Blogues

Sorceforge recently conducted an unscientific twtpoll that yielded interested results. The top four factors in the success of an open source project were:

Did you already try CivicRM 3.4 and/or 4.0? If not, we're releasing next alpha version, third one, especially for you. :-) Before downloading, make sure you read "Step up and help out" section of this blog post and let us know what you think (and what problems did you encounter).

Versions released today are:

Hi all,

as announced earlier the Location API is no longer with us in the API v3 version. It was a beast of an API, too smart for its own good and certainly to smart for the API team!

Rooty Hollow is excited to announce the release of our Constant Contact Integration module for CiviCRM.  If you are not able or willing to deal with sending bulk e-mails form your host this module is for you.

We're a small children's theatre company and make great use of Google Analytics.  We use CiviCRM/CiviEvent for our patron database and online ticket sales, and wanted to add Google Analytics ecommerce tracking to track the effectiveness of our various marketing activities.

I did this by copying /civicrm/templates/CRM/Price/Page/LineItem.tpl into a custom template directory, and adding the tracking code to my custom version.  All of our "events" use price sets, and the price options are various ticket categories (child, adult, senior, etc).  The code below tracks not only the entire order amount, but also the quantities of individual items in the order.

Here's another double release, fresh and ready, being a perfect opportunity for you to contribute to your favourite Open Source project (How? See "Step up and help out" section of this post):

We held our second CiviCon in Chicago on Monday Mar 7, 2011 at TechNexus. We had an amazing turnout of 100+ community members. CiviCon 2011 was made possible by a great group. I'd personally like to acknowledge and thank the folks who made this possible...

We just got back from Chicago where we had an eventful CiviCon 2011 on Mon, Mar 7th. We had more than 100 participants (registration, attendance sheets and name badges managed with CiviEvent) from across various parts of the US and Canada. We also had a successful sponsorship program with 4 Gold Sponsors, 5 Silver Sponsors and 10 Bronze Sponsors (managed by CiviContribute and the CiviEvent discount module). A companion blog post highlights all the wonderful women and men (and organizations) who made this event possible. Some of my personal highlights of the trip:

This was my first CiviCon.  I missed the chance last year.  It was great to meet all the people I have chatted with on the forums and IRC over the last couple of years -- finally.  I was gratified to be part of the sessions here.  I presented a UI Customization session with Jim from Rooty Hollow; I shared a couple of case studies along with Gregory from CivicActions.  Chatting with Lobo, Dave G, Kurund, Ninjitsu Matt and Deepak was fun and interesting.

During CiviCon I reflected both privately and publically about my first introduction to CiviCRM in '08.   I've gone from a 'noob in the forums asking dumb questions to someone who knows a little about a lot - but who still knows I have a lot more to know.  My personal story about the open-source CiviCRM community is a story of cautious enthusiasm, warm welcomes, giving back, and eventual understanding.  I took a leap of faith but it turned out well for me.  I encourage others to try the same approach.

A lot more that I thought, I found out at a I recent demo of CiviCRM at Simplify ICT, an event hosted in east London to boost the profile of free and open source software at non-profits.