Sessions

Registration, Breakfast & Coffee, Meet your Peers

Welcome and Who's Here

Neil Planchon and Noah Miller, CiviCamp organizers

The Cutting Edge: What's New and What's on the Horizon for CiviCRM

We'll recap some recent developments that are improving the user and developer experience in CiviCRM, as well as some changes that we hope will contribute to the growth and stability of Civi as an open-source project. We'll also look at the road ahead, gather your input, and talk about ways you can get involved in shaping the future of Civi.

Tim Otten, CiviCRM Core Team

The Big Picture: What Is CiviCRM And How Can It Serve Your Organization?

We'll discuss the various features of CiviCRM, what distinguishes it from similar tools, and give examples of real-world usage. You'll hear a case study from an established CiviCRM-using organization. We'll look at some commonly-used CiviCRM screens and leave plenty of time for questions. The session will be webcast live from CiviCamp to viewers around the globe on socialmovementtechnologies.org.

Jon Goldberg, Megaphone Technology Consulting and David Bracamontes, GSA Network

Break

The Life-changing Magic of Organizing Your Contacts

Compared with spreadsheets or simple email lists, CiviCRM gives you lots of powerful ways to organize the data you collect from your constituents. We'll talk about the different ways of getting information into your database, sorting and filtering it once it's there, deciding when to "tag", when to "group" and when to do something fancier, and how to practice good data hygiene (we may or may not advise you to hold each record in your hands and ask, "does this spark joy?").

Noah Miller, Lemniscus

The Personal Touch: Treating Your Participants, Donors and Subscribers Like the Humans They Are

One of the great things about CiviCRM — one of the main reasons for it to exist, you could argue — is that it allows your organization to "remember" how each of your constituents has interacted with you. In this session we talk about the principles of treating supporters like people, and how to implement those principles in your use of the platform. This can be as simple as sending different communications — even very slightly different — to donors and non-donors; there's lots more nuance possible depending on your supporter base.

Richard Esguerra, Giant Rabbit

The Secret to Success in Love and CRMs: Knowing and Communicating Your Needs

Want to have a happy, fulfilling relationship with your CRM? Before you jump into entering data and customizing, make sure you understand what pieces of information you need to track, how they should be structured, and how they are connected to each other. At this session you'll learn accessible techniques for figuring out these needs and documenting them, so you can communicate effectively with your coworkers and your implementation partner. Come find out why data models, entity-relationship diagrams and data dictionaries are the true paths to peace, love and understanding.

Lisa Jervis, Information Ecology

Lunch

(vegetarian and omnivore options provided)

Lightning Talks

The Main Event

Your organization wants to throw a kick-ass gala — or volunteer orientation, or workshop, or lobbying day. How do you get the word out to the right people? How do you make it easy for them to register and pay? How do you collect their preferences or other information relevant to their participation, send them friendly reminders, record who actually showed up, and follow up with them afterward? We'll walk through the process step by step in this session.

Noah Miller, Lemniscus

If You Build It, Will They Come? How to Make Sure Your Staff Actually Uses the Database

When we're caught up in the process of selecting and configuring a database, it's easy to forget about what comes next: people using it! This is something a lot of organizations struggle with. In addition to training and documentation, there are many strategies to prepare, equip, and support your staff in adopting the new habits and practices that come with a database. Come learn and discuss what you can do to make Civi widely used.

Lisa Jervis, Information Ecology

Better Living Through Extensions

CiviCRM's functionality can be modified by the use of programming packages — extensions — that are not a part of the core product. We'll cover how that works; how they are developed, distributed and maintained; and give some examples of the neat kinds of things that can be done with them.

Jon Goldberg, Megaphone Technology Consulting

Panel Discussion: CiviCRM + Your Favorite Content Management System

One of the great things about CiviCRM is that you can integrate it into your organization's website. But how you do that will depend on what platform the website is built on — Backdrop, Drupal, Joomla or WordPress. Come to this session to hear about our experiences working with Civi in all these environments.

Jack Aponte, Palante Technology Cooperative; Jen Lampton, Backdrop CMS; Josh Mailman, NorCal CarciNET Community

Sending Emails that Your Members Will Love to Read

Presentation of best practices in emailing campaigns and how using Mosaico (CiviCRM's new drag-and-drop email design tool) can help you achieve that goal faster. We'll talk about contact collection and segmentation in CiviCRM and the do's and don'ts of emailing, followed by a demonstration of Mosaico.

Timothée Colmet-Daâge, CiviDesk

It Slices, It Dices: Reporting and Data Analysis

You've collected all that beautiful precious data. Now what the heck does it mean? We talk about gleaning useful stories from your data, including some real-world examples about how analysis of CiviCRM data helped an organization develop projections for a $10 million budget.

Noah Miller, Lemniscus and Richard Esguerra, Giant Rabbit

Closing