CiviCon Recap: Thoughts on CiviCRM Conference 1 Week Later, Plus Videos

It’s a week and a day since the first ever CiviCon concluded. I’ve had a chance to encode and post all the videos from the Ingite and Lighting Talks (see below), and wanted to share just a few thoughts.  There were over 70 people at CiviCon, nearly double the number at the first DrupalCon (5 years ago). Both firsts took place 5 years after the project launched.  There were some jokes as we left the Michell Kapor Center about how big CiviCon will be in 5 years. The opportunity to meet with so many great people working with CiviCRM was fantastic, and for me, it was the first time I had met folks from the Core team other than Dave Greenberg and Donald Lobo. I look forward to future CiviCon and meeting more people working with the software.  To that end I am going to convene a Seattle Area CiviCRM User Group (SEACUG), the first meeting of which will be announced shortly (it will be at the end of May). The CiviCRM mobile brainstorm was perhaps the most exciting session.  Our own Ian Rhett did a great job facilitating a discussion about the future of CiviCRM on mobile platforms.  It is not easy to keep a room full of geeks on task in a brianstorm for an hour, but he did it.  I know there were some great notes, but I haven’t seen them on the wiki yet. Hopefully soon! During the session we identified a range of features we’d like to see in a mobile CiviCRM app, and discussed potential resources and paths to achieving them.  The lowest...

CivicActions Contract Template Terms and Conditions

At DrupalCon in San Francisco I sat on a panel “From Contractor To Shop” hosted by Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg from Zivtech. During the discussion it came up that CivicActions licenses all of its documents under Creative Commons.  This is a big thing for us.  One of our foundational values is “Openness”.  It’s a big world out there, and it needs a lot of help. We believe that the more we all share, the easier it will be for individuals and organizations to get down to brass tacks and start fixing it. This is one of the reasons we released our Estimating Worksheet Template last year. Since then we’ve gotten great feedback from other shops and individuals who are using it.  We put a lot of time and thought into making it useful and there is no reason why someone “down the road” should have to spend a bunch of time remaking something like it. All we ask is that improvements get returned to us and the community — the open source way. In that spirit, we’ve cleaned up the standard contract terms, conditions and licenses that we include on all our projects and are releasing them under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License.  These terms are a starting point, and as anyone who has done business knows, often there is some negotiation involved before the papers get signed, but this is where we start. The attached document is something that anyone can use as their own starting point for a contract template. If you do use the terms we’ve written, please understand the meaning and obligation of the license...

CivicActions Team and Sessions At DrupalCon San Francisco

As the week winds down CivicActions team members are getting ready to head to San Fransico for DrupalCon where we’ve got folks presenting a number of session.  Here is the lineup: Open Source Opens Doors for Youth: a professional/nonprofit/foundation collaboration builds a youth social enterprise by Jenn Sramek and Rose Liebman Monday 5:30 PM – 6:30 PMin room 310 Drupal Association Show Don’t Tell: Guerilla Usability Testing by Zoey Kroll in Tuesday 8:30 AM – 9:30 AM Room 306 Trellon Developing Apps for iPhone/iPad/Android using drupal as Base System by Sumit Kataria & Aaron Pava Wednesday 9:45 AM – 10:45 AMin room 303 Chapter Three  Advanced Drush by Moshe Weitzman & Owen Barton (panel) Wednesday 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM in room 307 Commerce Guys A complete list of our folks at DrupalCon: Aaron Pava @pava Fen Labalame @openprivacy George Frost Gregory Heller @gregoryheller Henry Poole @henrypoole Ian Rhett @ianrhett Jenn Sramek @ideaseed Jozef Toth* @jojototh Justine Hirsch Kev Walsh @unlockedmedia Nat (Catch) Catchpole @catch56 Owen Barton @grugnog Rose Liebman Sam Lerner Sam Davis Stella Power* @snpower Sumit Kataria @sumitk Zoey Kroll @edibleoffice * denotes folks from Europe whose plans may be foiled by a Volcanic Eruption in Iceland.   We have a sponsor booth where someone from CivicActions will basically always be, so if you have questions about our company, about working with us, or would like to inquire about having CivicActions work on your organization or companies website or strategy, please don’t hestiate to drop by....

Does your Blog Update Your Facebook & Facebook update your Twitter? You’re Doing It Wrong

I received some requests that I should elaborate on a recent tweet that read “If your blog is updating your Facebook status & Facebook status is updating Twitter… You’re Doing It Wrong!” My tweet was inspired by two things: a presenter at the NTEN NTC who mentioned the site http://www.doingitwrong.com, and my constant frustration when I click a link in a tweet only to be taken to a slightly longer Facebook status update that I then have to click on to get to the original source posting. In ecommerce it is an accepted truth that you want as few steps between your product and checkout as possible. Most information architects would also agree that the shortest path between home page and the information a site visitor is looking for is best. Most geeks would agree, whatever the app, the fewer clicks the better. So why do so many people have their social media content streams cascading across multiple platforms in such a way as to add more clicks? The answer is probably carelessness or laziness or ignorance (not willful, but inadvertent). I can’t imagine that it is intentional. I am just neurotic enough to notice this sort of thing and get frustrated by it. Frustrated enough to write this blog post. Hopefully I’ve convinced you that this cascade of social media posts is a problem, and now I will present the solution. If your original source content is a blog post that appears on your website, and you have the resources (time), the ideal way to spread it around is by custom writing a Facebook status update about it,...

"You Don't Need A Website, You Need a Web Strategy" 2010NTC Ignite

<p>I gave an Ignite talk on Thursday night at the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference (<a href="http://nten.org/ntc">10NTC</a>) hosted by NTEN in Atlanta, GA. </p> <p>The audience was fantastic, and the other presenters were really great.  Sarah Davies, the hostess and organizer did a fantastic job both organizing the event and introducing us all with a little song.</p> <p>Here is my video and slide deck for "You Don't Need A Website, You Need a Website Strayetgy." Read some <a href="http://civicactions.com/blog/2010/apr/06/civicactions_light_ignite_10ntc">background on Ignite, my talk, and those of my partners Jenn and Ian.</a> and <a href="http://civicactions.com/blog/2010/apr/08/ignite_video_and_slide_decks_10ntc">see their talks too</a>.</p> <p> <object width="400" height="300"> <param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /> <param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=10793980&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" height="300" src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=10793980&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed> </object> </p> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/10793980">Ignite NTC: Gregory Heller "You Don't Need A Website…"</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/gregoryh">GregoryH</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p> <div id="__ss_3671809" style="width: 425px;"><strong style="display:block;margin:12px 0 4px"><a title=""You Don't Need A Website" Ignite NTC 2010 Gregory Heller" href="http://www.slideshare.net/gregoryheller/you-dont-need-a-website-ignite-ntc-2010-gregory-heller">"You Don't Need A Website" Ignite NTC 2010 Gregory Heller</a></strong> <object width="425" height="355"> <param name="movie" value="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=hellerdontneedawebsitefinal-100408231738-phpapp02&stripped_title=you-dont-need-a-website-ignite-ntc-2010-gregory-heller" /> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="355" src="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=hellerdontneedawebsitefinal-100408231738-phpapp02&stripped_title=you-dont-need-a-website-ignite-ntc-2010-gregory-heller" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed> </object> <div style="padding:5px 0 12px">View more <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/">presentations</a> from <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/gregoryheller">Gregory Heller</a>.</div>...