The following post is adapted from an email sent to existing clients who currently use CiviCRM.

I'm writing to all my clients who currently use CiviCRM on their website to update them on some exciting news on the horizon, and to fill you in on some of my involvement in the project.

CiviCRM is open source software. What that essentially means is that there is no Fortune 500 company with lots of lawyers trying to protect anyone from seeing and modifying the code. It's open. Anyone can see and modify the code. Because of this openness, open source software has traditionally grown and developed very organically, allowing community involvement and input to push the project in the directions most useful for users.

CiviCRM is a little unique in this regard, as there actually is a "core development team" that literally works full-time on the development of the software (many open source projects are volunteer/community-driven). But it still relies very heavily on community involvement to steer the direction of the project.  

CiviCRM Advisory Group

Earlier this year, the core development team sought to create a structure whereby input from the community could be gathered and filtered in a more efficient way. This led to the creation of the CiviCRM Advisory Group in mid-February, which I was asked to participate in. The group consists of CiviCRM implementers and developers from around the world who have demonstrated committment to the project and can help articulate the concerns and desires of the community to the core development team.

I'm excited to be part of this group, for a couple reasons: it gives me an opportunity to help support and advance the project, and it provides greater opportunity to help influence the project in ways that best support my clients. In that regard, I welcome input and will do my best to lobby for inclusion of specific feature requests in future versions. I can't guarantee every feature request will make it into the next version, but I can often get it in the pipeline.

CiviCRM v2.3

One of the first things the Advisory Group did after forming was help define the primary improvement area for the next version of the software: usability. I think CiviCRM has made significant strides over the last couple versions toward streamlining processes, reducing the amount of page loads for a specific task, and generally improving usability, but more can (and will) be done. The key focus areas for v2.3 are creating more efficient and intuitive page layouts for forms and view screens; further reducing the number of page loads required to complete an action; and implementing some new features such as context menus (right click to take action on a record).

Over the coming weeks, I may send out some links to demo pages in order to solicit feedback and get a sense of whether you like the general direction things are heading in, and whether you find the layout and functionality to be a valuable improvement.  

CiviCRM Book

I'm excited to announce that I've been invited to participate in the publication of a CiviCRM book. I'll be traveling to the Tahoe area in early May for about a week where I'll participate in a book sprint with about a dozen other CiviCRM consultants and developers. The idea is to work out some of the structural and audience-related details in advance, and then come together for a week and plow through the writing and editing process, with the goal of having a near-finished product at the end of the week.

The project is sponsored in part by the Open Society Institute and Soros Foundations Network, and will be developed in partnership with Floss Manuals. The final product will be available in electronic format for free, or in print format for slightly over cost (the profit going back to support the project).

The book will provide valuable reference and opportunity to "go deeper" into the software than what is typically covered in our training.

You can read more about the book development through the CiviCRM blog.