Posted by scor on April 6, 2009 at 2:06pm
On behalf of all the organizers, I'd like to thank all those who came to the event on Saturday/Sunday. In order to improve the organization of the next events and also share what we learnt, we need feedback from the attendees. Please leave your comments below. What did you like? What did you not like? How can we improve such an event? Don't hesitate to shout whether it's positive or negative. If you want to keep your feedback private or anonymous, please send them to stephane.corlosquet@deri.org.
We are planning to write a report for other groups to organize similar events, as a result any feedback is valuable.
Thanks.
Stéphane.
Comments
Hey - I'm gutted I wasn't
Hey - I'm gutted I wasn't able to make the Drupal meetup last weekend :(
A friend of mine had some feedback for the event though, so I figured I'd send it on to you!
This was one of the same problems we had with the first meetup, in Dublin, a few months ago if I remember correctly.
Luckily, in the Dublin meetup, there were quite a few advanced users who could field some of the questions if/when required though :)
The problem we had, however, was that there was no one who could answer the questions brought up by the advanced users :)
Galway Drupalcamp feedback
I am echoing the feedback from zoro’s friend, for many of the positives and negatives they brought up.
I’ve already banged on about having an intermediate track – that would provide a space for those of us who have started our learning, and have specific questions (we probably share similar problems).
If issues were collected from people, prior to the event, they could be addressed in a targeted way, by the best person to deal with them.
I had a whole list of questions; I answered only a few, fairly superficially because of time constraints. I am thankful for all the help people gave me. I’m sure some of the organisers were swamped with needy people.
I loved contributing to a valuable non-profit organisation’s website. But I did end up not learning how to configure like I needed; it got a bit hectic. We could have done more if we had the site features, architecture and taxonomy worked out before we started (plus the theme chosen). That way, the whole group could have concentrated on the drupal specific configuration and building.
When how-to demos are given, I need to follow clear steps. If there are no session notes handed out, I spend time writing things and by the time I look up, I’ve lost the thread of what screen, page, etc, we are in.
Demonstrators could:
I had a great time meeting new people at the camp. Sometimes mingling and networking is not easy for me, I’m sure other people feel the same way. Icebreaking sessions could be a good way to get people talking.
Facilities were great.
Vibe was ace.
Hearing from Addison was super.
Lunch and drinks were fine (more fruit would be good).
Thanks for putting the event on.
Franny
From a tired man
Hi all,
I'm still wrecked from the weekend.
I'm happy enough with how the weekend went.
We put a lot of effort into organising the event, and I had fears for 2 particular issues.
1. We wouldn't get the sites built for the non profits - but we managed that.
2. The documentation sprint would fall flat - but Addision seemed pretty happy with progress.
The Good stuff.
Presentations to beginners were great - many Drupal camps don't really cater to the level of beginners we did.
Meeting lots of good people, swapping stories, exchanging ideas. Great time at dinner and drinks.
The site-building sprint should create great PR and interest in Drupal.
Catering was good - thanks to generous sponsorship from I01 - and my big kettle.
[A dedicated kitchen / canteen would be better that just a room though].
The Bad Stuff.
The unconference approach didn't work.
Not enough people were familiar with the ethos of a Barcamp - where everyone is encouraged to present something.
[At early barcamps, EVERYONE presented something - it was part of the deal with attending].
While we didn't expect that, we probably expected too much from people just stepping up to the plate on the day.
Lesson Learned: Plan your schedule a lot more for the day. Ask people to present. Publicise your schedule.
Do it well in advance, and have a few 'backup' speakers. People will know what to expect before they sign up.
No idea where we'll get all these speakers from :-(
No Intermediate Track.
Lots of people who had used Drupal a bit, but looking to make the next step, all of them at various stages of learning, but definitely not advanced. We needed a track for them.
Lesson learned Have an intermediate track.
I feel a separate post coming on about ...
What is Drupalcamp about, and who is it for?
We didn't really think about this enough before the event.
OOPS!
I didn't THANK everyone for showing up and helping out!
THANKS!
From an organiser
I must say I agree with a lot of the things raised in the comments above. I certainly felt in our team we were too pushed for time and didn't have a wide enough skillset for people to learn new things. This meant people who were designers worked on design, coders worked on features, etc, and so didn't really get out of "their" area. I was partially aware of this, but couldn't do much about it in the time we had.
