Posted by starbow on September 15, 2008 at 5:27pm
I think it is crazy that the regional events don't get more coverage over at the drupal.org main site. DrupalCampLA just had a 400+ person event, but if you put DrupalCampLA into the d.o search box, all you get is a forum post from last year where one of the badcamp organizers mentions them as inspiration. We (badcamp) will probably have around 300 people show up and I am sure DCNYC was huge. g.d.o placement is nice, but d.o is missing out on a big marketing opportunity by not bragging about these events more.
Comments
Did anyone write a post that
Did anyone write a post that could have and should have been promoted to the front page and was not? That would be the first step for the regional group in question to take care of, and then submit an issue in the webmasters queue for promotion to the front page.
Laura
pingVision, LLC (we're hiring)
PINGV | Strategy • Design • Drupal Development
We did last year, for
We did last year, for BADCamp 2007, and even had it promoted to the front page for about 8 hours. Then another member of the infrastructure team took it down, leading to an extended debate, which ended us being told that it is drupal.org policy to not have regional events on the front page. Although looking at the front page today, it looks like regional events are ok, as long as they cost a lot of money.
Untrue
You're spreading FUD and I'd appreciate it if you'd stop. The BADCamp post was demoted because, at that time, I was told that events shouldn't be posted to the front page. They had their own block and that was supposed to be good enough. Over the last year, as Drupal has grown, the front page has evolved and new policies are being formed. At this time, what's needed to get on the front page is a solid writeup and a request added to the schedule. Has nothing to do with money, nothing to do with Acquia, or any other conspiracy theory.
Michelle
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out the Coulee Region
What FUD?
What FUD? Everything in starbow's post is factually correct, save for the opinion or personal observation at the end that recent events posted to drupal.org's front page seem to cost a lot of money.
Making accusations and eluding to conspiracy theories isn't helpful. Besides, it seems to me that you're both right.
Exactly
That's exactly what I'm talking about. Bringing up a post that I demoted a year ago under different policies and pointing to that as an example of how only events that cost a lot of money are allowed is FUD. Yes, there has been an increase of commercial posts on the front page and we do need to make policies to be sure the front page exposure is handled fairly, but going on in thread after thread about how his year old post was demoted is not helping anything. I got tired of seeing it and finally decided to say something.
Michelle
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out the Coulee Region
To put this in context, I
To put this in context, I think the example of how BADCamp07 was handled is on people's mind because BADCamp 2008 is coming up. That makes it a relevant example to me.
Do you know the definition of FUD? I think that starbow's point is still a good one and that your repeated use of the term is misplaced at best and highly confrontational at worst.
Do you know the definition
I feel that this is uncalled for. I have already posted a link to the active issue about front-page policy on d.o. It is transparent. And being not a n00b to the Drupal community, you know that participation in website maintenance is a do-ocracy. There are no smoke-filled rooms where secret policies are decided about the community.
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. The suggestion that the front page is governed by politics or cash falls into that category, imho, especially if what Michelle says – that this is not the first time such has been suggested – is true. If such is not intended, then I hope that is clarified to Michelle, who has gotten a lot of grief for volunteering to stay on top of the front-page postings.
How the front page of Drupal.org is definitely a legitimate community concern. There are many opinions. And this being a community and we being people, the opinions change and policies evolve. Personally I would like to see several posts on the front page each day (and I say so in the above-linked issue), including regional events to go along with Drupal-related books, awards, insights, DrupalCons, fundraisings, and development-related threads. It is my hope and expectation that the redesign will consider that a large, growing and robust and active community such as ours needs a front-page that reflects that.
I encourage you and others who have opinions sound off on that issue linked //above// — err, below (http://drupal.org/node/279479) — because when it comes to the policies regarding the website we have today, and events just around the corner, that discussion falls outside of the scope of this group on g.d.o, but does not fall outside of the scope of things we can do now, with the site extant.
---
Laura
pingVision, LLC (we're hiring)
PINGV | Strategy • Design • Drupal Development
My entire reason for entering the discussion
My entire reason for entering the discussion is that I believe the term "FUD "is being thrown around in an attempt to devalue the original point. I'm not a logician or eristicist, but it seems to me that this is a "straw man" argument where an unfair exaggeration is made and then argued against.
In all honesty, I can't tell if your post is a response to me, starbow, Michelle or everybody else. I'm not here to hurt anyone's feelings or make any enemies, but if defending starbow's point makes me unpopular then I'll just stop now and let my posts up to this point speak for themselves.
