Nonprofits

This October at the Bay Area Drupal Camp (BADCamp,) we soaked up Drupal talks, gave a few of our own, high-fived friends, and fomented literary political activism. How? In line with this year’s circus theme, we turned our sponsor booth into a place for BADCampers to step right up...and send messages to their elected representatives.

Every year we attend the Bay Area Drupal Camp (BADCamp,) an open source technology conference in Berkeley, California. It’s an opportunity to see colleagues, meet new ones, and learn from attendees’ sessions.

This October, come to our Bay Area Drupal Camp (BADCamp) booth to give your elected representative a piece of your mind. We won’t be holding members of congress captive at the Kalamuna booth (or will we?) but we’ll have plenty of other excitements there to keep you curious. And of course, BADCamp is a celebration of open-source software, so we’ll be giving plenty of Drupal talks. Read on to find out about those and our exciting booth happening.

It’s been about five years since Kalamuna opened its doors—long enough for us to have grown so much that we’re now rethinking who we are, what we do, who we do it for, and why. In group conversations about these topics, it came out that several of us volunteer outside Kalamuna, and we thought interviewing members about this work would illuminate how our individual values might contribute to a larger, collective point-of-view.

This April at DrupalCon Nashville, in addition to wanting to meet colleagues and soak up the great talks, we wanted to create a forum for the international Drupal community to do good. That’s why we used our sponsor booth wall as a space for attendees to promote nonprofits that work for causes that matter to them.

Are you a marketing or IT manager who’s confused when navigating Google Analytics? Wish you could see only key performance indicators in one place? Or, do you want to share only some of your data in an automatically updated report? Kalamuna has created a Google Data Studio (GDS) report template to help our clients better visualize their data, and because part of our mission is to help colleges and universities meet their goals through technology, we’re creating free reports for higher-ed professionals now until April 30.

The Drupal community’s got heart. We partner with organizations that do work that matters, and we champion web accessibility, higher education and nonprofits in our events. This year at BADCamp we wanted to shine a light on this aspect of the community and do something different with our sponsor booth. Instead of giving away schwag, we gave away pre-paid charity gift cards that BADCampers could spend on causes they care about. See how the community spent the cards, and get a little background on how this charity donation booth came to be.

We’re happy to announce that once again, we’ll be participating in the Bay Area Drupal Camp (BADCamp,) an annual celebration of open-source software at the University of California, Berkeley. This year, in addition to contributing to the free talks and trainings, we’re excited to participate in a new way — one that we hope everyone will be a part of.

I want agency life to mean smiles, rainbows, and slaps on the back. But in a business that trades in collaborative intellectual output, that feelgood place doesn’t happen overnight. Over the past 11 years I’ve worked in marketing strategy and account management roles in Europe and the US, at shops like Mucho Design, Orbital BBDO, and EuroRSCG, and I’m now an account manager at Kalamuna. Over time I’ve picked up a thing or two about how agencies can do great work on time and on-budget, with more than enough feelgood to go around.

Our time on this earth is limited and we have a commitment to leave it better than we found it. Practically, this means refusing to corroborate the agendas of organizations who, knowingly or not, act with blind disregard to the consequences of their actions on present and future generations. Moreover, it means devoting our collective energy towards causes that will impact the world in a positive way. Kalamuna works primarily with mission-driven organizations. The best way to live up to our values is to act upon them.