Last January, we have 24 amazing CiviDay meet ups in cities around the world. I looked back just now and was reminded of all the great things that came out of those meetups (including CiviCamp DC!). It was great to see existing meet ups energised and new ones started. This coming January 29th 2014, we want to repeat the success of last year, and push it up a notch.
We all know there is no better way than face-to-face meetings for properly connecting with people. IMHO, our meet ups have two main goals:
- existing users can get together, build their networks and skills, share experiences, provide support and help to each other
- people who are considering starting out with CiviCRM can talk to real people who've been using CiviCRM, hear real life success stories, find out what support is available locally, and get energised about the possibilities.
This year, we'd like to focus attention on the second of these - welcoming new people. We'd like to make CiviDay an outreach event to show propsective users how CIviCRM can help them. Since a lot of people are thinking about new projects in January, this is quite good timing.
Head along to your local meet up, and if you don't have a meet up in your city, why not organise one?
How will we do this?
To start us off, here are a couple of simple ways in which we can do this:
- presentations from end users showing how CiviCRM helps them acheive their missions would help show people how
- presentations from implementers outlining the resources out there that can help people getting started with CiviCRM
- partnerships with other organisations (non profit / tech media, for example) to get the world out about CiviDay in general and local CiviDay meet ups
It'd be great to hear ideas from people on other things we can do on the day to make CiviDay a success - both things we can do on the day, and ways in which we can promote it to people that would not come otherwise. And if you have a day to spare between now and the 29th January, then creating some CiviDay resources would be an awesome thing to do.
What now?
As of 25 November, we have 14 meet ups organised. Here are a few things you can do right now:
- sign up to your local meetup (or start one if there is not one nearby)
- let the world know that you are going to cividay and how good it is going to be (#cividay)
- tell us about things we can do as part of CiviDay in the comments below
- promote CiviDay to people to your local and global networks