Wellington ICT successfully launched its e-rider learning lunch seminar programme last week with almost 30 people attending the first in a series aimed at helping community and voluntary groups to get the most out of technology. Two speakers gave informal presentations on the usefulness of an open source software tool designed to meet the needs of advocacy, non-profit and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). ‘CiviCRM’ is a constituent relationship management solution for managing contact information and integrating it with a website.

Liz Thomas told how Living Streets Aotearoa had found switching to CiviCRM from their multiple collections of contact lists much simpler than they had anticipated and how it has really improved their management of communication with a nation-wide network of community-based Walking User Groups and associated email discussion groups.

Peter Davis from Fuzion gave a brief overview of the software and provided some insight into how it functions; telling the story of how CiviCRM evolved and outlining how his company can help community organisations to be more effective in their communications, campaigns and projects through the use of contact/customer management solutions based on CiviCRM.

Participants enjoyed the seminar and the opportunity to network and were very positive in their feedback saying:  "It's good. We would like to hear more from other Wellington ICT initiatives. Thanks for doing great stuff for our communities." And “I would love to see these in the Hutt Community - just brilliant. Thank you.”