So following my earlier rant,  thought I'd be a bit more festive and start a thread on e cards. They are fun, can be thought provoking, are painless to send out, and can brighten a dark dull winter day.  Please post any examples you like,  good or bad, or if you have published one, post it here with some feedback on how it works / what it has done for you.  The goal here.. to find the best examples, and to improve our efforts in next years round of Ecard giving....:-)

So I have planned out the following dates for the user group in 2009
Typically we will schedule meetings from 2pm til 5pm  ( this seems to work well and for those of us coming from afar its more practical.

Tuesday 27th  Jan meeting will be hosted at Teach First's premises in Canary Wharf.  I'll be sending around invites for this in the new year.

So rant over... here are the dates for your diary next year.

Date  2009                    Venue                      Session topic  
Tue 27th Jan         Teach first          David Woodhead Astadia- build an hour app
Tue 3rd March     
   
Tue 2nd June
Tue14th July
Tue 25th Aug
Tue 29nd Sept
Tue 3rd Nov

Those lovely guys at Salesforce seem to listen in to our needs and requests without us knowing!.

At Decembers group meeting we where discussing how difficult it is to get training on force.com to know how to do more...

Salesforce are offering free training to build an app using force.com using "clicks not code"

I've signed up and will be letting you know how it goes.  If you have done the Salesforce admin course, please consider signing up for this free course and the chance to win some great prizes with your app.
Post a comment on this posting if you are giving it a go, and we can all keep in touch.
regards

Ciaran :-)

Extract from the email promo below...

Complete Your Salesforce Wish-list Using Clicks, Not Code
Whether your wish-list includes a Survey app, a Recruitment portal, or maybe a project management tool—why not build it yourself? With our Admin-to-Appbuilder Challenge Kit, you can do it with skills you already know in a matter of weeks, and win great rewards for the results! You'll receive:    :: Quick-Start App Builder Tools: How-to books and       tutorials, a step-by-step Webinar, and more—exactly what       you need to build with Force.com using clicks, not code    :: Challenge Entry Guide: Full details on sharing your new       app with the community on the AppExchange, entering it in       the Challenge, and winning terrific prizes Your company wins, too: Your apps deploy at no extra cost, because they're built and run on Force.com—just like Salesforce CRM. So take your career skills, achievements, and hero-status to a whole new next level: Get your Admin-to-Appbuilder Challenge Kit today!

Couple of new resources that have been shared with user group leaders

Think these might be of interest to a number of you

the new dev wiki:

http://wiki.apexdevnet.com/index.php/NPSF

new blog on social impact reporting:

http://blogs.salesforce.com/nonprofit/2008/12/social-impact-a.html

Enjoy!

Had some time on my hands due to train planning coming back from london ( or bad route planning on my part.

Have uploaded all the presentations from yesterdays meetings

please subscribe to the podcast in Itunes to get the most of them.

If you want to get the low down on how to play our enhanced podcasts I've created a PDF which outlines how you get to the graphics
download it here

to subscribe to our Itunes feed just ( and have installed Itunes.......) then all you need to do is click here

If you want the feed its at

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheUkNonProfitPodcast

We have presentations on:-

Salesforce sites

Email Marketing

Mass email systems that work with Salesforce.com

plus some a bonus  presentation I gave Tourism south east recently on how uksa uses internet marketing to  mass market on a small budget ( not strictly speaking a salesforce thing, but salesforce got plenty of bigging up and airplay that day ;-)

thanks to all the presenters from yesterday , Apologies that I couldn't capture all of the presentation material . And for those of you who couldn't make it- these give you a chance to catch up and not to miss out.

For those of you that wanted more info on Vertical Response training there are a whole host of links here

Plus their video tutorials

Plus their live webinar recordings ( scroll to bottom of the page)

you look at this and you realize there is a lot more to this tool. want to investigate lots more here. I haven't had time to really delve into it, but I know that my use so far is only scratching the surface. If there is time at the end of a day sometime shortly, I'll see if I can get an interview with them and record it for you all.

enjoy

Ciaran

PS. we now have over 70 members! Please keep spreading the word.