Sessions
From beginners to experienced developers, everyone has something new to learn about CiviCRM. Sessions and workshops this year at CiviCon are better and more numerous than ever before! We've got something for everyone.
Presentations on day one will be shorter and more concentrated. Workshops on day two will be a little longer and feature discussion, exercises and audience participation.
The conference program is organized into audience-oriented tracks, providing you flexibility and control over your experience. From case studies and “how to” sessions, to in-depth code review, the program will cover a diverse array of topics, session types, and representative organizations -- ensuring you the opportunity to view broadly, and go deeply, into the CiviCRM community. In addition, the help desk will be open at various times throughout the conference to provide one-on-one consulting advice.
Our sessions are aimed at users, implementors and developers.
User Schedule Implementer Schedule Developer Schedule
Complete session list
| Session | Description | More info |
|---|---|---|
| Welcome to CiviCon and Keynote |
We'll kick off the day with recognition and thanks for the sponsors and volunteers that made this day possible as well as general logistics. Then Holly Ross, the Executive Director of the Drupal Assocation, will deliver the conference keynote:
Web Experience Management
We all think of data as that stuff with decimal points that bar graphs are... read more
with Dave Greenberg |
Time: Thursday 9:00 am to 9:45 am Audience: User, Implementer, Developer Type: Presentation |
| What's New in CiviCRM 4.4 and Coming in 4.5 |
Session slides are now available on Prezi.
A new version of CiviCRM is on its way. What does 4.5 have that previous versions don't? What's cool in 4.4 that you may not have tried yet. This user-oriented session will explain in plain language (with examples) the better known and lesser known features that 4.4 and 4.5 introduce to CiviCRM including... read more
with Dave Greenberg, Kurund Jalmi |
Time: Thursday 10:00 am to 11:00 am Audience: User, Implementer Type: Presentation |
| Tales from the Trenches - CiviCRM Support to Nonprofits |
In this presentation, we will provide some real-life tales from providing support for CiviCRM for three years to scores of nonprofit clients.
We'll share best practices in creating a streamlined support process, categorize clients, educate on risk areas and other "gotchas". We will provide tips on how to best address common situations, for example... read more
with Lisa Rau |
Time: Thursday 10:00 am to 11:00 am Audience: User, Implementer, Developer Type: Presentation |
| CiviCRM Entities: Creating Enhanced Event Info and Registration including Openlayers mapping pages |
With the advent of the CiviCRM Entity and Webform CiviCRM modules and the use of Drupal modules such as Entity Reference and EVA, site-builders can create enhanced user interfaces to CiviCRM Entities such as events. Using only Drupal site building techniques, one can build pages which combine the display of any Drupal Entity including Content... read more
with Mark Hanna |
Time: Thursday 10:00 am to 11:00 am Audience: Implementer, Developer Type: Presentation |
| Grantmaking and Grantseeking |
Most nonprofits deal with grants one way or another: as grantmakers, grantseekers, or both. CiviCRM can help you manage both, and CiviGrant is only one part of the solution.
For grantmakers, we will cover how to enable and configure CiviGrant along with ideas for how to manage inquiries, proposals, decisionmaking among a committee, and... read more
with Andrew Hunt |
Time: Thursday 10:00 am to 11:00 am Audience: User, Implementer Type: Presentation |
| Fundraising with CiviCRM |
In this session we’ll review how two midsize non-profit organizations, Secular Student Alliance and San Francisco Baykeeper, have taken advantage of customizing CiviCRM to implement donor-centered fundraising.
Donor-centered fundraising is a donor management approach based on 10 years of research by Penelope Burk on what donors want from the non-... read more
with Jessica Kirsner, Secular Student Alliance, Eliet Henderson, San Francisco Baykeeper |
Time: Thursday 11:15 am to 12:15 pm Audience: User Type: Presentation |
| Take your API skills to the next level |
This session will give CiviCRM developers of all skill levels some new tools to stick in their utility belt. We'll cover:
Exploring the API explorer
The new "getlist" api for quicksearch and autocompletes
CRM.api3 for a sugary client-side treat
Several flavors of unit testing
And more
with Coleman Watts |
Time: Thursday 11:15 am to 12:15 pm Audience: Developer Type: Presentation |
| Hosting Options and Performance Improvements |
Learn how to choose from the variety of hosting levels and provider offerings. There is a myriad of options from shared hosting, VPS, managed instances, dedicated servers, and CiviCRM-specific providers.
