Report from NTC and Penguin Day

Meeting folks who use and implement CiviCRM - face to face - is stimulating, challenging and just plain fun. I spent last week in New Orleans at our Boot Camp, at NTEN's NTC and at Penguin Day - and came home tired, a few pounds heavier (good eats in NOLA), and vowing to make these opportunities happen more often!

NTEN Affinity Group

Thanks to Judy Hallman's hard work and useful "pushing" - there were two specific CiviCRM events at NTC - an "Affinity Group" and a lunch "Discussion Table". The Affinity Group was well attended - especially given that it overlapped with NTEN's Day of Service and before many folks had arrived for the main conference. There was a good mix of folks from non-profits of various sizes and types, a few integrators and several folks who work for other eCRM platforms. However, none of the attendees were actual users - and the planned agenda was focussed on user sharing and Q & A. We did a quick re-boot and managed to give folks an overview of CiviCRM features. Several people expressed doubts about using an open source solution for their organization (one person even using the phrase "deathly afraid"). They raised particular concerns about support ("who do I call when something goes wrong") and technical resources required for installation, configuration and maintenance. As options for paid support become more available, and the ecosystem of solution providers grows - these concerns should diminish. However, for many organizations a fully hosted (ASP) solution is the only realistic answer. A highlight of the meeting was Greg Heller's "show and tell" of several CivicActions CiviCRM implementations. Seeing CiviCRM "in action" really helps folks understand some of the power of the platform and the advantages of tight integration with a CMS like Drupal. John Kenyon also spent a few minutes describing his training sessions for organizations using or preparing to use CiviCRM. For future "Affinity Groups" / user meetups - we'll prepare for a mix of actual users and "interested folks" - and probably split the group into at least two separate sessions.

NTEN Discussion Table

About 10 people joined Judy and myself at a lunch discussion table on Thursday. This "session" was particularly rewarding because almost everyone was either a user or an integrator. Overall, the users at the table were quite satisfied with CiviCRM from both a functionality and usabilty point of view. When the discussion turned to "pain points" - there was a surprising amount of agreement on a few issues:

• It needs to be easier to search by full or partial email address and by first name.
• Screen reloads which occur when entering an offline contribution, membership or event registration are frustrating.
• Better support for organizations which have organizations as members is needed.

Interestingly, all three of these also came up in discussions at the Boot Camp earlier in the week - along with some excellent brain-storming about solutions. I think we'll be able to resolve or at least make decent progress on all three in the 2.1 release cycle.

Penguin Day

Penguin Days are about "bring(ing) together open source developers and technology support staff for nonprofits..." to discuss challenges and opportunities. The New Orleans session was facilitated by Allen Gunn (Aspiration), and included quite a few folks from local non-profits, along with developers like myself, and thought-leaders in this space - notable MIchelle Murrain (NOSI), and Beth Kantner. There was some lively general discussion about the "fit" between existing FOSS tools and non-profits - with some folks expressing strong reservations about usability and support. However, the overall impression was that this gap is shrinking pretty quickly as the tools mature and improve. Awareness and interest in eCRM solutions seems to have grown quite a bit since the last time I attended a Penguin Day. I facilitated two break-out sessions. In the morning, we had a general discussion of what's out there and ways of evaluating the type of platform best suited for an organization. The afternoon session was an in-depth question-driven review of CiviCRM features - creating custom fields, using profiles, front-end (CMS) integration and more. It was nice to see the positive responses from both the developers and potential users to our latest release.

Back on the Grid

Online tools like the forum, IRC and email allow us to interact with an amazingly diverse and distributed community - but face-to-face gatherings can help clarify and prioritize what folks need, what's working and not working. Just as importantly - based on my time in New Orleans - I am reminded that these opportunities create and strengthen the relationships which make a community grow and thrive. After we've shared a meal or even a chat, we're much more likely to help each other / share an idea / collaborate on a project... And - hanging out with smart, passionate and civic-spirited folks is just plain fun. Stay posted for announcements of future user group / affinity group meet-ups!