Howard Dean's Software Spawn

From Scott McMullan's blog, I read about a new platform called CivicSpace that "empowers collective action inside communities and cohesively connects remote groups of supporters." It's built by some people from Howard Dean's campaign so it's the Son of software from the campaign.
So what does it do? From the website, it allows communities (define how you wish) to organise themselves online-- by publishing blogs, photo galleries, running mailing lists and forums, send targeted mail, collaboratively edit and publish documents, organise events... lots of collaboration functionality. There are currently 103 websites using the software-- mostly for political purposes right now, but there are some other types of users (poets and foxhunters).
Sounds like a very useful tool... I wonder how easy it is to use.