I think making one larger site with all people involved on the same site, we could have several mentors wandering around and going around to the different groups helping them with their questions. We could also put designers into the new features group, and coders into the designers group, and so on. I think this would be really useful for the community as they would be exposed to areas that they don't normally get to try out.
I also felt we needed more Q&A time at the end of the day, esp Sat. I had a lot of people come up to me during lunch on the Sunday with questions. I answered what I could, but Sunday was just a crazy day and I didn't have the time to get through many.
As for the advanced track on the Sat, yeah, I drew up a list of topics that people wanted covered, but we didn't have the experts there to answer them :( I could have done some of them, but I was busy most of the day in the newbie track. I'm hoping if we keep organising local meetups, that we will get more people involved and they'll learn more and eventually we'll have more experts who can present on some of these things. It would have been helpful if people had replied to the post / emails with topics that people had wanted covered in advance, then we could have been a bit more prepared. But they didn't, so while disappointed we couldn't answer their questions, part of me is frustrated that they didn't respond. Perhaps we need to raise the profile of these questions in future.
Overall I'm very happy with the event to be honest. We built two great websites for two great organisations. We also managed to help a 3rd organisation, though a small bit of further work, and training, is definitely required. I was really impressed with the energy and enthusiasm that everyone brought with them. I also really liked the fact that we had social events, with pre-organised dinners and locations to be at. It really encouraged mingling and networking, and of course various Q&A on different features in Drupal. I'm really hoping we can build upon this. There was a great vibe and am really pleased how the event turned out and how we accomplished everything we set out to do. I must say it really raises the bar for the next event! ;)
I still haven’t recovered
I still haven’t recovered from the weekend yet – it goes without saying that a big effort was made by a lot of people (that didn’t go un-noticed) both in man (and girl) power and financial backing.
I echo a lot of the comments that have been made – where to start :)
The DrupalNgo is a great idea but like the other comments it suffocated that communal spirit of sharing – it was great for those that were involved we had great fun bug testing IE6 for missing images !!!!! but for those floating between rooms the experience must have been rather raw. Dont get me wrong there was a lot of good Karma at the event over the course of both days lots of people tapped into that. A better approach might be to build just a single site with a handful of team members before the event and present it on the first day as a beginners track, One single code base could serve as a base to help more organisation get the message out there - leaving theming to a day is a bit much its something that needs looking at – I think it serves the propose of introducing the user to drupal and also helping a group of non profits.
Also I dont know how zikomo won Alan did you bride any one with a free entry to the Connaught marathon!!!!
Having one “expert” would be great though that person would get swapped and defiantly wouldn’t return to the next event. Expectations have to be realistic on what people are looking for out of such an event. Questions should be put forward well in advance. Individuals on the day may be able to answer them with a brief 15 minute presentation, this all needs to be planned out in advance. There should a “thaw” period of submitting questions well in advance of the next event.
For Galway the barcamp process just went over my head - I understand the concept but you must have a slick presentation that is geared towards your audience not too much code and steps spelled out in a clear detailed manner. Sometimes people just need to be spoon feed information. I got my fingers burned at Galway lesson learned :)
Making that step from beginner to intermediate is somewhat difficult as there are so many different tracks that we take as users and developers. Creating modules, theming and scalability issues are of concern to all of us, there are a lot more. Really when you are catering for such a small group a more structured approach must be used, that does mean that the group needs more people willing to volunteer and step up to the podium - scratching our own itch.
The people organising the Belfast event will have a lot of work on their hands in trying to motivate people in coming – sorry but this is just fact, its the users not posting and not getting their questions answered are those that will stay away. The key here is how many new users will stay on - does anyone know how many new people from Dulbin came to Galway - I only recognised a few faces.
See you next time :) - I'll probably end up going to Manchester, maybe
later
M
another feedback
I got this feedback via email:
More intermediate feedback
Hello,
First thank you indeed to all the people who organised and spoke at the event.
I guess Im an intermediate user: Ive installed Drupal, set up a website which Im steadily expanding, have a bit of experience with CCK and Views, thus I have a reasonable idea of on how to do a limited set of tasks but am not always sure if Im stumbling about in the right general direction, or if Im missing something obvious.
