Objectives (Why are we doing this?)
The Drupal Association and Drupal community in general host many general events, such as DrupalCons and regional Drupal Camps. These events tend to be great for Drupal users and site builders, but are not focused specifically on core/module/theme developers and other hard-core contributors. Especially at DrupalCons, these contributors' time and energy is split (presenting, exhibiting, etc.), and it is hard to focus on contributing and collaboration. So, this objective seeks to create regional events around the world that are focused on developers and hard-core contributors. By providing events focused on Drupal initiatives, we will advance these initiatives, build a stronger project, and work to bring more people into leadership positions in the Drupal community.
| What? | How? | Metrics of success |
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High level, focused invitation-only events programmed specifically for Developers. Each city / venue will focus on two-three different, yet related topics. Each venue will most likely have no more than 25 participants. Audience:
Timing: 2-3 events staggered throughout the year.
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Two parts: Logistics: DA Handles all logistics Community: Community leaders compromise a Sprint Advisory Board (SAB) to identify sprints and bring together the people. The SAB defines topics and people. |
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Funding Model
- Supporting Partners
- Primary sponsors of all events
- Logos on simple signage
- Logos on website
- Thank you to the sprinters
- Event specific Sponsorship
- one-off items such as dinner, party, etc.
- Geographic specific sponsorship
Costs
~25 average # of participants
$8,750 total per sprint
- Venue: $2,000/day
- Room Rental: $500 per room per day (x 3 = $1,500)
- Internet: $350 per day
- Food/Coffee: $2,750
- Misc costs: $150 per day
- $3,000 scholarship fund
- $1,000 overhead
Historical Information (Ideas, recommendations, and research)
Idea #1:
Similar to Drupal-in-a-Day (above) we'll coordinate the activities of local community groups to organize a "Drupal Code Sprint" day once a quarter that will happen in location around the world. (ex. 75 code sprints all occurring on Feb. 24th).
Funded by: Underwriting
Minimal advertising on announcement pages and byline credits at the regional sprint locations
Idea #2
Linux Kernel Developer Summit model / An invitation-only event for Drupal core developers and initiative owners. This could be an extension of the core sprint leads at Drupal Camp, Core conversations, and Core developer summits.
Funded by: Sponsorship (similar to LKDS)
Idea #3
Sprint packets: Create sprint packets, which is an outline of how to run a sprint, topics/initiatives to sprint on, and potentially funding for the sprint. We can utilize our existing fiscal sponsorship program and the community cultivation grant program to reach out to individuals and solicit their ideas and potential budgets.
Funded by: Underwriting, donations, memberships (request that sprint leads encourage attendees to become members)
Note: We actually already have a wealth of information on how to run a sprint of various kinds at: http://drupal.org/node/247945 (and sub-pages).
Comments
By developers, you mean a
By developers, you mean a variety of Drupal contributors, right? ;)
I don't think you mean to leave out all the designers, project managers, etc. I know you were at the PNW Summit, and saw how well it caters to a wide range of professionals and contributors, and I think that's part of what makes it awesome!
Just making sure that others don't misunderstand that, as I think we often use "developers" as freehand for "contributors", and it'd be good to clarify whether you really meant just developers or not (I suspect not). Thx!
Build, Refine, Scale
Ariane,
This objective does mean Developers as in software developers writing PHP Code so your skepticism is justified. I want to make it very clear that this is a starting point and we most certainly want to branch out to support all contributors. The new sprint lead program at DrupalCon was designed for all contributors and we have worked hard for DrupalCon to be inclusive of our entire community. We also provide fiscal sponsorship for camps such as the PNW Drupal Summit, Drupal Design camp, FrontEnd United, and others. You're 100% correct in that our focus should be and is our entire community and not just the developers. It takes a village.
