"Meeting" the Community in Corona times

Before Corona was in our midst we communicated with our customers and community members in the old fashioned way: we organized small onsite meetups once or twice a year in the Netherlands where 15 to 20 people (mainly Dutch) turned up and we had an enjoyable time together exchanging knowledge and experience. 

And once every 3 years it was our turn to organize CiviCamp / CiviCon for NW - Europe in the Netherlands, a bigger event for approximately 100 people, followed by a 4 day sprint. 

In Corona times this is obviously no longer possible and we expect that it will take some time before we can actually meet each other in Real Life. Since we find it important (and fun) to meet the people we work for and work with and to create and sustain a lively Civi-Community in our area, we had to come up with other solutions. And we had no idea what was going to work, so we jumped into the deep. 

In October we organized a Webinar for Dutch speaking Civi-enthusiasts. We published a blog on CiviCRM.org and used our own social media channels (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook), sent a Newsletter to our contacts and to our great surprise over 30 people signed up!
We used Google Meet during the online event and created different rooms for different sessions and that worked out well. A lot of energy and enthusiasm was there and it was really nice to hear and see others again, instead of working on your own in your 1-person office at home. 

So we immediately planned a follow up Webinar in November for our English speaking fellow Civi-ci this time. And - again to our surprise - over 40 people turned up! We have found a way to get in touch with our fellow community members in NW-Europe without too much effort. And - more importantly - others started joining in as well, presenting sessions and sharing their experiences.  

But although the webinars were a success and will certainly get a follow up in 2021, it also feels rather organized and too much of a one-way traffic (a few of us presenting and sharing something, all the other listening and consuming). So we have now thought of a more informal meet up: CiviCooP’s Coffee Corner. Every first Thursday of the month, from 09.30 till 10.30 CET we will be having a good cup of coffee and will invite people to join us in one of our ‘Coffee Rooms’ (Google Meet): a general room for chit-chatting, a room for the functional people and one for the more technical topics.  We have no idea if anybody will turn up at all and if it is meeting a need, but we are happy to test if it does. And if not …. we will have an enjoyable morning anyway: having virtual coffee with our fellow-CiviCooP-ers. :) Cheers!

NB: You do NOT have to register for the event. Just come as you please.
Find the link to our Coffee Corner here.