Any interest in phone conference? / study group?

[Denver Dave]

Discussion forums are great, listservers are great.   Any interest in a phone conference about CiviCRM?

We could use www.Skype.com for up to 9 people, http://skypecasts.skype.com for up to 150 people and free conference software (excluding any long-distance charges) like www.freeconferencecall.com or www.highspeedconferencing.com   ..... or if there is only 3 of us we could do a 3 way call.

Any interest.  Hard to imagine that I would not learn something.

[geilhufe]

that would be a great thing for the community to organize. We've done them in the past and I think they have been useful. Skypecasts are a bit spotty in terms of quality, but there are other options like freeconference.com.

If someone organizes it, schedules it and puts together an agenda I'm willing to be there. We can probably rope Dave or Lobo in without too much kicking and screaming on their part

[preacherboy86]

I like this idea. I'm currently building a few sites with CiviCRM, and I'm having particular trouble with CiviMail, though I love all the other features. Learning more from this community would be fantastic!

[lcdweb]

I'm in.
-Brian

[chrism]

Good idea.

Our organization has been holding monthly one-hour lunch time teleworkshops with great response from our members.  FYI we do the following:
- select a focused theme for the call, and arrange 2 to 3 guest experts, and 1 moderator
- schedule a call for 100 people on freeconference.com
- when we start, ask participants to press their mute code, and listen to preliminary discussion by experts and moderator
- open the floor to questions for the remaining time
- choose the paid recording option so that we can share the discussion with those who could not make it

A couple challenges for CiviCRM will be:
a) finding a conference calling service that is affordable for the globally distributed team (freeconference.com and others typically have north american numbers and Skype doesn't work reliably to call in to them - Skype fails about 25% for me)
b) finding a good time that works for globally distributed team

A couple of topic suggestions:
- CiviCRM 2.0 for users - Introduction to features
- Developing CiviCRM - overview of architecture, APIs, best coding practices
- CiviMail/CiviEvent/etc.. - discussion of a current module's features and choices for roadmap
- Drupal and/or Joomla integration
 

[Denver Dave]

Thanks for the post.  Let's just pick a Day and time in mid December and see how things go.

I initially thought that we'd use my account at www.HighSpeedConferencing.com , but it looks like they may have re-organized and changed their pricing where Skype connections might be .04 / min.  Seems high - checking it out (please jump in if you wish):
http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=103103   

Otherwise, we'll use my or someone's account at www.FreeConferenceCall.com

How do I keep track of the other CiviCRM people that I meet that may be a resource? .......

What just one minute .... If we are really trying to use CiviCRM, maybe we should use the tool.  I'll setup a special custom datagroup for CiviCRM people, change our member type codes to now have an "other" or something that does get our access to health care mailings (unless you want them), maybe check the opt out.   ... I'll give it a try and report back.
- - - -
Worked pretty slick - I just added a custom multi-select field for Resources and listed CiviCRM and Drupal as selections.  In the member type radio buttons, gave an "other" option

Does change the concept of Constituent Resource Management - conceivably someone could be a resource that is actually on the other side of an issue.  And the resource might be of use to someone that took over my role.   I can see that the contact could collect quite a few people that are not on our normal mailing list.  I think I'll run in the 100 or so Colorado legislators today from another tracking database we have.

[petednz]

So what happened? Did a conference call take place? Did it die the death of indecision? Or was it just Xmas got in the way?

[Denver Dave]

I would still like to do a call if even one other person wants to participate.  We could either do
(1) Skype - up to 9 people
(2) www.FreeConferenceCall.com
(3) www.HighSpeedConferencing.com/classic

Shall we pick a day and time?

[petednz]

Hi DD - think it would be a good idea if there is some interest to summarise our key interest areas in Civi and then it may help create some different focus areas for people to engage with. Will wait and see if any others take the hook. Certainly open to skype options - maybe even if we were to just hear from people about their different ways of applying civi

[Donald Lobo]

This is not a phone conference, but there is a CiviCRM webinar tomorrow and there will be a pretty long Q&A session (hopefully)

More details here: http://civicrm.org/blog/

This is a paid event, but there is a discount for current CiviCRM users

lobo