CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hey Mark,

CHASE 2013 http://www.conferencehouse.co.uk/CHASE/chase_home.aspx will be held in London next February and I have been asked to participaet as a panellist to represent CiviCRM.  There will be representatives from other leading vendors of CRM packages aimed at the charity / non-profit sector, on the panel also.

Cool.

Naturally, I am excited to be doing this but I would like to be better prepared, so I am looking for advice from anyone who has done anything like this before, ie represented CiviCRM in such a context.

I think that this video is a good example of different CRM vendors playing nicely together : http://thinkshout.com/blog/2012/11/lev/redhen-spotlight-badcamp

I imagine that the discussion will not be technically focussed but focussed more on marketing issues, eg trends in open source vs proprietory software packages, market size and share, etc.

I know that we do collect stats based on ping back - if you want to analyse those and produce something that would be useful for chase and in other situations a well, I think that would be really good.   let me know if you want to see the raw stats. i think analysing the stats would be v. useful. 

I think it would be useful to be familiar with any major charities or non-profits, particularly UK based, who are using CiviCRM, so I will read the case studies here.. http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/Case+Studies and here.. http://civicrm.org/what/casestudies

I would also consider contacting the major UK based CiviCRM providers and asking them about their high profile clients and seeing which ones aren't on civicrm.org.  if you find any that aren't and want to mention them at chase,  It might be worth volunteering to write case studies for them on civicrm.org.  that way you have a great set of case studies for the conference, civicrm.org gets some more case studies and the client and service provider get to increase their profile (i.e. win win win win).  I know that the Green Party of England and Wales aren't on civicrm.org yet - they would be good to include.  I'll write another couple of case studies before Chase if you keep on hassling me.  I am sure that you could get other providers to do the same

I am aware that CiviCRM does not have the kind of marketing budget that the proprietary vendors have but I see there are some materials here.. http://civicrm.org/content/spreadtheword which should be useful too.

That might be about it, but definitely google around and have a good look around the wiki.  I also think you will learn a lot from watching all of the conference videos that are up on these sites (especially the keynotes)

http://sf2012.civicrm.org/
http://london2012.civicrm.org/
http://london2011.civicrm.org/

Can anyone suggest anything else I should do to help prepare myself for this opportunity to represent the product to an audience such as that?

I think that keep track of stuff that is missing, questions that you wish you knew the answer to, and generally making all the resources that you put together available on the wiki where other people can find and improve them would be very handy.

we could then turn that into a 'pack' that people can use when they are going to conferences to represent civicrm.  i'd be really keen to help out there.

also, if you have more information on the specific questions that are being asked / the specific content of the panel, then i think a brainstorm on forum.civicrm.org would also work quite nicely.

would it be useful for a number of CiviCRM service providers to club together for a stand at the exhibition there?

lets see if there is any interest at the meet up this wednesday

Mark - also check the attachments on this wiki page:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/pages/viewpageattachments.action?pageId=67076580&metadataLink=true

Stoob (Stuart Gaston) put together the latest doc for an overview session in Portland this past October.