speaking from a user perspective you can use the opportunity to show how your organisation uses CiviCRM to help achieve its aims (e.g. engaging and recruiting new volunteers), or dive into a specific CiviCRM Component to show you get the most out of it (managing Memberships, getting the most from Mailings, running and advertising Events).
If you are a developer you may want to showcase how you've combined elements of webforms, search tools and CiviCRM Extensions to extend CiviCRM and deliver a solution for the organisations you work with.
From either perspective, it would be good to show the reality of working with CiviCRM. To talk about any frustrations and stumbling blocks you found along the way, and how you worked round them.
As the latest developments in CiviCRM, SearchKit and Formbuilder are tools that people are eager to learn about. If you're happy to deliver a tutorial/ workshop on getting the most out of either of these shiny pieces of kit we would love to hear from you
We'd also like to know how you find working with the CiviCRM Community. Do you want to cheerlead for the chat channel? Where can we improve local meet ups? How to get involved with updating the documentation?
Who you'll be talking to
CiviCamps attract people from across the Third Sector, but there are three main categories of attendees
- People seeing if CiviCRM is the best software for their organisation.
- People who already use CiviCRM and want to find out what more they can be doing.
- People who administer, implement and develop CiviCRM wanting to see the latest developments and to learn from others' experiences.
You don't have to pitch your session at one specific audience, what you're talking about may be applicable to more than one category of attendee. If you can let us know the general level aim to address, this will help us schedule the day so that not all "introduction to Civi" sessions run during the same slot
Formats and presentation styles
At the St Thomas Centre we'll have use of the Main Hall and other smaller rooms that hold 15- 20 people, so you won't have to deliver your presentation all the delegates at the same time. And we'll have sessions where more multiple workshops/ presentations are being delivered at the same time.
How you want to deliver your session is entirely up to you. Whether that's a PowerPoint focussed presentation, or a more hands on workshop style.
Each session will last up to 60 minutes. So please allow. 30-40 minutes for your talk and 10- 15 minutes for discussion and questions. This will leave 10 minutes at the end of each session for people to get refreshments, take a comfort break, or network before the next session starts.
Other options
During the day there will be a session for lightning talks. If you don't think you can talk for 30-40 minutes, these can be more focused presentations delivered in the main hall on a topic of your choosing, lasting for no more than 5 minutes
Less formally, we may also run "ask an expert" workshop/ user clinic where attendees can come and ask for help/ guidance/ input on a specific topic. As well as a way of sharing your expertise, these can be a great way of finding people running into similar stumbling blocks with CiviCRM, and finding out how they deal with them.
Get involved
If you've got an idea for a session please contact William Mortada or Rose Lanigan.
If you can let them know, your session title, planned format and the level it's pitched at that will be a great help. If you're not sure about content/ format or level drop them a line anyway. They'll be happy to chat about your ideas and make suggestions.
Once your session details are agreed, they'll add them to the programme for the day.
If you don't want to commit to delivering a full session, but are interested in making a lightning talk, or helping in an "ask an expert" session please drop them a message with your contact details and they'll be in touch.
Alternatively you can message the CiviCamp organisers in the Community Channel in Mattermost, to talk about getting involved without fully commiting.
Yikes! It's 7 weeks away! See you in Manchester.
