EVENT: CiviCRM usergroup meet up

If you are either using or planning to invest in a CRM (customer relationship management tool) then you may have heard of CiviCRM.  CiviCRM is open source and free to download and is designed to meet the needs of the voluntary/public sectors.  If you want to find out more about it then why not check out this event coming up in London …

We’ll be holding the fifth UK CiviCRM user group meet up in London on Thursday 25th June, and we’ll be joined by a few members of the core team visiting from Poland, India and the USA.

It’s an all-day practical event and is aimed at non profits, advocacy organisations, and political groups and is a great opportunity to find out if CiviCRM is right for you, improve your CiviCRM skills, and to find out more about the CiviCRM community.

We’ll finalise the agenda based on participants interests and skill levels, but topics we’re imagining that we’ll cover include:

• introduction to CiviCRM – what does it do and how can it help you?
• installing, configuring and making the most of CiviCRM at your organisation
• CiviCRM surgery – answering questions and helping with specific problems
• getting more involved with CiviCRM community
• how you can help improve CiviCRM

The session is hands on so please bring a laptop if you can. If you’re using CiviCRM already, bring a laptop that will let you access that installation. If you aren’t a current user (but are technically minded) you should install a working copy of CiviCRM in preperation for this meeting.

You can also read the new book Understanding CiviCRM in preparation for this event.

This is a non-profit event. The costs go toward event and travel expenses and any surpluses will go toward funding improvements to CiviCRM.

More information and registration available here: http://civicrm.org/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=8

There is more about CRM (and databases in general) on the Knowledgebase www.ictknowledgebase.org.uk/databasemarket.

ICT Hub case studies go global

It was nice to see the ICT Hub case studies on Beth’s blog today http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2007/08/my-icthub-case-.html

Beth wrote up a great case study on Susie @ AFL’s use of blogging.  Susie even made a little oscar acceptance speech, keep on blogging Susie!

Now to start with, I am famous. Yes, I am a case study for the ICT Hub. It was always on the cards that I would end up being a case study for something: it has ended up being for the ICT Hub. You can read it here. I am under Using New Media. Beth Kanter who is marvellous did the case study, thanks so much Beth! I had better say before anyone downloads the pdf, purses their lips and mutters ‘get her’ to themselves that I am only responsible for implementing our FOSS strategy within AFL, not, like, in the world (you may laugh, but…) Also the ‘mentoring from the computer consultant’ was Help From Chris and to be fair to Chris he didn’t mentor, he did it all, and is actually the person who has brought in Foss at AFL, not me. Yes, I can categorically say that every bit of open source software on an AFL computer is directly attributable to Chris and his Vision. Many people wonder how he sleeps at night…

We’re in the middle of doing some rejigging of the website and I’ll be doing a lot of work on the case studies, tying them in more with the rest of the info on the site.

If anyone wants to feature as a case study on the website then please email me louise.brown@icthub.org.uk