The session on Civic Space and CiviCRM is dimly lit by the glow of the computer screens. I know about Civic Space and I’m interested in maybe using it on www.OrangePolitics.org sometime in the distant future. But I haven’t heard about the CRM (constituent relationship management) thing, which is something we’re looking for at work to manage an internal contact database.
Dan says CiviCRM is a nonprofit back end for Civic Space: donations, advocacy, e-mail marketing, etc. But it will work as a back end with other systems like drupal, mambo, plone, advokit, etc. This isn’t quite what I am looking for for work, but still intriguing.
Examples using Civic Space:
– www.spreadfirefox.com (looks good & scales big)
– www.principlesproject.com
– www.ydabythebay.com
Andrew Hoppin says www.EchoDitto.com is a high-end vendor for setting this up. I have been checking them out lately and they do some very interesting and good-looking stuff.
David Geilhufe says this is a “young ecosystem” and you can’t look at it the same as you would other vendors/solutions. He says it’s not ready for prime time yet.
Dan says he has just helped to create a Civic Space Users community. I think that part (nonprofit stakeholder) has been missing so this is good news.
If you’re curious, you can demo civic space at www.bryght.com .