Over the years, I've subscribed to hundreds of e-mail lists. Like many of my colleagues in the online campaigning world, I subscribe to get a feel for how different organizations handle their online communication strategy. During the US Presidential election in 2008, I was subscribed to more than ever -- and I enjoyed every missive! -- however, when the election was over I unsubscribed, no longer wanting to hear from McCain, Ron Paul, and so on. A year and eight months passed ... and then, today, I received the e-mail below. I'm a big fan of e-mail and I work with many organizations to help grow their lists by reducing list attrition (unsubscribes) -- so my first reaction was "this is pretty smart." However, as I had a chance to read further and realize that I'd simply been re-subscribed to the list without permission, I was less enthusiastic. Now, frankly, I'm not the kind to get my knickers in a knot about this kind of thing (as it is easy enough to re-unsubscribe), but I bet that many others would. What do you think? Genius or Spam? (Click for larger version.)

This in late last week (while I was on the mend from some serious food poisoning... thanks Peru!) from Donald Lobo and the CiviCRM team:

Hey folks:

We are trying to raise some sponsorship $$$ to build canvassing and get out of the vote support in CiviCRM. Seems like we've got a good combination of folks who are interested in working with us to develop it. We've got an excellent start from some seed funders, and need a few more funders to meet our goals. If the above is of interest to you or your clients, please consider helping out. You can make your donation here :)

The complete specification is on the the wiki: CiviCRM for Canvassing and GOTV

This requirement has been probably been the #1 reason that many of the electoral campaigns that I've supported in the past couldn't get good mileage out of CiviCRM. There was no easy way to do the usual canvassing and get out of the vote activities right inside of CiviCRM. Sure, it was hackable with custom fields and custom reports, but it never worked as well as it could have. If you've had similar experiences, this is your chance to fix that.

Why not sponsor some of the development, or commit some developer hours to help out?

This just in from Donald Lobo and the CiviCRM team:

Hey folks:

Just wanted to let you know that we'll be having our very first CiviCon on April 22 at Mitch Kapor Foundation offices. We hope to see all of you at the conference. Save the date and book your tickets: CiviCon, April 22, 2010

Information and registration is here. Please register as soon as possible :)

Would be great if folks could propose a few sessions here. We'd love to organize the conference into various tracks (fundraising, advocacy/political, membership/association, education). The success of the conference depends on our combined involvement.

We are also having quite a few trainings around that time in Atlanta, GA around NTEN (April 7, 11, 12). There is an affinity group session and panel discussions around CiviCRM during NTEN.

We are also having trainings the day before DrupalCon April 18.

If you are in the area or attending either of those conferences, we could use your help. Please contact us via email.

A complete list of our events is here

lobo

Exciting to see a product evolve so far in such a short timeframe. If I recall correctly, my own introduction to CiviCRM began on the Kleercut campaign in 2005. It's been a reliable friend several times since then and just keeps on improving. Kudos to all the folks that make this open-source software project possible.

This is one event that I might just have to attend. If you're considering CiviCRM for your organization, you might want to think about it too.