Right now we're trying to find the right mix of financial support, program assistance, and organizing that works for the community and we chose a small slice of our community to focus on to experiment with and create that bag of tricks. I hope that we can get this buttoned down quickly and expand out the offerings such that we are helping with Doc sprints, Design sprints, camps, educational events, and that we hit a full cross section of our community. As we define the programs for developers we'll also create the institutional knowledge and processes that will be able to support the full community and then we can scale out. Help us work on this small scale first so we can grow!
-Jacob Redding
For my part...
I can't speak for the rest of the board, but I definitely meant "contributors" with my vote for this item. :)
Oh...
Oh... that's... hm. I'm really surprised! It seems such a negligible added effort (or even easier) to make events suit the spectrum of contributors...
You're right
Ariene: I think you're 100% absolutely correct and in most of our conversations about these events we've talked about contributor events. However, we still want to provide focus primarily to define the best processes and method for the DA to step in here.
My primary goal is to assist and support the community. The community has been amazing at creating camps, sprints, jams, Drupal Days, Business Summits, etc. I see no reason for us to "take over" any of these so don't expect to see the DA organize or manage a camp anytime soon. We may assist and provide support but not manage or organize. The question that we're trying to answer is what is the best way to meet this objective. Do we
1) Organize the "event" (sprint, jam, summit) directly
or
2) Work with an existing camp/summit/jam
Ultimately the goal is to use the resources of the DA to augment events in the Drupal community.
So right now we're focusing on a very tight audience but very quickly we should be doing what you expect to see; events for contributors. I feel that we're aligned with your expectations but out of the gate we're starting small and scaling up.
-Jacob Redding
Events as collaboration incubators
I know a lot of developers agree that there aren't enough sessions at DrupalCons or Camps for us anymore, which makes it less compelling to attend. I think that this action point is meant to address this.
In doing so, it seems to conflate an 'advanced' level and a 'developer' role. While having an advanced level developer-targeted event would address the issue, I believe that having an advanced level hardcore contributor-targeted event would address it equally well.
For example, at DrupalCity Berlin there was a small group of hardcore contributors, including myself, fago, Itangalo, sun, and fuhby, not all of whom primarily consider themselves developers. That event was 100% worth it to me because of the conversations that we had and the cross-pollination of ideas among that group of hardcore contributors. Because the ratio of hardcore contributors to newbies and non-contributing users is so high at Cons and Camps, you don't necessarily find that experience... but it is the experience I always go to Cons and Camps hoping for.
My 2c is that I would really love to see this be shaped as an event for advanced contributors (not necessarily developers) who are active in the community.
Great feedback
This seems to echo what Ariane and jhodgdon's comment. The purpose of this objective is that of DrupalCity Berlin. People that are working on initiatives, leading groups, or have a focused of code, documentation, planning, etc. that need tight focus. Although DrupalCon brings together our entire community and allows us to discuss the future of the project, learn from each other, challenge ourselves, and provides a platform for discussion and brainstorming we do recognize that it has become increasingly difficult at DrupalCon to focus on a single particular topic whether that be writing core code, planning an initiative, writing/organizing documentation, or planning a UX strategy session. The purpose of this objective is to address this.
As I've mentioned we'll be focused initially on the developer portion of our community but as the plan reads above we'll quickly expand that to all hardcore contributors.
-Jacob Redding
The pacific new Drupal summit
The pacific new Drupal summit is a fantastic model. It was born out of, primarily, two desires: create an event for people who make their living by providing Drupal related sevices, and reduce the burden of organizing annual drupalcamps within a compact region that would likely have significant overlap in attendees, presenters and sponsors (as was the case for Portland, Seattle, Vancouver 2006-2008).
Camps are fantastic opportunities for the community to grow and welcome newbies as well as for community members to develop presentation and training skills. Summits are like a middle ground between camp and a conference allowing people making their living with Drupal to come together and learn from each other Oma more intimate scale and at a more modest expense than a DrupalCon.
It would be fantastic if the association could play a role in helping to organize more regional events of this nature.
http://GregoryHeller.com
Rocking...