What are the important indicators so that you can choose the most appropriate option? Can you really do more with less? What level of access do... read more
with Peter Petrik |
Time: Thursday 11:15 am to 12:15 pm Audience: Implementer, Developer Type: Presentation |
| CiviHR: The Journey So Far, and What's Next |
A year ago, CiviHR was just a blueprint. It was introduced to a wider audience at CiviCON 2013 (http://sf2013.civicrm.org/introducing-civihr) with a rationale, proposed functions, and timeline. It is a matter of great joy that at CiviCON 2014, we shall able to present a live demo of CiviHR to show how far it has come and what we plan to take up... read more
with Andrew Tombs, Ruchi Kumar |
Time: Thursday 11:15 am to 12:15 pm Audience: User, Implementer Type: Presentation |
| Birds of a Feather Sessions |
"Birds of a Feather" groups are self-organized discussions about topics of mutual interest. Participants will be posting discussion topics during the morning and then folks can join a group based on their interests. In prior conferences, sessions have included:
Social media and CiviCRM
Documentation working group
User to user support (forums and... read more
with |
Time: Thursday 1:15 pm to 2:15 pm Audience: User, Implementer, Developer Type: Discussion group |
| CiviVolunteer is Here to Manage Your Volunteers |
This presentation will showcase the new CiviVolunteer module of CiviCRM. CiviVolunteer extends CiviCRM to help organizations manage their volunteers -- recruiting, training, assignment, and scheduling through to tracking and rewards programs.
The extension focuses on scheduling and reporting volunteer hours, as well as lay a solid foundation for... read more
with Frank Gómez |
Time: Thursday 2:15 pm to 3:15 pm Audience: User, Implementer, Developer Type: Presentation |
| Creating a document management system with CiviCRM and Drupal |
Learn how to create a two-way connections beween various Drupal nodes and CiviCRM contacts. The examples we will explore will be connecting each organic group to a CRM contact, and vice versa. Another example will be a report filling system where each report filed is associated with a CRM organization contact.
In each example, you can see the... read more
with Sarah Gladstone |
Time: Thursday 2:15 pm to 3:15 pm Audience: Implementer, Developer Type: Presentation |
| Integrated grassroots fundraising, organizing, and communications features? Yeah, CiviCRM + PowerBase can do that! |
Last year, Progressive Technology Project (PTP) conducted a pilot program to test the much needed features that grassroots community organizing and base building groups need in order to conduct an integrated grassroots fundraising campaign. The "integrated" part means that the fundraising features enhance the overall CiviCRM + PowerBase features... read more
with Mark Sherman, Tomás Aguilar |
Time: Thursday 2:15 pm to 3:15 pm Audience: User, Implementer, Developer Type: Presentation |
| Protecting Personal Information |
CiviCRM is first and foremost a tool for communicating with your community. Who is your community? Why are you communicating with them? And who else might want in on your conversations?
We’re willing to make the bold claim that nonprofits have a responsibility to protect personal data they collect on their community. In this session, we’ll... read more
with Noah Miller, Kellie Brownell |
Time: Thursday 3:30 pm to 4:30 pm Audience: User Type: Presentation |
| Hostile Migration: Jumping to Civi Under The Gun! (A Case Study) |
Their website and membership database held hostage by a web development company, non-profit Music Nova Scotia needed to build a new site quickly and cost-effectively, and with only a manually-updated spreadsheet of their membership to go by. CiviCRM to the rescue! This session will describe the accelerated development process (< 6 months) by... read more
with Sean MacGillivray |
Time: Thursday 3:30 pm to 4:30 pm Audience: Implementer, Developer Type: Presentation |
| CiviCRM TaxReceipt project |
This presentation will provide an overview and in depth coverage of the CiviCRM CDN TaxReceipt project - a joint project by Canadian developers: Jake (Peaceworks), Lola (Freeform Solutions), Alan (Alan Dixon Consulting) and myself (Semper IT). I will present on how we arrived at the Extension - how we worked with (and continue to work with) a BDO... read more
with Karin Gerritsen |
Time: Thursday 3:30 pm to 4:30 pm Audience: User, Implementer, Developer Type: Presentation |
| Fun with Profiles |
In this session you'll learn how to use profiles to create member directories (or board lists), for easy bulk data entry for volunteers or irregular CiviCRM users and how they can augment what you see in your search results.
with Jane Hanley |
Time: Thursday 3:30 pm to 4:30 pm Audience: User Type: Presentation |
| Accounting Integration in CiviCRM 4.3+: Helping Fundraisers and Accountants to Reconcile |
Beginning in release 4.3 of CiviCRM, a much more robust methodology for tracking and exporting financial data was introduced. Now it is easier than ever to have CiviCRM track contributions and other financial transactions the way fundraisers want to see them, but at the same time easily export that financial information the way the accountants... read more
with Guy Iaccarino |
Time: Thursday 4:45 pm to 5:45 pm Audience: User, Implementer Type: Presentation |
| Using CiviCase for Projects |
For those of you that came to CiviCon 2013 in London or SF you may have seen the earlier versions of the system used by Oasis to manage community projects using CiviCRM and CiviCase.
