Thanks to Feargal O'Kane and his team at BT48 who organised DrupalCamp Derry at Cultúrlann Uí Chanáin. Great looking venue, and excellent wifi. About half the folks came along for a big group dinner and continued the conversation at Halo. The after-camp dinner is becoming a tradition here for the Ireland camps.
There were some great sessions provided as well, and some good debates. (Anyone for a "Drupal Debate" event?)
Thanks to the folks who prepared these great sessions! (20 mins sessions seems to hit the sweet spot).
Using Omega, Context and Delta to build a mobile site - Feargal
Who's site is it anyway, designing for the end user - Gary
We need to talk about mobile - Edward
Display Suite - Alan
Using Vim - Cormac
Designing in the browser - Edward
Contributing to Drupal using Git - Alan
New format better for newcomers and more relevant for attendees
We played some more with the format. We've always been trying to improve the camps and find a way to best accomodate the large amount of new comers the camp tends to attract.
1) We added training
We added intro training - This time we had a 3 hour introductory session for beginners, alongside the presentations for experienced people. I used the "Hello Drupal" materials with 12 people attending. I got a great compliment that someone came in unsure about Drupal, and left super excited about Drupal!
2) Open space for discussions
We followed planned sessions with small group discussions. In the past we found it difficult to get presentations. Everyone is busy, it adds stress to the camp, when really, people want to talk.
We used "Open Space Technology" to quickly (under 15 mins) plan an agenda of small group demos and discussions. See http://tinyurl.com/derryopen for the schedule.
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On Sunday we talked about:
Lessons from setting up a Drupal agency - tools and tips to save time and money
Social Media integration in Drupal - why and when.
Drupal.ie - what should it be?
[BTW- I love open space. You could spend weeks trying to make as relevant and interesting a schedule. I saw some people unsure about how it was going to work, but the rules are so simple you can quickly catch on. One thing I neglected to do was be the rapporteur after. If anyone wants me to facilitate Open Space again, I'd be glad.]
3) Drupal Ireland Association - AGM
We held the second AGM on Sunday and voted in the new leadership for the association. Mike King from Red Room is now chairman, and I think there will be a post coming out about that soon and plans about the website being planned, and new ways you can get involved in helping to promote Drupal.
Want to help promote Drupal in Ireland?
The first thing we're going to do is reach out to colleges and universities in Ireland to schedule talks.
- Can you speak at a college or university? Please indicate where you are located.
- Do you have a contact at a college or university that wants a speaker? Please send them to this form: http://tinyurl.com/drupalvisit
We are also looking to build a schedule of events where Drupal should be. For example, BarCamp Belfast on Nov 14th. We'll have more info about this soon.
Comments
Promoting Drupal to Colleges
Thanks to Fergal and all at BT48 for organising the Camp. Everyone that spoke gave an informative presentation and the Open Spaces were great too.
Heather, as briefly mentioned when I chatted to you on Sunday, I'm out in NUIM where they use Drupal for all web site development. I will talk to them about presentations / talks on Drupal tomorrow and see if they are interested.
Feel free to contact me directly if you want to chat about promoting to colleges in particular.
Thanks,
Paul.
Open source, open mind
Hello Paul! Emailing you now
Hello Paul! Emailing you now :)
Thanks Heather!
I have to admit that I was skeptical of the open space format for discussions, but it worked really well, and much credit to Heather for facilitating that! Looking forward to another one.
Open discussions FTW!
Yep, the combination of short talks in the morning and then open discussions in the afternoon worked really well. It was also interesting to hear talks that weren't 100% all Drupal, e.g. mobile stuff and information architecture. I found the open discussions on the Sunday more useful than Saturday's - not sure why that is, maybe it was the topics or maybe it was the larger groups. However, it was a great weekend and hope I'll be able to make it to the next one (wherever it is!) :)
Stella
Open discussions seem really interesting
The open discussions is a really promising format, I'm curious on how do you guys build this up? getting all the attendees together and asking for interests?, with a whiteboard where anyone could sign in bof-style?
Bof style on a whiteboard
Bof style on a whiteboard could certainly work too!
I followed the open space methods pretty standard. That is, forming the circle in person. Something so so nice about seeing that group together. I know it's very "hippy" :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-space_technology#Typical_meeting_process
I don't think online is as effective. We could have spent weeks and week dithering about topics. The immediacy about "who is there right now" is very important. For example, before the actual open space two topics were proposed, but in the end no one actually wanted to talk about them.
The one thing I find easier, if you have a finite number of spaces and a smaller group is to collect the ideas shared in the circle (on small paper or note cards) and group them together into common threads/sessions. I prefer to do this with one other person, and then post the agenda.
We did use a google doc for putting up the agenda with a shortened URL to make it easy for people to access.
http://tinyurl.com/derryopen
Really - the missing part, which I failed on, was getting reporting back from the sessions. I would do that in the future.
Good to hear that the short
Good to hear that the short session format worked out - I thought it seemed like a good idea when it was being discussed in London. Are you going to stick to that next time? Annoyed to have not been there. I'd say next time - but then I said that last time!
--
Tom
www.systemseed.com - drupal development. drupal training. drupal support.