Sometimes I like to shout things at inanimate objects. The TV. My computer. Cars that are trying to kill me while I’m biking or are just parked halfway into the road. You know.

When I saw that the Knight-Mozilla OpenNews project was hiring a Community Manager, I shouted at my computer “that’s me!”

And, turns out, it is me. It actually is. I signed the papers this week and will be starting with Mozilla next month as the OpenNews Community Manager. I am beyond elated and cannot wait to start working full-time supporting this incredibly inspiring community around journalism and code.

I’m giving another introductory talk on CiviCRM at this year’s Drupaldelphia. In the past year, there have been some noteworthy developments for CiviCRM. Let’s start with some of the basics.

What is CiviCRM?

Well, with a spiffy new website, you can learn all about it at civicrm.org. Short answer is that it is an open source constituent relationship management system. It’s a tool to help manage information and connections with different types of contacts an organization may have. It can be configured to do mass emailing, take online donations, sell tickets and manage events, and much more!

Next weekend is looking pretty great. Philadelphia’s annual Drupal conference will be happening again at Temple University on Friday, June 22. And, Friday and Saturday PyStar Philly will be having another intro to python class for women and their friends. Plus! Saturday is a Drupal core code sprint and Mozilla’s Summer Code Party.

Whew. Busy weekend of some excellent learning and sharing opportunities. I’ll be presenting a session about CiviCRM for nonprofits again this year at Drupaldelphia. Feedback welcome on helpful Civi stuff to cover. And, I’ll be an instructor at the PyStar Philly class. Look forward to learning and connecting with folks!

This Saturday is the annual BarCamp News Innovation event at Temple University. This year, I’ll be participating as a judge of the Open Gov “News” Hackathon. I appreciate being asked to judge the hackathon and look forward to seeing what awesome mobile tools the teams of coders and journalists conjure up Saturday.

I’ve been to BCNI for a few years, and it’s always been a great chance to learn and catch up with folks. In particular, it’s been a way to see how much of a leader Philadelphia is in the news innovation community. People from up and down the East Coast (and sometimes farther!) come to Philly. We get to learn together, and Philly gets a chance to showcase the variety of nonprofit, community-based, ethnic, traditional, and other journalism efforts that it supports.

An exclamation of glee appeared on the #nicar12 Twitter stream last night. Thanks to Derek Willis (no, really, thank you!) dozens of journalists from the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting 2012 conference descended on the City Museum in St. Louis.

Today, I tried to figure out how to explain what made last night so friggin incredible. First, the museum is amazing. It’s pure fun. I realized that the museum also echoes many of the things that can happen in amazing newsrooms.