Response to: Exactly
1) I have been talking about this in exactly two threads.
2) It wasn't my post last year.
3) You don't need to wait until you get angry to post useful information like the fact that the policy I referred to is in the process of being changed.
Ok, let me tone this down and be clear that I have never been upset at you, Michelle. I really appreciate the work you do helping out with drupal.org. I was upset at the policy, as it was explained to me. And I am happy to hear that it is changing.
Truce?
Sorry for coming on so strong. This was just at least the 3rd and maybe the 4th post where I had seen someone (sorry, I thought it was you each time) complaining that post was demoted and only big name events are allowed to be promoted and you have to have it in with Acquia to get on the front page and on and on and on. There's comments about it all over the place. I just got fed up, especially since I was the one that had demoted that post a year ago, and this comment was the last straw, so to speak.
So, yes, the policy is being worked on. I, too, was concerned about the number of commercial posts on the front page but it's really because the whole thing is in transition from not allowing commercial posts to allowing them and it just all needs to be sorted out. Hopefully the redesign will help with that and maybe allow us to separate the commercial annoucements from the general news.
Michelle
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out the Coulee Region
You got it!
I have run volunteer efforts before, and I know first hand the sting of just doing your best and being accused of having a hidden agenda. It sucks.
And I am sorry if the tone of my comments over-powered the points I was trying to make.
Reply to: Untrue
Edit: Boy it is hard to tell who is responding to what. This is a response to Michelle's comment titled "Untrue".
No. I am not spreading FUD, and there is no need to get personal. I am asking what has changed since last year. Maybe I have been bitching a bit too much (just like you are now), but how exactly am I supposed to know that a new policy is being formed (Edit: http://drupal.org/node/279479 does not address this specific issue)?
No where did I mention Acquia, or conspiracies. If the current policy is to allow regional events on the front page, then I am content. I was just upset at the possibility that only commercial region events could get a listing on the front page but not free, community based Drupal Camps. No FUD, no conspiracies, just my understanding of a policy, as it was explained to me, that I disagreed with.
You will notice I posted my pissier comments to the groups "Drupal Event Organization" and "Drupal.org redesign", which seem like pretty apt places to talk about this issue. On the front page thread I just asked about the policy, and linked to the conversation from last year.
Re: Reply to: Untrue [WAS: No.]
IMO, g.d.o needs to add the RE: Comment Subjects module to help resolve this issue.
I suggestion you catch up on
I suggestion you catch up on the issues. You can start with http://drupal.org/node/279479 which is a discussion about front-page policy, with what might be an emerging consensus but by no means unanimity, let alone a policy of exclusion.
Laura
pingVision, LLC (we're hiring)
PINGV | Strategy • Design • Drupal Development
Reply to: I suggestion you catch up on
Hmm, I am having trouble following the time line of the comments. I think this suggestion is for me. Which I appreciate. I actually did read that issue a month ago, but didn't subscribe, so I haven't been keeping up.
The key bit for me is that at one point there was a "no events on the front page" policy (except for DrupalCon). Michelle is saying that this policy has been changed, which I entirely agree with. I was upset because I was worried that it had changed into a "no events except large commercial events" policy. I am happy that isn't the case.
BTW, I have no need to promote BADCamp on drupal.org. We are going to be turning people away as it is. And it sounds like DrupalCampLA did just fine. But we were inspired to put on BADCamp by reading about DrupalNYC and DrupalCampLA. And maybe femrich will be inspired to put on DrupalCampKazakhstan, by reading about us.
Events link
An events link would be critical for this on Drupal.org's homepage, and the redesign is the perfect time to make sure we speak up. :D
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
I agree. Some link to
I agree. Some link to upcoming events, maybe a block in the sidebar with the next 5 upcoming Drupal events, and a place for organizers to register upcoming events.
Grant
Sala kahle,
Grant
There would need to be some
There would need to be some kind of threshold, like, maybe, 100 people or larger.
Given how few groups can
Given how few groups can attract 100 people to a DrupalCamp, I would be inclined not to have a threshold based on attendees. I would make the bar a certain amount of organization, like a 6-hour-long event or longer, with at least 1 track pf programming and 3 or more speakers. I think the strength of this is is making Drupal accessible and through drupal.org, making clubs, cons and camps as easy to find as possible.
