Workshops in Berlin: Learn about CiviCRM, a web tool for nonprofits to manage contacts, fundraising, newsletters,events & more

Update: these workshops have been cancelled, but there is an interesting discussion now starting amongst potential CiviCRM developers and users in Berlin to get together soon to start collaborating on bringing CiviCRM to the German "Sprachraum". This will involve localizing the application and documentation into German.

As for Kabissa, we are pleased to be in the middle of an upgrade to the latest version of CiviCRM which we hope to launch in the coming weeks - so we will need guidance and support on setting it up optimally for our needs. Let us know if you're a CiviCRM export and interested in volunteering. Thanks!

Oxfam Deutschland has graciously agreed to host hands-on CiviCRM workshops on October 6-7, targeting nonprofits using (or considering) CiviCRM in their organizations as well as web developers that want to add CiviCRM implementation and customization to their toolchest.

CiviCRM is available as a companion module for Drupal and Joomla content management systems, and like these tools is also open source software and available as a free download.

The CiviCRM team have also agreed to give a quick overview of CiviCRM on October 5 at the Socialbar ("ein Treffen von Weltverbesserern" = a social event for dogooders).

Workshop Registration is open!

If you are interested in participating in the workshops, see the following links to learn more and to register:

• Berlin user and administrator training : Oct 06, 2010 9:00 AM
• Berlin developer and implementer training : Oct 07, 2010 9:00 AM

If you have any questions about the event, feel free to contact me as I am helping to coordinate the event.

As you will see, the trainers have an agile approach and the agenda is still not set in stone. It will be finalized at the event so that the workshop can be tailored to the participants. CiviCRM is fairly feature rich, so before you come be sure to review the CiviCRM manual and take CiviCRM for a test drive.

Where to go to learn about CiviCRM and get involved

The website at http://www.civicrm.org is very useful and provides a wealth of documentation and resources, a community support forum, a demo where you can take CiviCRM for a test drive, and links to download and install the code. If you are new to CiviCRM I strongly recommend you have a poke around in there.

Let's strengthen the CiviCRM community in Germany

While there is an active open source community in Germany I have not yet encountered many organizations using and promoting CiviCRM here, even on the CiviCRM forums. While my personal interest is in promoting CiviCRM (and similar innovative ICT tools) in Africa and in developing the Kabissa platform using CiviCRM, I would be happy if we could use this visit to Berlin from the CiviCRM team to find out who is here working on CiviCRM projects and see if we can't come together as a community.

Some ideas:

• Blog about CiviCRM and how it is - and can be - used in German speaking countries (this blog post should be in German!)
• Localize the CiviCRM Book into German
• Organize regular meetups
• Create a section of the CiviCRM forum devoted to German language community support
• Create a "showcase" of CiviCRM sites in Germany
• Get more German vendors on the CiviCRM Professional Services page

It's possible - even likely - that some of the above are already happening. If so, please add a comment to share what you know!   

Who is using CiviCRM in Africa?

The same ideas for CiviCRM community building in Germany could also be extended to Africa. Are you already using CiviCRM in Africa or for civil society organizations working in Africa? Are you interested?

Please leave a comment to let me know how you are or would like to be using it. Perhaps we can collaborate and support each other.

Kabissa history with CiviCRM

I am particularly excited to have been able to coax the CiviCRM team to come to Berlin since I just embarked on an upgrade of the Kabissa site to the latest CiviCRM version which will bring a much improved user interface and a range of new features and improvements. We have been using CiviCRM since version 1.9 back in 2006 when we first implemented our online community platform for African civil society with funding from the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Institute.

The CiviCRM team did some custom coding back then for Kabissa to provide the "front-end" functionality that makes Kabissa so useful, including the organization signup form and a dashboard where site users can manage their organization profiles and add additional people. In June 2009 we relaunched the platform with FuseIQ, a web development shop in Seattle, to upgrade us to CiviCRM Version 2.2 and add new functionality to display organizations on a map and enable them to create their own groups for blogging and team collaboration.

Now we are upgrading to 3.2 and look forward to taking advantage of the new backend functionality as well as improved user interfaces.

Facebook for Civil Society, anyone?

Going forward, I want to further develop the frontend of the Kabissa site to add social networking features - which I think would make a great open source Drupal module.

In particular, I would like to expose the relationships functionality to Kabissa members so that they can show and make use of their connections with each other and with organizations (and connections between organizations), and to strengthen the Kabissa community of people and organizations in creative, powerful new ways including country and thematic dashboards, enabling local network organizers to publish print editions, and leveraging the network through mashups with other like minded initiatives like Global Giving and Nabuur.

If this interests you or you have suggestions, please contact me or leave a comment!