What can you do for your community? A message from Otterlo (NL)

This week we are working together in real life! Although we are mainly exploring Search Kit and Form Builder we are obviously also discussing CiviCRM, the community and life in general. And we in this context is Coleman from the Core Team, Christophe from Mediwe (Flemish organization that uses CiviCRM), Andreas and Detlev from Civiservice and Klaas, Jaap, Alain, Erik, Betty and me from CiviCooP.

This morning we had a fruitful talk about what we can do to ensure that we all contribute as much as we can to make the best CiviCRM possible. And we all agree we need each other. But sometimes communication is difficult and the focus stays too much on what goes wrong. And although we are all entitled to an occassional grumble and rant, we are also convinced that working together as a community is the best approach.

So we came up with these perhaps simple thoughts:

1. Meetings in person are vital! We need them to get inspired and enthused so we invest time in the community.
2. Digital meetings for specific topics can work really well. But regular digital meetings do not.
3. The communication should flow in all directions through the entire community. So although the developer digest from the Core Team is really awesome and appreciated, we should also perhaps have a digest from what CiviCooP are doing to the rest of the community?
4. It might be a good idea to fund a communications professional to work with the community communication for some time. Not send out a regular newsletter but use all different media to promote contact, inspiration and communication.

These are the thoughts we want to share with you and hopefully inspire you. Think about what you can you for your community :-)