In this session we'll explore the basics as well as how Phase II of the project has moved on, including using charts to visualise the data collected.
with Parvez Saleh |
Time: Thursday 4:45 pm to 5:45 pm Audience: User, Implementer Type: Presentation |
| Understanding Imports - Getting your data in and updating it |
This is a session for CiviCRM beginners, or for someone already using CiviCRM and now needing to add or integrate data. CiviCRM can do great things when importing and updating data, but there are limits to what it can do - especially when you are using custom fields! This session will cover:
Understanding what the Import functions can do - and... read more
with Eliot Mason |
Time: Thursday 4:45 pm to 5:45 pm Audience: User Type: Presentation |
| Hiring and Training for Success with CiviCRM |
CiviCRM is awesome but it is not a solution - it is a tool. Effective people who are capable of using tools and adapting to new systems are the solution. Learning new technology is one of the most challenging tasks non-profit staff can do. Not everyone is "a natural" but you don't need them to be to use CiviCRM effectively. You do, however, need a... read more
with Stuart Gaston |
Time: Thursday 4:45 pm to 5:45 pm Audience: User Type: Presentation |
| Welcome to Day 2 and State of the Project |
Welcome to Day 2 of CiviCon San Francisco 2014! We'll share our thoughts on the state of the project, and highlight some of the awesome initiatives that are driving the platform forward.
Session slides here
with Dave Greenberg, Lobo |
Time: Friday 9:00 am to 9:30 am Audience: User, Implementer, Developer Type: Presentation |
| Designing and sending newsletters with CiviCRM |
why is it so hard to design and send newsletters?
designing for above the fold
HTML gotchas for email composing
practical examples: before/after
best practices for sending
with Nicolas Ganivet |
Time: Friday 9:30 am to 10:45 am Audience: User, Implementer Type: Workshop |
| (Mis)leading Change |
Leading Change when you don’t have the formal leadership role…or when you do. Why is implementing the things we said we wanted so hard?...and how do we make it not so hard.
This is a practical workshop that centers on the specific implementation/initiative challenges to the not for profit environment.
Topics that will be covered by presenter... read more
with Karen Salomon |
Time: Friday 9:30 am to 10:45 am Audience: Implementer, Developer Type: Workshop |
| I "wannabe" a developer? How do I get started? |
We will discuss and answer questions like this:
How do I get started? How does the API work and how can I use it?
What software/tools should I learn to use/Have in my back pocket?
What would be a good project to start with? Something simple but will help me learn?
What are some of the challenges of developing in civicrm and how can I help overcome... read more
with Wendy Greiner, Kurund Jalmi |
Time: Friday 9:30 am to 10:45 am Audience: Implementer, Developer Type: Workshop |
| An Intro: WordPress with CiviCRM |
Join this workshop to see how you can use your WordPress website with CiviCRM. See a brief demonstration of how you can use CiviCRM to capture contact information on your WordPress website. We will look at:
WordPress plugins for CiviCRM
WordPress shortcodes
CiviCRM Extensions
You can publish new content about your organization with ease using... read more
with Dana Skallman |
Time: Friday 9:30 am to 10:45 am Audience: User, Implementer Type: Workshop |
| Pulling it Together: Integrating CiviCRM With Joomla Core and Third-Party Extensions |
Do you love CiviCRM, but get frustrated when it doesn’t work the way you want on the front end in Joomla? Have you wanted to allow users to manage their organization’s users and events without having them navigate the administrator? Are you using Bootstrap, but jumping through crazy hoops to make profiles and listings work with your responsive... read more
with Jeremy Proffitt |
Time: Friday 9:30 am to 10:45 am Audience: Developer Type: Presentation |
| Effective Campaign Life Cycles with Civi |
CiviCRM can be used within campaigns to target and track communications
with constituents and allies. These communications are most effective
and efficient when combined with intentional planning for campaign
success and organizational sustainability.
An effective campaign lifecycle has a few essential parts: a coordinated
plan for messaging and... read more
with Jessica Steimer, Jack Aponte, Tomás Aguilar |
Time: Friday 11:00 am to 12:30 pm Audience: User Type: Workshop |
| Peer to Peer Fundraising Platforms on CiviCRM |
Jeff Porter and Ryan Johnson will provide an overview of the Peer to Peer fundraising platform designed for FPWR (onesmallstep.fpwr.org) and also used for PWSA of Colorado (www.pwsderby.com) and Charity in Motion (in progress).
