Are there any plans for a CiviCRM Affinity Group meeting at the NTEN conference?

[hallman]

Last year David Geilhufe and I requested an Affinity Group meeting at the NTEN conference for CiviCRM  -- http://nten.org/node/967 has a link to my notes from the meeting.

Is anyone working on one for this year?

[hallman]

I completed the form, asking for a CiviCRM Affinity Group meeting. If there's more than one request, I'm sure NTEN will combine them. We can figure out what we want to do later. Here's what I put on the form:

1. Who are you?
2. What is your Affinity Group Meeting's Title?
CiviCRM Users Group

3. Please briefly describe the meeting.
People who use, or want to use, CiviCRM will gather to discuss issues around implementation, administration, training and support.

4. Please list 3 takeaways that attendees can expect to have.
1. A better understanding of what CiviCRM is and what it does.
2. How organizations are using CiviCRM.
3. How users can help each other and the project.

5. Why do you believe this meeting should be included in the NTC Affinity Group Meetings?
- Usage of CiviCRM is growing rapidly.
- Community support and input are important to the CiviCRM project.
- NTEN's CRM Satisfaction Survey demonstrated that a  high percentage of respondents use CiviCRM and would recommend the solution to others.
- Last year's meeting was well attended and productive.

[hallman]

Assuming the CiviCRM affinity group meeting is approved, I'd like to have a plan. What can we accomplish?

I think the sessions are 90 minutes. I'll take my computer and make sure the room has Internet access and projection.

My thoughts: (I'm modifying this as people reply)

Wide sign-in sheet gathering name, email address, organization, organization URL, Using CiviCRM Yes No; Drupal Yes No; Joomla Yes No
What else?

Introductions are always helpful. Helps people with common interests get together. Introduction should include: Name, organization, Using CiviCRM? Any particular things they'd like to know about or talk about? These will need to be short. My guess is we'll have around 50 people.
What else?

Real quick showing of the CiviCRM home page, documentation, forums, blog, "getting started" pages.

Have a few CiviCRM users show their sites, features they are using, discuss achievements, any problems they had with set up, examples of things that they do regularly that are hard to do (as ideas for improvements to CiviCRM). Keep it short. People can ask questions later.
Need some volunteers willing to do this. Would like to have these well planned and showing a variety of features.

Briefly discuss ways people can help the project:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/How+to+Help

Have the session videotaped or at least audiotaped.

Have at least one person take notes.

What else?

[geilhufe]

I'll be there to help out Judy.

Thanks for spearheading this.

[Dave Greenberg]

Judy - Thanks for pulling this together! I think your session plan is great.

From the development team's perspective - it would be helpful if folks who are sharing their sites and real-life use cases could include any examples of "things that they do regularly that are hard to do."

We get lots of feedback on the forums about potential new features and improvements - but they may or may not be from folks who are really using CiviCRM on a regular basis.  Getting details on "usability issues" from folks who have made an investment in using CiviCRM could really help us take concrete steps to improve things.

[hallman]

Since we'll have at least one person there who can answer questions (Thanks, David Geilhufe), I changed "Any special interests" to "Any particular things they'd like to know about or talk about?" Dave, would you jot these down on a flipchart as we go along? I think you did that last year and it worked well.

And I added Dave Greenberg's suggestion as "examples of things that they do regularly that are hard to do (as ideas for improvements to CiviCRM)."

Please keep the ideas coming!

[hallman]

The NTEN conference CiviCRM affinity group meeting is now scheduled for Wednewsday, March 19, at 10:30 a.m. in room Gallier B with David Geilhufe and me as co-leaders. Please come, if you can. NOTE: The affinity group meetings are NOT posted in the NTEN Web site yet.

[John Kenyon]

Hi Judy,

Great idea. I'll stop by to share my experiences, I have had 3 clients over the past year implementing CiviCRM so I have some good stories.

Best,

John