The location was Truckee California, the technology was Floss Manuals, our ‘guide’ was Adam Hyde - and the mission was a bit daunting.

After 5-days of hard slog, some very fine food and great company we hit ‘publish’ around 6pm on Friday (yes I know, I should have finished my chapter at 5pm Adam!) and the manual was immediately available as a free download PDF, and as a hard copy that can be purchased online.

So how does a booksprint work. Well, in our case, once we had divvied the book up in to chapters we all leapt in to the most relevant chapters, emptied our brains, passed it on to someone else, moved on somewhere else, came back to it later. In amongst this we argued about spelling (open source won the day and spelling was agnostic of UK or USA style English), we conferred on how exactly CiviCRM dealt with curly problems - and we laughed.

We even let some Joomla! folk participate

Did it work - undoubtedly it did. There was no manual, then there was. The concept is brilliant. There are definitely some ways I think both the technology and the process can be tweaked to ensure that even more of our efforts were fruitful. There were occasions where we clearly had to much overlap across some chapters, and there were some gaps that we will have to go back and fill in.

In terms of process, hats off to Adam for steering us through. My preference in future would be to have a more layered map of what we are aiming for - the software really only let us frame it out at the Chapter level, and I think going down another two levels on the outline - and being able to view the output in such an outlined format - would be great.

And yes, I would use a mindmapping tool such as FreeMind to manage the content outlines because it gives so much flexibility and the ability to collapse and expand infinitely.

This manual will continue to evolve online, and updates will be frequent as we get back to fleshing out the weaker parts, or adding in new elements from future releases.

Hats off to my co-writers - a really enjoyable experience.

• Personal Campaign Pages - so you can add the online networking of your activists to encourage donations
  , and
• CiviCase - which is a highly configurable case management system that will be useful to various service providers such as beneficiary action groups, mental health service providers, health management teams and others. We are looking forward to implementing this for various clients who are assessing CiviCRM at present.

an find Release Highlights here.

I was surprised to get an invite to participate but thinking about it I can see that it would be useful to be able to contribute to this from the perspective of someone who is more on the implementation side of the equation, than on the development side.

And hopefully I can ensure that the political sectors interests get voiced. Not sure if I will be the only one from this side of the equator but good to know that the South get a voice.

Thanks to two Drupal modules this is proving to be a straightforward process.

Views Bulk Operations has made the process of the categorisation overhaul nice and simple. Being able to grab all the files that had been categorised in a particular way in the old system, and recategorise them in bulk to the new taxonomy is very useful.

Meanwhile Faceted Search has also turned up trumps, providing a very user friendly advanced search function.

Good work developers!

• CiviCase: a huge addition that provides a valuable tool for case management
• Personal Campaign Pages : enabling supporters to drive potential contributors to the contribution pages
• CiviEvent: discounts, early bird registration and much more
• CiviCore: ability to force Drupal registration when using Profile forms

CiviCRM scored the following grades:
A : Quality and Reliability
A : After Sales Support
A : Delivers on Promises and Deadlines
B+ : Usability
A+ : Value for Money
A : Value for Time
A : Ability to be Configured

Having a streamlined and effective communication system so organisations can deliver the information that their contacts want is hugely helpful.

In particular, being able to send them an email that not only shows them the contact details that are on record, but also providing a link that takes them direct to a page that displays that information means keeping contact details up to date can be a whole lot easier.

The system we have been working with the civiCRM community to extend really does deliver on this.

Things ground to a halt as a result of an awesome opportunity to jump the Tasman last September and work on the communications strategy for the Australian Greens’ election campaign. Hard work but really glad I went. Big ups to all those people who made me so welcome. Thank you.

Particular highlights were breaking in to the media ‘cone of silence’ around the Greens in the Rudd v Howard stories. We did this by taking a somewhat in-your-face approach to being closed out of the leaders’ debates. Not something we have had to worry about in MMP New Zealand. Anyhow the decision to run our own leaders’ debate in the same venue with a public audience did get us in to the main stories. Thanks to Bob Brown for believing in the possibilities on that one.

Streaming events proved that even the best technology can fail - thanks goodness for YouTube! And some good lessons were learnt in co-opting facebook ads - talk about quick feedback on creatives!

There was an awesome team to work with, and in particular I have to take my hat off to Mia (you’re awesome!) - you made me so welcome. Also in Canberra, of course, Roland, Bill and Kerrie T. What a great team and a great place. And my hosts. How did you put up with me so long? Thank you so much Jack and Deb.

Max, Lesa, Jon and the rest of the NSW crew - thanks for your persistence, creativity and passion. The Vic Greens with whom I got to spend some good times! On ya! Chris D (who really does look like Beethoven!), Alison, Dinesh, Ian, … and Lily.

The West Aus team also rocked. Alison X (see you in Parliament soon I hope), Rachel and Rachel, and Tim. Shame the SouthPark viral didn’t get out earlier. It was great. (Where is it?)
To the teams in the other states, it was hard yakker but you really all did such an awesome job. The SA and QLD teams really pulled some rabbits out of the hat!

Of course the campaign wouldn’t have been the same without the efforts of the ad agency; hats off to Ben, Rod, Stuart, Sam and the rest of the team at Cyclone. Being able to take up residence in your offices was a breakthrough. Hard work on all of us but we got through it.

And last, but definitely not least, the Senators and the Lead Candidates. Kerry, thanks for dragging me in to this. Sorry you’re looking for a new job but the world is your organic, fair-traded oyster. Sarah and Scott, look forward to seeing you up at the capital. Larissa and Richard, next time maybe - there is always a next time.