Drupal 8 + CiviCRM Roundearth Lands In Calgary for CiviCamp

by Elliot Christenson on May 9, 2018 - 9:22pm

On May 22nd, the giant CiviCRM Meetup CiviCamp Calgary arrives! What is CiviCRM? What is CiviCamp? What is Calgary? And why should a Drupaler like yourself care? If you are familiar with myDropWizard, you probably know some of those answers already! If not, let's carry on:

What is CiviCRM?

If you have heard of myDropWizard, you probably are already familiar with what CiviCRM is and why we're so excited. For the uninitiated:

CiviCRM is a powerful, web-based contact relationship management (CRM) system.

CRM's are software that help manage your contacts, communications, and even financial interactions. CiviCRM is open source (like Drupal) that allows all sorts of organizations handle things that otherwise would have to be handled in much more ad hoc ways like word processing documents, spreadsheet documents - or even paper records!

What is CiviCamp?

CiviCamps are casual, locally-organized one day events covering everything related to CiviCRM. Attend CiviCamp and learn about CiviCRM and what it can do for your organization, meet other CiviCRM users and gather their feedback, learn advanced strategies for managing your online database, ask any questions you might have, share tips and build connections!

If you're familiar with DrupalCamps or DrupalCon, this is the parallel in the CiviCRM community. It's a place to meet other CiviCRM users and creators (like myDropWizard's Roundearth).

What is Calgary?

I'm only half-kidding. I know Americans (i.e. U.S. Citizens) have a poor reputation when it comes to cities outside the U.S. Obviously most of us have heard of Calgary - at least I did - from the Olympics a few years back.

I'm a sheltered American, like I said, and I didn't realize that Calgary is actually a huge city (over a million residents is huge to those of us in Wisconsin!), and it's in fact Canada's third largest.

I personally won't be making the trip, and I feel a bit cheated of the opportunity to check it out!

Why Should Drupalers Care?

So, all of that is great, but why should you care about that as a Drupaler? Great question! If you are a nonprofit operator yourself, or if you are a Drupal developer that works with nonprofit organizations, you should check out what CiviCRM has to offer. CiviCamp Calgary would be a great place to do it!

CiviCRM and Drupal have a long history, and we've written many other blog posts about our efforts with CiviCRM and Drupal 8:

myDropWizard has been actively working with many nonprofits for close to a year on our Roundearth project. This is our distribution of Drupal 8 + CiviCRM. Our long term goal is to increase usage of it, get the costs for development down, and get this into the hands of even more nonprofits as a hosted service.

myDropWizard's First CiviCRM Event

We're very excited to have myDropWizard represented at CiviCamp Calgary. Even more exciting: myDropWizard Co-Founder David Snopek was selected to lead a session on Drupal 8 + CiviCRM!

• What is the current status of Drupal 8 + CiviCRM?
• What are some challenges?
• What are some upcoming milestones?

If you're planning on being at CiviCamp Calgary, please say "hi" to David Snopek and Will Long. I know they're anxious to meet as many CiviCRM users as possible in the short time in Calgary.