This is a post to start a discussion, something of an expansion of Dave's blog (Let's Market CiviCRM better) and Jessica's blog (Expanding end users). I guess it's about starting to get some practical ideas around toolkits to help the community undertake the ideas mentioned in the above blogs.
Over the past couple of weeks I have done a couple of CiviCRM consultations and demos with interested parties, some who had never seen CiviCRM before and others who had.
I consider myself reasonably knowledgeable with navigating around CiviCRM and thus when giving demos, I can show people features i think they will appreciate and enjoy, in the appropriate ways and clearly explain concepts, techniques and approaches for use.
In some of the consultations recently I have encountered people who have used CiviCRM before and ultimately decided to move on to other systems. Generally it's because users haven't been able to achieve what they wanted to achieve, sometimes it's because CiviCRM just doesn't posses the features they require, but more often than not it's because their installation was never really set up properly in the first place or no one ever explained how to use CiviCRM properly. Thus, they unfortunately end up having a bad impression of CiviCRM and often when I then deliver a demo at a later date are quite surprised by what can actually be achieved.
CiviCRM doesn't work on a partner style program who have training and self interest in representing their product as accurately as possible and often those installing are not experts at all. This is one of the great things about CiviCRM in some ways, but as we all know, presenting someone with a massive blank canvas that can be taken in any direction can be a daunting task.
So what could be done to help?
Drupal has the concept of features, profiles and distributions that go someway to helping present that particular blank canvas in a variety of different and relevant lights and now with the CiviCRM Starter Kit, CiviCRM integration for the features module, CiviCRM extensions and some other techniques we have the potential to be able to create our own sets of distributions or starter kits to maybe help those small implementors along the way.
We could create starter kits with predefined configurations and features for church, environmental or scout groups (for example), representing some of the regular tasks that these groups all undertake when using CiviCRM, thus giving them a slightly more representative canvas to begin with and hopefully give them some context and relevance to get started more solidly and fulfillingly on their CiviCRM journeys.
What are people's thoughts?
Comments
along the same lines myself. A relative newcomer to Civi, I arrived before the starter kit was available and would have had a much easier time seeing its benefits (and explaining them to others) had there been a front-end demo approximating to what I was looking for. Thanks for the post, glad I noticed it in my Civi dashboard feed. Off to sign up for the marketing effort!
Building more complicated, use case specific distributions on top of the CiviCRM Starter Kit is EXACTLY what I was hoping would happen. What I'd REALLY LOVE to see is more community driven distrubutions (vs. vendor driven solutions). We're already building on the CiviCRM Starter Kit w/ with the Community Media Startet Kits. That kit only adds additional Drupal modules and themes, but there's no reason additional CiviCRM Extensions couldn't also be included in the packaging.
Anyone thinking of trying to manage a distrubtion by community/committe should take a look at the structure the organizations involved in CMDrupal have put in place to manage the distribution with multiple vendors and organizations involved.
How a Bill Becomes a Law... or Feature becomes a Module included in a Kit
Memorandum of Understanding between Largest Organizations - Do no harm
Managing .make Files (beardcast video)
Guide to Effective Collaboration
The only thing I'd ask of any group using the CiviCRM Starter Kit as a starting point is they use that .make as the starting point and leave the order and structure as is so all the distrubutions that include CiviCRM are easy to update with new CiviCRM releases and we can share the work of keeping the base Starter Kit up to date. I'm ussually able to get the CiviCRM Starter Kit updates within a few days of new releases, but if there were more people involved that time could be hours.
I've started some documentation about updating the CiviCRM Starter Kit's .make files and would welcome any help maintaining the kit. If your interested, just post an issue to the CiviCRM Starter Kit's issue queue.
Coupled with the CiviCRM Cookbook (http://www.packtpub.com/civicrm-cookbook/book), I think this is a great initiative.