The folks at PNW Drupal Summit are awesome and throw a great event. We're continuing the conversations so we can best support their efforts.
-Jacob Redding
What's the objective here?
I'd like to know what the objective is for this -- I guess I'm confused by why what is articulated on this page would be one of the 6 Drupal Association goals for 2012. As it's articulated here currently, I'm not sure what the objective is of the "events targeted at developers" -- what's the end goal and why is it important? I also think you need to define what you mean by "developer". People use the word "developer" to mean "someone who writes software", but in the Drupal/web world, they also use it to mean "someone who builds web sites". And in some of the discussion above, it seems like it means "contributors to the Drupal project". So which is meant here?
If what you're proposing is to hold sprints, then here is one possible goal/objective that could be articulated as to why you want to hold developer-targeted events [once you define what "developer" means]:
- Get "developers" together in small groups -- is this the objective? If so, I'm not sure why this is important to do -- aside from the fact that it's fun for developers to get together and I for one would certainly would enjoy being part of these events... Can you make a case for why it is important, and why it's so important that the Drupal Association should fund it, and how to justify the expense if "getting them together" is so important, it's a pretty high cost to benefit just a few people.
Or is the objective really the work that will come out it? If so, maybe one of these is the objective:
- Move official Drupal Core Initiatives forward
- Improve Drupal Core software in general (not just initiatives)
- Improve Drupal software in general (core, contributed modules, contributed themes)
- Improve the Drupal.org infrastructure (to support the "make d.o awesome for developers" and "make d.o awesome for site builders" goals)
- Improve Drupal documentation (in support of the "make d.o awesome for site builders" goal)
- Make improvements to anything the Drupal Community deems important to work on (code, documentation, themes, *.drupal.org web sites, etc.).
I would also like to point out that the Pacific Northwest Drupal Summit would not satisfy many if any of these goals. It's a great event, but its purpose is to bring together professional users of Drupal. It's not primarily for contributors to the Drupal project or developers in the sense that I think you're talking about here.... So I don't think mentioning it in the header as an example of an event is correct, unless by developers you mean "people who use Drupal to build sites".
So... In short, I am not sure what this Goal is about. Can someone who does understand it either reply here or better yet, edit this page to make it clearer? Again, I probably agree with this being a goal, but I want to understand the reasoning behind it.
Drupal programmer - http://poplarware.com
Drupal author - http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920034612.do
Drupal contributor - https://www.drupal.org/u/jhodgdon
Bring people together
The overall goal is simplistic in nature: To bring people together.
DrupalCon was originally created for a single goal: Bring the community together. DrupalCon does an amazing job at this. However, we recognize that as the conference has grown it has become more difficult to focus on specific objectives. This is simply because there is so much going on.
The Linux community started with LinuxCon and eventually created the Linux Kernel Developers Summit to provide focus on very specific initiatives within their community. This is a similar progression. We'll start with Drupal developers, meaning writing code, and very quickly branch it out to all initiatives and contributors (see comments from ariane and linclark above). Our objective with this is to help the community collaborate and break through barriers we have seen. For example, you've experienced barriers in advancing your documentation initiatives. We hope by bringing people together in focused events we can more quickly identify these barriers and overcome them. This is only one of many methods that we hope will help us through. As you've identified this objective dovetails in with the other objectives particularly in improving drupal.org.
-Jacob Redding
Ah, OK
OK, that's well-articulated, thanks! Probably this wiki page needs a little editing to make that clear. I might take a stab at it later today if no one beats me to the punch. ;)
Drupal programmer - http://poplarware.com
Drupal author - http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920034612.do
Drupal contributor - https://www.drupal.org/u/jhodgdon
Edited...
I edited the section at the top, hopefully better articulating this goal. If not, there's always the revision revert link. :)
Drupal programmer - http://poplarware.com
Drupal author - http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920034612.do
Drupal contributor - https://www.drupal.org/u/jhodgdon