Grant
Sala kahle,
Grant
Regional Event Support
Whenever regional events do such a great job to promote the Drupal Association as was done at DrupalCampLA - a regional meeting that charged no entrance fee and more than once tried very hard to get people to join the Drupal Association in a public manner (which did not financially support their efforts in any way) - I can not imagine a good reason why we should have a policy that does not support their regional efforts by a little love on the front page. It seems like the least we could do since getting more people to join the Drupal Association benefits us all.
As far as numbers go, I agree with Grant. An arbitrary number like "100 people" is just going to mean that a lot of regional meetings come just short of the threshold and their events would have been made an even greater success by that little extra push.
-=- christopher
Anyone think we can poll association to see how many bought in
People were telling me they were purchasing, or had just purchased their Drupal Assoc. Membership badge during the camp. I was very proud of everyone making sure that not only they did it, but made it part of a group effort and see they help make a difference being a part of the Drupal "get badged" movement.
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
just a link
Honestly a link to the event calendar that already exists is good enough to get people to probe. Better filtering or display of events would be the next logical part to that.
Regional groups maybe can talk about choosing a Panel View that is regional events within a distance of zip code, but that's something I just came up with.
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
I promoted this post
:P
omg, THAT's funny! i
omg, THAT's funny! i literally lol
--
mike stewart { twitter: @MediaDoneRight | IRC nick: mike stewart }
noticed on GDO...
I noticed on GDO home that NYC Camp got their post to be sticky, which is a great idea. Our camp would have like that, but right now since the NYC event is over the sticky should be turned off and BadCamp should be one of the events to get sticky on GDO.
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
Done!
I'm not sure how Moshe feels about adding more people ... but I think a few more people with access to promote / sticky on gdo would be just fine.
Let's have that discussion in http://groups.drupal.org/maintenance -- including requests to be made admins.
Good point regarding writeup
I don't believe we did d.o. write up to announce DrupalCampLA, but possibly we can submit a recap about our experience and lessons learned. Looking forward to BadCamp!
Gus Austin
PepperAlley Productions
Gus Austin
My response was posted over on d.o
FYI, my response to this is posted at http://drupal.org/node/307660#comment-1015139
______________________________
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619.717.2805
I'm on the other side of the
I'm on the other side of the world from most of y'all (hello from Kazakhstan) and still I think it is much more useful to have regional events (of any number of attendees) on the frontpage rather than advertorials from companies selling drupal-based products and services.
The events serve to highlight the strength of the drupal community and to provide inspiration ("hey, if they're doing it, maybe we can do it here...") and potential ("hmmm... maybe I should plan my next vacation around one of these events") for dupalers wherever they may be.
Personally, this is the kind of stuff that gets me juiced about Drupal. As for the advertorials, those could have a spot on the site, but I don't think they belong on the front page.
Regional promotion based on IP
What I see a lot in advertising is IP-based regional advertising. I think it would be a good idea if people with an IP-address coming from California had a Drupal frontpage which featured DrupalCampLA / DrupalCampSF etc. Such events probably wouldn't be useful at all to someone from say Kazakhstan or the Netherlands (like me), so the frontpage wouldn't feature them.
Maybe we can even make an AJAXy interface to draw a line around areas, or point-click-select regions to mark which geographical regions would be interested in the event. For example: if I live near the German border but I don't speak German, I'm not interested in German-language events.
The global event calendar would always be a fallback then.
-Niels Bom
-Niels Bom
And
don't forget to add that Google Map.
probably in the minority
but I absolutely, positively despise IP-based advertising. Particularly because I live in China but I'm an American. When I visit google.com i expect Google.com but wonderfully I get google.com.cn, wonderful.
I can't even view mobile.cnn.com stating that the mobile version isn't available in China yet. I thought this was due to licensing restrictions but then cnn.com works just fine. Later I found out that's it because the interface isn't in Chinese. wtf? I don't want it in Chinese I want it in English. Oh that's right my IP says I'm in China so therefore I must be from China and speak only Chinese.
Like I said I might be in the minority but any frequent traveler would, hopefully (fingers crossed), concur with me in that IP-based things suck.
Now if this were a user setting item that would be a different story or if the interface was smart enough to allow you to get around the automatic assumptions. Of course I'm inundated with really bad interfaces from really big and smart companies.