As a social event I enjoyed the weekend a lot! However as a Drupal training event, personally I didnt really learn that much: as has been previously mentioned an Intermediate track would be very welcome (if the numbers make it feasible), I kind of got an impression that beyond a few real experts I wasnt the only person attending the Advanced track by default as the Beginner one wasnt really appropriate. That said I did find it interesting, just that a lot went over my head.
But (and this is not an insignificant but), one thing that was useful was discovering a way I could potentially contribute back to the wider Drupal project i.e. Documentation (and offering some help to some of the beginners at the event too).
Supporting three tracks might be a challenge, especially in the rather freeform nature of Galway event, as others have said it might be worth considering something a bit more organised (the tracks dont have to be completely seperate - they can merge at points if needed e.g. all getting together to have a Q&A session).
Overall in summary I enjoyed the event and found it useful, though not as a learning opportunity however, but as one where I found out how I could potentially contribute to the Drupal project.
Thanks!
Feedback from a Drupal newbie developer's perspective.
Great weekend! Thanks loads to everyone especially the organisers for all the work put in. Not only were they organising the event but also were the key speakers! So well done! And brilliant to meet such a nice friendly bunch of weird and wonderful people :)
The format was really good IMHO. Sometimes at a 'proper' conference you attend a really good talk and learn something but it can be a very passive experience and I've learned a ton of stuff at this event.
As an experienced developer (not in Drupal) the whole weekend gave a really good insight into good designs for sites and how Drupal site spec/design/implement process works. You can only gain this stuff with experience and it is really valuable to get an insight there and have access to really excellent Drupal people. Also meeting some real end users and seeing some graphics/theme design was very interesting.
Saturday
I stayed with the newbie track on Sat and absorbed a load of stuff.
There was a better defined structure in the "newbie" room and I found every presentation had elements of very good value. Where I already was familiar with what was going on I could tune out a little and try and catch up reading Drupal docs on some areas or work on my Drupal Install/Configure.
You can only really learn something properly by doing it fully yourself but seeing GalwayFLUX site overview and ShadowBox Theatre site created gives a huge jump start ~kindof~ background reassurance that what you're doing (especially with regard to Modules used) is sensible, stable, tried and trusted.
It sounded like in the experienced track people didn't stay on topic long enough to get full satisfaction and feel they fully learned something or answered questions fully. Perhaps that is where a proper unconference/barcamp style works better? If the whole experienced/intermediate group tries to stay together you can only cover any issue lightly. If the experienced track was split up even more into smaller workshops which really delved into some one thing it could work.
Sunday - website build
Sunday was very nice, fantastic atmosphere.
At the start (especially as a newbie) it wasn't possible to get involved.
We shoulder-surfed module config and development a bit.
Alan was very good setting up and then introducing what work was ongoing and delegating and pulling people in when possible.
It was good to be accidentally sitting in the middle of the design people working on the theme. It would be nice for me to do the day again and pay attention to the design and see what was happening there.
Later on I just helped upload a bunch of images into the gallery. Very simple but nice as worked with Margaret from Zikomo who could explain what was going on and give them good titles which adds a great deal to the gallery.
What might make maximum use of this sort of event is if the project work was tracked and recorded and presented out loud while the work was happening.
The presenter (one person or one person for design/dev/content) would:
Doing this could be a bit distracting for the work (especially if the explaination is wrong! :)).
You might feel like a bit of an eejit. :-P
It is probably hard to do this.
But I think this approach could reveal what was happening in general and even allow for enhanced synergistic intra-team communication :).
Finally thanks again for such a good event.
There was loads going on and I felt it would have been handy if I could aplit myself in at least 2.
Tons of activity and material and ideas so I definately am looking forward to future events.
feedback
Hi everyone,
Just want to say thanks for effort put in to make this weekend happen. Enjoyed event. What I most got from it was a more tangible grasp of what drupal is, and its community. It has made learning drupal on my own more possible. I'm a newbie to it and don't have much web experience...down to not even knowing how to ftp to server(all that has changed!)..but my reflection is its hard when your not around people that can give you a nudge in right direction and you can get stuck on the simplest of things!
