CiviCRM

I'm pleased to report that WebAccess has been doing a terrific job upgrading our Organization Directory feature, and that we are almost ready to launch the new site. Please contact me if you are interested in a preview and helping look for bugs during this final round of fixes. Thanks! 

Thank you everyone who voted for Kabissa Connections on Netsquared to get us into the final 15 and thank you judges who selected us to be among the 5 winning organizations to receive a $5,000 cash prize. I also would like to congratulate the other 4 winners, in particular Agricultural Marketing Information Services in Cameroon and Integrated Electonic Peace Building Project in Kenya which are both very innovative and powerful projects deserving of recognition and support.

Last time I wrote about laying the foundations for the new Kabissa - today I'd like to tell you about some of the building blocks we are using to create the new structure.

What is CiviCRM?

Was ist CiviCRM?

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.

Now that Kabissa has begun receiving financial support from  stakeholders, it is important for us to begin providing regular updates so that you can understand how your contributions are being put to work to nurture and grow the Kabissa network. This is a crucial moment in the transition of Kabissa from larger project-oriented consulting organization to smaller volunteer organization providing a networking platform on an ongoing, low-cost basis.

The Kabissa online community platform was built using Drupal and CiviCRM, two very powerful freely available open source web applications. It would be great to get more folks in Seattle who are working in Africa to pick up on the benefits of CiviCRM for nonprofit/charitable work and consider using it. A terrific opportunity to find out more is coming up - a new CiviCRM Users Group will meet for the first time on May 27th. Details at http://bit.ly/b1vUY1

Donald Lobo from CiviCRM directed me today to a new version of the very handy Prodder Directory of Southern African NGOs, which SANGONeT launched yesterday at http://beta.prodder.org.za.

This is exciting news for me since we at Kabissa also are using Drupal and CiviCRM as the backbone of our own online community website for African civil society. I like the look and feel of the new Prodder site and am pleased that CiviCRM is finding broader use in Africa.

Browsing the site, I was also intrigued to see that a print version of the Prodder Directory is available. What a terrific resource! I have floated tihs idea in the past for Kabissa: wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to offer a print edition of the Kabissa Member Directory, on an annual basis and also in custom print runs for specific purposes - eg in support of national, regional or sectoral networks, or to distribute at conferences.

SANGONeT official press release follows.