Blogs

Long time contributor Eileen McNaughton recently won the New Zealand Open Source Award for Open Source Contributor, so we thought we’d reach out to a few members of the community to get input on her efforts with CiviCRM. Erik Hommel and Dave Greenberg are kicking off this blog post with their own personal thanks to Eileen. If you have a comment, story, or just want to say thanks, post it in the comments!

Earlier this year, we did a community wide survey to better understand the CiviCRM user base as well as help refine our priorities as a Core Team. While there were a few surprises in the results, one item that we expected to stand out was a need for ongoing training. Let’s face it… CiviCRM can be complicated, at least for those that leverage its full potential and adapt it to their own business processes.

At the CiviCons and developer meetings this year, we've had several conversations about release strategy. The topic is a bit abstract -- touching on a web of interrelated issues of technology and scheduling and business-process. I've been searching for a way to explain this topic to people who don't eat and breathe code in CiviCRM's git repos -- an analysis which is a bit simpler and more transcendent.

CiviCon London wrapped up last week, with over 150 attendees attending more than 30 information-packed sessions. It was great to have such engaging presentations, representatives from the core team talking about the direction of the project, and so many long-term contributors around. But for me, this is the most valuable thing about attending CiviCon...

Nearly 78% of sites using CiviCRM are on either version 4.6 or 4.7 (check out CiviCRM stats online). Why is that significant? Because those are the only two community supported releases currently. If you’re not on one of these versions, most importantly, don’t be alarmed. There might be a reason you’re not… perhaps you’re using a partner that continues to support an previous version, or have customizations that prohibit an upgrade.

Good evening. (Or, for folks in America… good afternoon. For folks in Oceania, good morning.) I'm writing from the CiviCRM sprint in Edale (UK), and it’s the height of apple season. In an ordinary year, the local folks here would be shaking the apple trees, getting a bit tipsy on cider, and discovering gravity.

As the title implies, we’ve stuck our toe into improving the contributor framework before, but never quite settled on the best approach. But, it’s high time we do so. Why? Because contributors are key to sustaining and improving CiviCRM. The trouble is and has always been that recognizing, rewarding and encouraging contributions from the community is a complex task.

The team is excited to announce release of CiviCRM 4.6.22 and 4.7.12.

The October 5th release for 4.7 includes a few changes :

Ruta Civica (Civic Route) is a Mexican volunteer based organization working in civic education and promoting citizen participation in public affairs. Through different campaigns, our mission is to develop the involvement of citizens in the making of the Constitution and laws for Mexico City and its urban planning. Since land zoning, construction and public works decisions have to pursue the public interest. We organize and train neighborhood committees and groups, as well as provide independent technical expert advice on urban and sustainability projects. We also work in educating, preventing and denouncing corruption.

One of the top goals for the CiviCRM roadmap is to improve the theming to look good on more websites and devices. That's a big task and it won't happen overnight, but I want to stop and appreciate the progress we've already made plus other improvements in the works: