DrupalCamp Pittsburgh
OK, now that our third Drupal Meetup is in the record books and we've planned the fourth, maybe it's time we take it up a notch.
How about DrupalCamp Pittsburgh in September after students return? I think the earlier the better so as to get students (and others) acquianted with Drupal before they get caught up by alternate, often proprietary CMSs. How about September 19-20, which happens to be the weekend before the G-20 Summit (and five weeks after Netroots Nation. Is Pittsburgh a happening city, or what?!!
Anyway, I've never organized one before, though several people I can draw from at CivicActions have. It looks simple enough, and if we divide and conquer, I think we can pull it off.
The primary things we need are a space (with 3-4 breakout rooms each capable of seating 20 or so) and food. Supplies such as projectors, power strips, easels with paper and markers should be easier to scrounge up - though we're lucky, some of those may come with the rooms. Oh, and we'd need volunteers to find the location, look for sponsors, obtain food and possibly even create T-shirts.
There are lots of great DrupalCamp planning resources online - here's a few:
- Drupal Camp Organizing Guide (groups.drupal.org>
- Organizing Drupal Camps (drupal.org)
- Drupal Organizer Kit for Conferences, Camps, Meetups and Unconferences (Acquia)
- Drupalcamp, How to and Q & A (video of DrupalCon DC 2009 session)
I know I'm getting ahead of myself, but the schedule could be something like:
- 8am-9:30am: coffee, pastries and unconference session planning
- 9:30am-10am: kickoff keynote
- 10am- 1pm: first three 50 minute (parallel) session periods
- 1pm - 2pm: lunch and more session planning
- 2pm - 5pm: three more parallel session periods
- 5pm - 7pm: dinner
- 7pm - 8am: bars, sleep
Sessions could be everything from "What is Drupal and Why Should I Care?" to "Advanced Theming". With four rooms and six session periods, we could have a total of forty-eight sessions - yow! Once we get a wiki page set up we could start soliciting session ideas, but final schedule and session planning would happen the morning of each day.
Wha-da-ya-think?
Ical feed
Are any of you going to Wisconsin?
Wisconsin Drupalcamp (free) is this Friday / Saturday. I realize that's a bit far for a spontaneous trip up there but if any of you are going you could learn from it for planning purposes. I haven't been able to come to any of the meetings cause I live up at Penn State but I would like to get together with your group sometime this summer (maybe later this month or next) to talk DrupalCamp / even larger plans then that (w/ the education folks at least). I understand you have quite a few members from Pitt and surrounding College's and I'm trying to organize a mini-circuit of camps all across our area (Pittsburgh, State College / PSU, a few other's I've briefly talked to who are drivable). Please email me, especially if you're from a college / university to discuss further.
"Plaguing the world with Drupal; One Plone, Moodle, Wordpress, Joomla user at a time since 2005." ~ btopro
http://elearning.psu.edu/
http://elearning.psu.edu/projects/
http://elearning.psu.edu/drupalineducation/
I would love, love LOVE to
I would love, love LOVE to see a Pittsburgh Drupal Camp.
I would put in my vote to change the date, though, for three reasons.
Publicizing
I think that we will have to do more work in publicizing than they do in bigger cities and we don't have as large a group to spread that work around. Bringing the student population would be really good, I think we'll need to spend some time getting the word out about Drupal on campuses to bring students out.
Partnership
Carnegie Mellon put on an Art & Code conference last March that brought a lot of REALLY interesting people. We may be able to collaborate or publicize there.
Maintaining Audience
Three of the closest large cities have their camps around this time and a fourth one might... New York had their fall Drupal Camp on this precise weekend last year, Chicago has theirs in late October, and Philly has theirs in early November, so we might not pull as much from eastern Pennsylvania and Ohio. Toronto had been in May before, but they've had a "Coming Soon" message up for a while, so it might hit in the fall.
Maybe April?
With those factors in play, I would think April might be a good time. This would give us time to get more group members and get everyone more involved. It would also give some time to connect with student groups and get the word out about Drupal in general. Plus, the camps that are held in the spring seem to be mostly European camps, so we wouldn't be splitting the audience.
Just not Spring Break
Or either side of Easter.
Other than that, I totally agree with our fearless leader. Maybe we can stage an associated event - perhaps simply an open planning meeting - during Netroots...
agree; students = unreliable
Yea, I dono about the climate at your schools but Drupal isn't really something many students know about up here or inquire about. I've been contacted by I think 3 students at most and know about 5 developers overall....out of 40k people up here. A camp would be a huge draw up here though (had 75+ at my last talk on campus w/ little publicity) because we're so big and so many people are interested in it. I'd love to get some reps from this group to come up and present / lead some discussions if possible. Dono when that'll be, i'm working on dates and funding and what not post-wisconsin's.
As for a PGH one I like the justifications for holding off above. How many of you are there out that way to begin with? Cause I think the interest group would need to be big enough as a base to ensure x number of people just for presentations and the like. Wisconsin's shaping up to be 100ish people and across 2 days. Maybe something like that would be good to shoot for in terms of size. I know Bill Fitzgerald will also be out there which may not mean much to some but any time you have the author of a book presenting / talking at one of your things it'll also give it more credability when proposing the idea to people who control the funding to go places or even just those interested in going in the first place on their own dime.
I think I should meet up with you guys sometime next month, Pittsburgh's not very far and I KNOW I could get some people from up here to come out. Drupal's slowly but surely catching on and there are more and more people that are in need of Training and experience with the Drupal community that I can't keep up with it all!
I could see location being an issue for you guys unless some uni's were willing to host or rent out space cheap. I know Free training / collaboration during a down market is a powerful motivator for a lot of people and putting a Free or nearly free price tag on it would be huge for getting people to go.
40 members (in this group) could be a good start if everyone comes, I think getting closer to 100 signed up for a group or twitter or website dedicated to the drupalcamp planning would be a good figure to shoot for to know the interest is there as well as possibly being able to get some space / funding from a university / college based on the publicity of a mini-conference.
"Plaguing the world with Drupal; One Plone, Moodle, Wordpress, Joomla user at a time since 2005." ~ btopro
http://elearning.psu.edu/
http://elearning.psu.edu/projects/
http://elearning.psu.edu/drupalineducation/
Drupal Camp case study
Amazon just posted a case study about the recent San Fran Drupal Camp, seemed pertinent to the discussion
http://badcamp.net/drupal-camp-san-francisco-case-study
Excellent read!
And I love that the bottom line budget ended up being $412
But they built up to that over several years - I think we should feel comfortable taking some time to get it right, as long as we have fun and spread the Drupal word (or node) in the process.
Wisconsin Big success
A few take away's from what made it so successful:
I'd highly recommend getting in contact with the organizers of DrupalCampWI as I'm sure they'd help you guys from the lessons they learned in putting one on this weekend. (about 150 attendees too)
"Plaguing the world with Drupal; One Plone, Moodle, Wordpress, Joomla user at a time since 2005." ~ btopro
http://elearning.psu.edu/
http://elearning.psu.edu/projects/
http://elearning.psu.edu/drupalineducation/