North County Meetings

I live in Encinitas and would love a North County meeting. I'm torn about alternating versus having both. It'd be interesting if we had clearly distinct topics. It might make twice as many meetings a far more valuable option.

Remember, it's not a competition... ;-)

It's been my experience that having any variability in event details (time, place) tends to lower attendance. Requiring people to remember if this month's meeting is at a different time or place becomes an additional obstacle to attendance.

But then again splitting the group (either alternating or doing both) reduces the power of having really strong numbers at the monthly meetings.

How do things work out up in LA? Don't they have multiple meet-ups?

I'm a huge fan of north county meetings since I live in Encinitas and can't often make it down as it simply takes too much time with the back and forth and traffic.

I share the concerns of splitting attendance and the possibility of lower attendance, though. Perhaps we could have an additional north county meeting that differentiates from the normal monthly meetings in some way. I don't really know this early in the AM on the specifics but +100 on Carlsbad.

Rich has a very valid point, and it seems everyone so far is in agreement with him. So the way I see things shaping up is to run a couple of separate meetings in North County and see how it goes. Since I live in UC (hey there, tanyagm) I plan to attend in both locations, at least initially.
I'll ping Matt to chime in, and Joel as well. And if someone has already talked to the LA people about their multiple meeting locations, please share what they had to say.

On a more fundamental level, I take very seriously Kieran Lal's appeal to attract and train new people. This is the main reason why I am involved in running this group and SandCamp. If the pyramid that is the Drupal community is supposed to grow, then growth must start at the base. Talented and dedicated people will "trickle up" on their own, but we must find and nurture them initially. I am hoping that a North County meetup can attract new people from the high tech and biotech communities who by and large live north of the 52.

On another tangent, have we explored the possibility of doing web meetings?

Some of the bigger churches have satellite campuses where they'll still have services at the same time as the main campus, but the satellite campus wil just tune into the sermon part of the meeting, to get the message.

Maybe a similar model might work for SDDUG? There could be a NC meetup at the same time as the one @ Balboa, so people could get together to meet in meat-space with other Drupalistas (Drupalero's?), and then do a video web meeting for the presentations & lightning talks.

Also, with the online aspect, maybe we could also pull in people to attend over the internet.

Or would the resources necessary to pull it off be too much?

I'm in Encinitas and would definitely be interested in this!

Matt

San Diego is a very large county, and Balboa Park is definitely a trek for people on the Northern side... especially after a full day and facing evening traffic.

On the other hand, Balboa Park Group has reached a critical mass where it's possible to achieve more; and Balboa Park Online Collaborative has provided great support. Whatever everyone decides, I think that it's important to maintain the larger group without excluding and losing North County folk.

I think Rich's take on alternating locations is correct. Maybe, North County meetings on an alternative night?

I like the idea of having a separate North County event. Though both locations are convenient for me since I live in Oceanside and work in PB. :-)

I'm also willing to help out in any way with organizing events.

Thanks everyone for the lively discussion. We made the Hot Content This Week list in the sidebar for two days running.
Nothing like a camp to energize the group. :-)
From the comments it looks like half a dozen people would participate in North County for sure, and I have one email response and two verbals as well. That makes a good core group.

Here's what we're going to do:

• Leave the meeting at HOC in Balboa Park as is, second Wed of the month 7 pm

• Run a couple of North County meetings to see how they shape up. Location TBD. Time: How about fourth Wed of the month, 7pm?

• Matt Young has promised to look into a Carlsbad facility. Any updates Matt?

• Plan B: Who has access to a decent room midway between Oceanside and UCSD? I like the CONNECT option tanyagm brought up from a pure technical point of view, but UTC isn't quite North enough for the people from Oceanside and Escondido to make them regulars, I'm afraid.

The rest (video links, actual agenda, etc.) will hopefully gel organically as we push forward. Keep the comments coming!

Based upon the discussion here and at the 2011 SANDcamp I'm now in favor of a North County meetup, in addition to the current S.D. meetup, and on an opposing schedule, i.e., the fourth Wednesday of each month. Let's do this!

We'll need commitments from at least 10 people in order to get this kicked off, and a location such as a workspace or maybe a coffee shop. If we want this to be successful at first, let's focus finding a location with WiFi and leave the webinar hookups till phase 2. :)

I'm in the San Gabriel Valley (L.A.) but if it was in Carlsbad or north thereof, I have a friend in Oceanside and would consider coming down a couple times a year for your more action-packed meetups :) - well, at least while I'm still living here. My buy-in might be more vaporous than realistic.

Let's firm up a location until mid-week so we can announce the meeting. Feedback from our Northeast County friends in Poway and Rancho Bernardo says a location between Del Mar and Carlsbad is preferred, since they have to drop down to the 56 to get to the coast.

Details / needs:
Can someone take the lead on Carlsbad Library?
Larry Jones said he'd look into Solana Beach library. Any update?
Any other location ideas which you can make real by Wednesday evening - let's hear it and make it happen!
Kathy Hayashi will give us her Drupal7 talk, and I'll try to find something for beginners to round out the evening. Let me know if you have something that fits the bill.

Great work everyone, now we only need the final sprint, and then we can meet Wed Jan. 26 at 7pm! You can start to "indoctrinate" your non-Drupal friends now and tell them the location after Wednesday.

I have been given permission to offer up a room at NAMM headquarters in Carlsbad (better known as the Museum of Making Music) on Armada. We have a room that would be perfect although it would need to be booked ahead of time.

Thoughts?

Wow, that's amazingly great news! Thanks for making those arrangements!

I'm feeling very excited about our upcoming session!

Our first North San Diego County Drupal Meeting will take place at Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad, Thursday 1/27/2011 6:30pm to 9pm.

Dan, I know when we first spoke I mentioned starting in Feb and a time from 7 to 8:30. Can you please confirm the room is available on the 27th from 6:30 to 9?

I apologize if I misled anyone on the dates or time.

Ron

I'm very excited to see this very active thread about a North County meetup. I want to laud all you Northern trekkers for making it downtown for both meetups and the SandCamp planning meetings all these years.

Just a note and a vote though, I believe we need to be one user's group with one group page for a holistic and unified voice. I Note that the LA group has grown because there's just ONE group and a lot of momentum. If they broke up into separate LA groups they would create a distinct communication barrier. Let's make our San Diego page hopping with activity; it's how LA has grown to over 1000 members. Our page has been pretty lacking in activity relatively speaking. :)

Since many of my favorite people are up North: Chuck, Shawn, Brenda, Burt, Dave, Matt, Joel, Kathy, Peter, etc. I would be sad to have you in a separate playground.

Susan

That doesn't seem that noisy to me. I personally wouldn't mind hearing about notifications on nearby meetings, especially if that represents a potential webcast. ;-)

Yeah, I went there. /me grins.

I read Christefano's writeup. Looks like they use a taxonomy and send messages based on that. Since we already went through the somewhat painful process of setting up a Group page and getting it approved, let us use it for under 1 month and in that time we'll integrate a new workflow for our North County group as a category etc and use that permanently. Until then we'll just use what we made to get immediate items completed...

Happy?