I got enough out of weekend to really dig and am actually enjoying the drupal buzz now..having downloaded and exploring the recommended modules and learning as much as I can take in from drupal support. It just takes time go over it again and again for familiarity to set in
I'm working on two sites just for my own work and promotion(plus I just uploaded a couple test sites to cut loose on). I think it would be cool if more hands on is included in these weekends. I think it would speed up the learning curve. I acknowledge there is a graduation process and once you know what your about and have projects in mind, simulating these things or working on them under guidance might work if there is enough consensus for this.
I enjoyed sunday also. I agree you ended up doing what you were familiar with...it was a mystery still to me how the site emerged but I was so impressed with how it all happened on the drupal platform...that it makes me very eager to gain this mysterious and powerful knowledge for world domination!
anyway I just want to say attending these events does support and foster ones solitary learning curve from a newbies perspective!
cheers
tony
belated feedback
Finally Hi to one and all,
Like many of the above I was knackered after the weekend in Galway (4th - 5th April) and then had a busy early week, finally getting down to process some of the photos I took last weekend on Thursday. The Easter weekend has got in the way so only joining the Ireland group today and processing more photos.
Anyway first of all a big thank you to Alan, Stella, Stephane and all the other organizers! You all worked hard to try and make a success of the whole thing. I'm a complete Newbie and have had problems downloading Drupal on my local machine and uploading files to my Blacknight shared hosting account (which has Drupal installed on a couple of my domains) so I haven't even passed "Go" to use a Monopoly expression. But I got great advice and encouragement from Stephane, Somes and others.
I found out about the event the previous weekend at the barcamp Open Source event in Kevin Street and had no idea what to expect, however what I find very useful when learning new technologies is on-line tutorials and videos so on the off chance that I might be able to sneek a few shots of the seminars, I brought my Mini-DV camera. Well I didn't have to sneek at all as Stephane was very encouraging about capturing as much as possible on 'film' and since these events and the entire 'Open Source Community' relies on voluntary contributions I was glad to be able to do contribute in some way. Unfortunately I only took one 60 minute tape so didn't film as much as the process as I had hoped but was able to get some great stuff using Stephanes camera and cassette. It will be a while before I get around to editing my 60 or so minutes. I missed some vital shots in the beginning when Alan dived into the early development process before I could get my act together but on balance I think between mine and Stephane's stock we have enough footage to use both as a learning tool and a means of promoting Drupal to a wider community.
So as for recommendations. Assuming Belfast comes off, I shall bring plenty of tape this time and if we can get a few more camera people on board I'm hoping we can produce enough to benefit both attendees and others after an event like this in the future. This way we can all view different aspects of the event that we weren't physically present for. Of course all this depends on a structure which accommodates, newbies, intermediates and the advanced users. Scor's suggestion for newbies of having mentors with five newbies building a site sounds great as does the suggestion of a sort of speed 'get to know you session' perhaps at the end of the first day? I've written enough for the moment so wont add more suggestions especially as I'd be repeating much of what has been said by others anyway concerning the structure and learning capabilities of such an event. Suffice to say that, I feel, it has been a reasonable success and I particularly enjoyed Sunday and meeting the members of Zikomo, since I was born and grew up in Africa myself.
As soon as I have ALL the photos of the event up on flickr and facebook (I already have a few up on facebook) I shall let you know. Eventually I shall liaise with Stephane and hopefully get one or two 'Documentaries' up on the Web on some site or other for everyone (at least in Drupal Ireland) to view.
Chow for now,
David
Well I thought it was great.
The comments above all sound valid and whatnot, but from the perspective of one who has barely dipped their toe in the mire of Drupal, I learned a lot. (Or at least came away feeling like I did - I tried later to do the image gallery thing and made a mess of that...!)
Like the last Dublin gig I felt incresingly disposed towards playing with and learning about Drupal more, so I think that was positive. The Sunday thing was a real blast: my big learnings centred not around Drupal per se, but more about working with other techies who know what they are doing, which was fantastic, as I mostly work as a largely solo operator. I think that the energy in the place was class, and I'd definitely go again. I've waxed lyrical on the weekend in my podcasts at work, in fact.
So fair play to all the organisers, and a big thank you for a great weekend.
Linky?
Hi Anthony -
Can you link to those Podcasts?
Alan
podcasts
Woops, forgot the link... http://www.ictpoint.ie