-Jacob Redding
-Jacob Redding
Me too
Boy I know this one. If you are going to change your interface based on IP, for localizations, then you had better make sure you have a way to change the language. Turning off a locale completely is bizarre behaviour. There are over a billion people living in China, don't they think that some of them can speak and read English?
Living in Thailand has made me a lot more aware of automatic localizations.
I wouldn't like this
I wouldn't like this solution. For one thing (as I wrote above), though I come from KZ, events from California are useful to me. For another, people do a lot of traveling. You might be in California today, but in KZ tomorrow. (Well, maybe the day after...) In general, my experience with IP based filtering is... don't.
To be fair...
DrupalCampLA planning for this year started with an announcement and a planning wiki on the Los Angeles group, and we quickly had a site of our own off of g.d.o to post updates to as the planning progressed. We also leveraged our sign-up list from last year, and our groups on Upcoming.yahoo.com and Facebook, and the LA BarCamp mailing list to get the word out. We were pretty quickly overwhelmed by the positive response, so I think we lost sight of doing any other formal promotion/announcement, including an official g.d.o write up. Oops.
Also, as an afterthought, we should have done a press release. (BADcamp folks, you reading? :) ) Not everyone who is interested in Drupal knows their way around g.d.o or subscribes to their local groups. We should do more to get the word out to our surrounding communities.
BUT... yeah, we really should have done a more complete write-up for this site.
We're currently working on getting the videos from EVERY SESSION at DrupalCampLA up and linked on our site so that this info can be available to everyone and this conference becomes a living document on the web. When we get that project complete (or most of the way there), we'll do an official write up and get it posted.
As for future events and their promotion, I agree that there should be more visibility for regional events, which are becoming more popular, especially as travel costs skyrocket. Might be nice to have something as simple as a feed folks can subscribe to that just announces regional events, with a link to more info.
Cheers,
Crystal
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http://www.disambiguity.com/drupalorg-help-overhaul-the-information-arch...
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I hope that the redesign
I hope that the redesign does not hold the Drupal front page model as sacrosanct. The idea of putting up a notice for a regional event months in advance, only to have it scroll off the page a few days later makes no sense to me. It seems reasonable to me that there be a a block on the front page that has rotating notices, preferably in the graphic form, for upcoming regional conferences, along with a link to a conferences taxo page. That way, the events get more exposure, and that exposure continues right up to the event.
Tao's Original POint about Local Event Viz as marketing
After quickly reading through this whole thread, it seem to be that Tao's original point may have been lost.
I agree that it would be good marketing for drupal to show that every month there are multiple BIG local events going on. Not just user group meetings, but essentially drupal conferences organized by the community and bringing together groups of 50 to 400 people. While it may be useful to show the events based on ip filtering, it defeats the marketing impact of showing these events on d.o.
The marketing message is: Drupal is a big, vibrant community, and people are coming together in cities all over the world on a regular basis, maybe even in your city. The audience for this message is the pool of potential drupal developers, businesses and organizations considering drupal.
I'm not sure that a "post" is what it necessary, but something more like an ad that has the basic information about the event. Perhaps a "DrupalCamp" block is what is needed and it would just scroll through a listing of the upcoming camps showing date, lcoation, logo, link to the site specific for that camp.
http://www.CivicActions.com
http://www.GregoryHeller.com
http://GregoryHeller.com
Jumping in...
At the end of Drupalcon Boston I wrote a post that was essentially a listing of the upcoming Drupalcamps/events that I was aware of (they were posted on g.d.o). I did the same thing at the end of Drupalcon Szeged. The post was nothing more than a pure bare-bons ad for upcoming camps. I would love to see something more static up on the frontpage of d.o. I want people to be aware that these camps are going on as well as the meetups, jams, code sprints, training sessions, etc. etc.
This "AD" does exist on groups.drupal.org in the form of the upcoming events block but it quickly becomes crowded. In fact they all event messages get really crowded really fast.
The wonderful thing about our community is that we are very active and we have a lot of awesome events.
The bad thing about our community is we have too many events! (facetious)
The high volume of events muddies the water and can, at times, hide those really good events big or small.
Just taking a look at http://groups.drupal.org/events its an amazing site but for September I see....
Barcamp Hong Kong
Victoria Drupalcamp
Drupalcamp Peru
Drupalcamp L.A
Drupalcamp NYC
OSSCamp Delhi
Open Expo
This only covers the "one-off big events" and not the Drupal meetups, Drupal training sessions and events that aren't on the calendar (ex. the Opencamp in Beijing which included sessions on Drupal). Or essentially 1 fp page every 4 days.