We will discuss the lessons learned, best practices around
Internationalization including language support, currencies,... read more
with Jeff Porter, Ryan Johnson |
Time: Friday 11:00 am to 12:30 pm Audience: User, Implementer Type: Presentation |
| CiviCRM 5.0 |
- Doctrine and Symfony integration in CiviCRM
TBD
with Kurund Jalmi, Tim Otten |
Time: Friday 11:00 am to 12:30 pm Audience: Implementer, Developer Type: Workshop |
| Transitioning to CiviCRM - How to map your data into CiviCRM and collect the data that you want |
Summary:This workshop focuses on planning where the data will go before importing, not about how to actually run the data import. We will look at the ever popular question of when to use a group or a tag, when to use CiviCRM custom fields, relationships and more.
Audience:This workshop is for you if you would like to better understand what types... read more
with Kasia Wakarecy, Lola Slade |
Time: Friday 11:00 am to 12:30 pm Audience: User, Implementer Type: Workshop |
| Lightning talks |
A Lightning Talk is a short presentation. Unlike other presentations, they only last a few minutes and we will deliver them in a single period by different speakers.
Presenters:
Jeff Porter: FPWR (P2P) Case Study
Kevin Reynen: Google Summer of Code
Max Hunter: East Bay Bike Coalition
Jamie McClelland: PowerBase
Andrew Tombs: CiviHR
Stephen... read more
with |
Time: Friday 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm Audience: User, Implementer, Developer Type: Presentation |
| Navigating Epic Challenges in CRM Implementation |
Implementing a CRM for your organization (or migrating an existing one, or improving your relationship with a CRM that isn't meeting your needs) is a strategic and tactical challenge. This session will draw on case studies of real-world CRM implementations to help your organization prepare for and overcome the challenges inherent in planning,... read more
with Daniel Heath |
Time: Friday 2:45 pm to 4:00 pm Audience: User, Implementer, Developer Type: Workshop |
| Donor Journeys using CiviCRM |
Over the pond in Europe we've been talking about how to keep donors engaged. This really boils down to planning and implementing Donor Journey's i.e. what would you like your contacts to do and how do you make it as easy as possible to get there.
In this session we'll cover some of the features of CiviCRM that make this possible and what we have... read more
with Parvez Saleh |
Time: Friday 2:45 pm to 4:00 pm Audience: User, Implementer Type: Workshop |
| Importing Large Datasets |
CiviCRM's built in import functionality can be used with smaller datasets or a limited number of record updates. Need to pre-load a database with tens of thousands of records? This workshop will demonstrate an approach of preparing, loading, and validating large datasets - tens or hundreds of thousands of records.
We'll review options of using... read more
with Peter Petrik, Mark Hanna, Nicolas Ganivet, Jon Goldberg |
Time: Friday 2:45 pm to 4:00 pm Audience: Implementer, Developer Type: Discussion group |
| CiviCRM 4.5 for Developers |
The new version of CiviCRM features numerous enhancements to make users and developers happier. In this session we'll cover:
Api enhancements
Popups and the new ajax framework
EntityRef: a new approach to autocomplete fields
Unobtrusive notifications
In-place option editing
And more
Session notes are here.
with Coleman Watts |
Time: Friday 2:45 pm to 4:00 pm Audience: Developer Type: Workshop |
| Members Only: A Training Session on Managing Your Members Using CiviCRM |
CiviMember is a valuable tool in CiviCRM but setting it up the first time can be daunting. This session will cover everything you need to know to get started with CiviMember.
You will learn how:
to create new membership types
membership status works
membership can be shared between related contacts
to add a self-service membership signup and... read more
with Jane Hanley |
Time: Friday 4:15 pm to 5:30 pm Audience: User Type: Workshop |
| Developing and Extending CiviCRM |
CiviCRM's architecture provides a unique opportunity: to collaborate with clients and developers from different backgrounds; to share and reuse code with different projects, different CMSs, and different CMS releases. This workshop will introduce CiviCRM's architecture and drill-down on how to write your own patches and cross-platform extensions,... read more
with Tim Otten, Nicolas Ganivet |
Time: Friday 4:15 pm to 5:30 pm Audience: Developer Type: Workshop |
| Parlez-vous CiviCRM? internationalisation and so many other languages |
Are you using or planning to use CiviCRM in another language than US English?
Do you need to expose contributions, event or profile forms to your constituents in more than one language? Our workshop will shed light on what localisation and international is, how it works and how you can use it. We will then take questions on how to address specific... read more
with Mathieu Lutfy, Luciano Spiegel |
Time: Friday 4:15 pm to 5:30 pm Audience: User, Implementer, Developer Type: Workshop |
| Drupal Webforms for Events, Memberships & Contributions |
If you're using Drupal and CiviCRM you probably know that the Webform module is useful for making all kinds of forms. Maybe you've even made a couple Civi-integrated webforms (or a couple hundred). It's not too hard to make pretty good forms. But what about making great forms? This session will cover some basic techniques and then the cool new... read more
with Anna Heath |
Time: Friday 4:15 pm to 5:30 pm Audience: Implementer Type: Workshop |
