CiviCRM Developer Camp

This week I went to CiviCRM Developer Camp in London, UK. I must admit I've never used CiviCRM and downloaded and installed it for the first time the day before! The camp, which was un-conference in style, was held over two days, and over 20 people attended. It was meant to be a camp for experienced users, but given the varying degrees of knowledge of the people attending, I think it was less techy or advanced than originally intended.

For me it was the perfect introduction to learning how CiviCRM was structured and how I could go about extending it. Day one started with an overview of its architecture, followed up by an introduction to its hooks system. Unlike Drupal it is object orientated in design, but does have a very similar, albeit in its infancy, hook system. This might be related to the fact that the majority of the larger developer community are working on integrating it with Drupal. Day two continued with more sessions on hooks and the API, as well as a brief discussion on using CiviCRM in a multi-lingual environment. Finally, it finished off with an interesting discussion on how to improve and grow the CiviCRM community.

After the two days my head was reeling with information. If you're using CiviCRM, or even just contemplating it, I would definitely recommend going to this or similar events if you can. It wasn't just that the various sessions were all good, but you got to talk with other users, see what sort of implementations they've done and how they overcame various problems. It was also helpful for finding out information, such as getting involved in the community, where to find the IRC channel and how to find my way around the documentation.

Kudos to Michael McAndrew for organising the event, and thanks to Donald Lobo and Kurund Jalmi for flying in especially for the camp and for their excellent presentations.

Useful links:

• CiviCRM main site
• How to get involved
• Developer Documentation
• How to contribute code