Personally I want to promote every single one of these but my marketing hat prevents me b/c I know we'll quickly bore our audience whom will then tune us out. The "aah... not another-one" syndrome.
I agree though we need more coverage of regional events b/c it truly isn't fair that a private company's for-profit event was able to get a front page post and the local non-profit, people working their butts off for free events are not. This isn't anything against Lullabot, the conference or their well-written post its just an observation. In my perfect world I want all Drupal events to get equal coverage (for-profit, non-profit, camp, sprint, jam, booth-in-the-back-corner-of-a-conference, etc.). Drupal is Drupal regardless of size or profit-making non-profit making status, it all deserves attention.
Although I like.. no wait I love G.D.O I don't think it is achieving a certain marketing goal. The camps, jams, sprints are still getting buried in the mix and people just aren't finding them (in my broad assumption). The block on the right side of the page is great as well as the ability to promote to the front page and sticky it but we still get the buried effect as well as inability to promote all events.
I don't have an exact answer but I'm imagining something similar to Wordpress' Wordcamp website
http://central.wordcamp.org/
It has a single purpose. Highlight the upcoming camps.
that's it nothing more.
it's kind of like another website: http://barcamp.org (heard of it?)
Now we have http://groups.drupal.org/events and the f.p but, again, is muddy and unclear.
My idea:
Lets take drupalcamp.org (a domain that will be generously donated to us upon request).
Redirect it to a page on G.D.O that takes all CAMPS, or close-enough events, and highlights their dates as well as a link to more information. Quick to the point and, most importantly, clear.. very clear. t
my proposed solution is
1) drupalcamp.org goes to a Drupalcamp page on g.d.o (cross marketing)
---- say maybe a new group called drupalcamps? Its a quick view + panels job
2) This page only displays camps & information on how to do your own
additionally...
3) We define metrics on wants warrants special highlighting
--- Attendance rates, quality of conference, location, etc. etc.
4) We create a policy for promoting these special highlighted items to a new block on Drupal.org
5) We work with the d.o admins on creating a policy for fp posts of events
--- honest I'm very tempted to say none-at-all b/c the amount is just too high and the politics possibly a bit too much.
Just food for thought. The results of the survey we sent out after Drupalcon Szeged showed that an overwhelming majority of people knew about Drupalcon because it was on the frontpage of drupal.org. We've got marketing issues.
-Jacob Redding
-Jacob Redding
sounds good
I think that your list of proposed solutions address most if not all of my concerns. I'm willing to help in any way might be useful. Thanks for understanding that there is a valid set of issues on the table and looking for a constructive way to address them.
I should add...
I like the idea about the Drupalcamp block.
We would need to define some metrics for it though as some people don't like to use the word "drupalcamp" so they bundle a "Drupalcamp" under a different title.
things like..
Does OS-Con with a Drupal booth, get promoted in this block?
Does "DoitwithDrupal" get promoted in this block?
What about
Barcamps with significant Drupal sessions?
etc. etc.
so I like the idea I'm just adding in my two cents to see how/if we can keep the waters clear.
-Jacob Redding
-Jacob Redding
I would suggest that only
I would suggest that only non commercial drupal exclusive events get listed in a drupalcamp block on d.o.
If you are running a for profit training you can afford to advertise. BarCamp agendas are only suggestions until you get there. A booth at a conference is completely different than a dedicated camp/training event.
while i do not control drupalcamp.org i do control drupal-camp.org and would gladly point it at the appropriate place, and have offered to give people subdomains on drupal-camp.org for their events too.
http://www.CivicActions.com
http://www.GregoryHeller.com
http://GregoryHeller.com
drupalcamp.org
whoo hoo, drupal-camp.org and drupalcamp.org man our community rocks ;)
first: I could agree on the non-profit thing, that somewhat makes sense to me. The Drupal exclusive part though might limit things like when there is a big Drupal presence in a barcamp or when Drupal is at OS-Con, FrOS-Con, FOS-Con, a CMS conference or other places. Collateral damage?
I'm all for promoting Drupalcamps most definitely but want to see how we can also help out these other non-profit events that are "bundled" with others.
second: drupalcamp.org is Noel's so I guess we could choose either.
-Jacob Redding
-Jacob Redding