This is a continuation of the thread posted here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/112639#comment-413704
It discusses whether the managers of the Westside meetup shall control the 'LA Drupal' name or whether other Drupal meetups in LA will be able use it.
Should there be a larger umbrella organization to handle all of the meetups? If so, what should it be called?
In the absence of precedent and tradition to handle cases like this, we have the chance to make history and be an example to other growing user groups in the Drupal community.
Also, members have requested a vote. Because the Westside meetup is too far for many people to reach, I suggest that we have the vote on G.D.O., with discussion below. If we can spend some time clarifying the issues here in a civil way, we can post an insiightful poll and make the will of the community clear with careful and thoughtful wording. Being hasty or inflammatory will not benefit anyone. Let's take our time and assume that everyone is thinking and behaving with the very best of intentions.
So, what should the structure of the greater los angeles Drupal community be like?
Here's my first stab at the poll questions. Please refine, add to, as desired:
1) 'LA Drupal' should be a label that all meetups in the Los Angeles area can use - as in LA Drupal - Downtown, LA Drupal - Pasadena, LA Drupal - Westside.
There would be no main meetup, and everyone can use the 'LA Drupal' name. This is similar to how things have been. There should be no LA Drupal greater organization at all besides the fiscal agency of the LA Drupal Association. Every meetup is equal. Organizers of the meetups have complete creativity for how their events are run. Once a year, all of the meetup organizers would get together for beers.
2) 'LA Drupal' should be a label that all meetups in the Los Angeles area can use - as in LA Drupal - Downtown, LA Drupal - Pasadena, LA Drupal - Main meetup in Culver City, in loose affiliation. There would be a main meetup, currently held in Culver City, that would be organized by the current LA Drupal managers, but other meetups would be able to user the 'LA Drupal' name.
3) There should be only one 'LA Drupal' meetup, and it should be held monthly in Culver City. No other meetups can carry the 'LA Drupal' moniker, even the one that's actually held in LA. No events except those created and managed, or approved by, the 'LA Drupal' managers will be considered 'LA Drupal' events.
I would suggest that if two of the choices are close, that the distinctions between them be clarified with further discussion and a runoff poll taken after discussion.
Disclaimer, I am a business partner (and married to) christefano, one of the LA Drupal managers.
Comments
Its just a name convention right?
Personally I don't know the whole back story behind the name conflict issues. I don't disagree with an official monthly meeting wherever that is but I don't see the harm in having more than one meet up with the LA Drupal title. I would think any meet up that's regularly scheduled at an established venue in LA county that follows some kind of structure would be LA Drupal.
Can someone post what the concern was about having more than one meeting named LA Drupal? Perhaps not all meet ups are LA Drupal meet ups and maybe we vote on defining what an official meet up consist of. I guess I'm leaning more towards option 2 from the above list because having a MAIN meet up at least sets a central place for the community willing to travel.
not sure why this was posted
not sure why this was posted after mine, but before commenting here, please read the thread I started: http://groups.drupal.org/node/128909
In my post I detail why I favor something like #3 - a single, well organized, monthly meetup
multiple LA Drupal meetups is confusing; to me, proof is in the lower attendance at meetups last year. a single name is an attempt to bring clarity of which meetup to attend for new drupal users -or- people who don't live their lives on groups.drupal.org rss feeds.
really, that's a short synopsis, please read before commenting here
--
mike stewart { twitter: @MediaDoneRight | IRC nick: mike stewart }
Clearly more than one LA
Clearly more than one LA Drupal meetup is more than this group of managers is able to handle, Chris stated that himself. Whether the LA Drupal community is better served by having multiple meetups is a completely different issue. They arose from community demand. If someone hadn't asked for them, they wouldn't have happened. People said that it was a struggle to get to the Westside meetup. It's not surprising that the attendance to the Westside has gone down.
A year ago, there were no meetups anywhere besides the Westside meetup. I'd be willing to go on record that more people have been better served by having multiple meetups in the greater LA Drupal area. And as for attendance going down, the Downtown LA Drupal Meetup was standing room only, the meetup before last. The increase in venues have created more demand, not less. Attendance is going up in the greater LA Drupal area.
I can only see benefits for the community in having multiple venues that can capture the energy of many organizers. If someone like Benno wants to do a brilliant series on D7, or if someone at the Downtown meetup wants to spinoff a series on Drush, this could only be good for the community. I wouldn't be surprised if a Burbank meetup sprouted, given Warner Bros proximity.
As for the quality of the meetups, that's your opinion. I've seen great presentations at Benno's, droolworthy ones in Pasadena and dead sexy ones Downtown as well as at your Westside meetup.
Founder
http://www.larks.la
Robot Coordinator
http://droplabs.net
Organizer, Dragonslayer
http://drupal.la &n
Quote me here...
What I said is the LA DRUPAL organizers chose to concentrate on one main meetup a month (organized and run by LA DRUPAL Management). I did not say we are only able to handle one meetup a month. There's a lot of things firing at once, so I'm afraid all of this shows there's still confusion in our group (about the group) and that we may have unfortunately added to that confusion.
If you post an event in the LA DRUPAL group, then its considered an event for our local community and nobody should care if the name "LA Drupal" is in the title or not because people want to learn "Drupal". There doesn't need to be a poll or any voting on this as our association (board) already voted. In fact, so there isn't any tug-of-war online or in person, I'll say it here: LA DRUPAL ASSOCIATION is a legit entity/association and we've been laying down the groundwork for our community to function through 2011 and beyond. There shouldn't be a problem here, but I feel some people fan the flame a little and rogue-nodes only foster negative thoughts since there will never be a unified decision. We all do the best we can and making decisions for groups of people never result in 100% agreement. Our (LA DRUPAL) reality is currently: the LA DRUPAL Association has its mind and heart in the right place and the community shows their support (or not) by being involved in our offerings.
