London user and administrator training - Autumn 2011

Three of us are coming from RedbridgeCVS. We need to get a new database to record details of the organisations we work with, and the work we do with them. We've chosen CiviCRM. We're hoping to do the simpler parts of the development work ourselves, with the help of a developer who will do the tricky bits and support us when things go wrong. None of us have used CiviCRM before, so we need to start from scratch and acquire as many Administrator skills as possible in the two days. One of us, RedbridgeCVS's Information Officer, will be leading the database development process, but our board was keen for other staff to gain an understanding of CiviCRM too, so we had some redundancy if the Information Officer fell under one of those hypothetical buses.

I am coming from South Africa. I have about 15 yrs experience leading trade associations, and am now consulting. I have recently started using CiviCRM for my own business. I am building a CiviCRM install and web CMS for my previous association and want to learn as much about the system as possible (and meet people I can turn to for help and development when necessary).

.... and I want to get a clear sense of whether I can continue using Joomla, or need to move across and start to learn to Drupal.  I see CiviCRM playing a central role in my business and want to ensure I am on the right platform from the start.