CiviCon Next Month in San Francisco

I’m honored to be asked to kick off the first ever CiviCon next month in San Francisco . CiviCon is a one day conference for users of CiviCRM , a free software constituent relationship management platform. CiviCRM is a key component of Creative Commons’ infrastructure (we use it as our donor management system ), and I’m excited to see the community come together and talk about new features, integration techniques, and ideas for future development.

When I was asked to present, I thought about what I could talk about, beyond simply our deployment and customization of CiviCRM (which the other Nathan will do a great job of during his presentation ). Creative Commons is not the first non-profit I’ve worked with, and CiviCRM is not the first constituent/donor management system I’ve worked with. As I thought about my past experience and my experience at Creative Commons, I realized that CiviCRM is a key piece of infrastructure that enables Creative Commons to fulfill its mission, and to do so in a responsible way. Using CiviCRM is not just a question of free vs. proprietary software: it’s a question of responsible stewardship. CiviCRM and other free software allows us to fulfill our mission in a responsible, sustainable way. I think this is important to think about, so I’ll be talking about why I think this is the case. I’ll touch on how CiviCRM fits into Creative Commons, how it supports our mission, why I think FLOSS infrastructure ([STRIKEOUT:including]especially Civi) is essential for non-profits and grassroots organizations, and what I think is on the horizon.

I hope you’ll join me next month at CiviCon; you can register now (space is limited). The list of proposed sessions is online, and it looks like a really interesting day.