If there is ever the question can someone use the name "LA DRUPAL" outside of board's permission the answer will usually be a no. The same goes for using the name "Drupal", which was met with many of the same questions/points, but the truth is the name is not owned by the community. We are allowed to use it and part of that responsibility is taking care of how its used. Why? Because there are hundreds of members and not everyone attends every meetup, so when they are interested in paying attention or getting involved there cannot be these large amounts of fragmented information (aka confusion).
Mike brought up a perfect example that I presented in a manager's meeting: What happens when two "LA DRUPAL" meetups are listed for the same day & time but take place at different venues? How do we handle that? How do we respond when people ask "which is the official meetup?" or "which one should I go to?", etc. etc. etc. I hope this clear example gets people to see far enough that "oh, yes, there can be a lot of confusion if there's no order or control". I'm using the term "control" in an organization sense, not power. Too many unknowns can or will come up and its the job of the organizers to manage those.
@nodiac (Lee): I don't think the numbers of a meetup's attendees show how we're really growing (or not). There's a large percentage of the same people attending multiple meetups - so a straight tally isn't the right count. We've dropped dramatically in our first-time attendee ratio; first timers went from consistent 40-50% (over multiple years) to more of a 5-10% rate in 2010. That's a big drop that I would point out shows that we're not growing, there's just more demand to learn something (else) in Drupal. I doubt its because the platform is not attracting new people, so it must be us.
Meetups: There was never the intention to reduce the number of meetups and we don't want there to be confusion, flooding, or unnessary competition between people or meetups. Similar tech community groups for companies like Adobe and Apple have requirements and rules for these very same reasons. They do not allow groups to be within an area that already has a group established. While Drupal.org doesn't have those rules/limits in place now it should not be assumed that will always be the case. I seriously expect there will be the time where regional groups are required to adhere to similar rules as those I've mentioned above. People are not stepping up to offer their meetups to be targeted or focused, instead people just want to meetup more. People can meet anytime, but there's nothing good that would come from a list of events all tackling the same topics month-to-month. And having one meetup be focused won't fix every other meetup, but we on the LA DRUPAL management team want to be sure we're keeping up the standard we established years ago - to network and teach skills that pay when using Drupal. I'm sure the other meetups have had "drooling" topics, but you must see that our main meetup has varied in having those caliber of topics even month guaranteed and there needs to be some time dedicated to the "mothership" meetup. Please encourage the others around you to choose a focus when establishing a meetup, otherwise we'll be seeing similar demos of Panels, CCK, & Views for another year and I think we're past that those being raw or new in the Drupal world.
Chris Charlton, Author & Drupal Community Leader, Enterprise Level Consultant
I teach you how to build Drupal Themes http://tinyurl.com/theme-drupal and provide add-on software at http://xtnd.us
There is currently a
Rogue node? Really? Chris, someone called for a poll. Other people seconded and thirded it. I posted a discussion about the poll. It makes sense that this thread be about the poll, and the other thread be for discussion of the issues around how LA Drupal will be governed. Separating out the two discussions makes sense and helps keep things clear. When I started writing, Mike hadn't posted yet. Since what I posted was significantly different from what Mike said, it's not really a duplicate and I see no reason to take it down.
I'm also surprised that you would want to shut down a poll whose aim is to find out what the community really wants.
There is currently a difference between the LA Drupal Association and the managers of the Westside meetup, and Chris, you sit on both. The LA Drupal Association has a different personnel roster, and may be the best equipped entity to be the umbrella organization. Since it was founded for fiscal responsibility for events and other LA Drupal dealings, it may be that it is the best structure because that's all it's supposed to do, and to add other responsibilities to it would be muddying its mission. That may be all the area needs.
The Bay Area has a very sane model. I've heard that there's one bank account, and many meetups, but there's no formal association. Before the vote, perhaps we can hear from someone in the Bay Area about how their organization is structured, its strengths and weaknesses?
Would you change anything? How do you handle scheduling? Have there been any drawbacks to this structure?
What are other viable models besides the ones listed above?
If the responsibility of scheduling is such a bear, and the people who are creating a meetup are too challenged to see which week is not having a major meetup on the calendar, then that meetup isn't likely to succeed because of challenged leadership. Other organizations do it. If someone posts an event and someone notices a conflict, it would be great to have discussion in the comments. People can change the date without a lot of hassle. If someone's able to get a special speaker for an event, and that speaker is only available in a certain location at a certain time, I don't think that case should be ruled out because of a conflict with another event.
Do people think the poll should mention the LA Drupal Association's role in the structure of LA Drupal governance?
Founder
http://www.larks.la
Robot Coordinator
http://droplabs.net
Organizer, Dragonslayer
http://drupal.la &n
For the record, the existence
For the record, the existence of the legal entity known as "LA Drupal Association" has absolutely no bearing on the discussion of what the "LA Drupal" name is used for. The LA Drupal Association was created simply and exclusively for the purposes of fiscal responsibility.
The only other use for this organization that's been discussed amongst the LA Drupal managers is the possibility of offering group healthcare for LA Drupal members. This is still in the exploration phase. There may be other uses for this entity in the future, but the LA Drupal managers have not yet discussed them.