Two weeks ago Michael McAndrew, Xavier Dutoit and me (Piotr Szotkowski) had the pleasure to attend Campaigning Camp 2010, hosted by FairSay in Oxford, UK. Campaigning Camp was a two track event, with concurrent CiviCRM and Plone development sprints interspersed with general campaigning advice from FairSay’s Duane Raymond.

If you were thinking of attending the CiviCRM meet up last Wednesday or wondering what exactly is shared, discussed, explained, who attends?…
Also, no worries if you're a bit late, we leave a number at the door for you to call

The meeting was attended by approximately 20 people who were new to CiviCRM, people who have decided to use CiviCRM and people who use and or develop it everyday and had specific questions.

After short introductions, we split into 3 smaller groups.
Group A talked about CiviSchool - http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/CiviSchool

Just finished up two days of work with CiviCRM at campaigning camp in Oxford UK bringing together members of Plone and CiviCRM community. The Camp followed on from the two day e-Campaigning forum and that was really useful in helping us keep the user at the forefront of work and discussions. And led to some really interesting conversations about a user focused approach to campaigning in CiviCRM which we plan to take further at CiviCon in April.

In parallel with the Drupal sprint (http://sf2010.drupal.org/conference/drupal-sprints) and CiviCRM training session (http://civicrm.org/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=25), we'll be running a CiviCRM code sprint.

Using an unconference format, we'll likely focus on activism functionality or perhaps squashing some bugs. A great way to contribute to the community while sharing with others and getting support from the core team.

We've had some great session proposals on the wiki but are still on the look out for more. CiviCon is your chance to debate the parts of CiviCRM that matter to you, so if you have something you want to show off - or something you' like to get off your chest - then sign up for CiviCon and add your proposal.

We've split the day into three tracks

• Developer track
• CiviCRM in action track
• Usability and community track

Exactly one month from now, a team of CiviCRM developers, implementors and users will sprint to update 'Understanding CiviCRM: A Guide for Non-profits'. We've heard from lots of folks that to have this free online book as a learning resource is really important. And we're pretty excited about this sprint, especially given the amount we achieved last time.

There is lots to update and improve and we'd like your input to make the new version of the book as useful as possible to you. There are a few ways in which you can help now.

We had another engaging NYC meetup on March 16th, competing with the first warm sunny day after the crazy noreaster, where around 20 people spent the evening to dig in to CiviCRM.

After our usual intros where folks can express what they'd like to get out of the evening, Fred kicked off a case study of how he used civi for the Man Up Campaign, and demonstrated the use of profiles to collect information from individuals who would like to engage or contribute to the campaign.

Every year in June, around the 10th day, a commemorative event happens in Akron, Ohio - the annual celebration of the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous. Hosted at the University of Akron, over 10,000 participants from around the world gather to celebrate the founding of this wonderful fellowship. In recent years, registration for this all weekend event has moved from mail-in forms to an online registration process.