Hey guys, thought we should probably get a thread on LA / Cali Drupal Business Summits started to get a feel of what we should do to promote Drupal in a community effort in the Southwest. We (KWALL) have been discussing business summits with many of the community at camps / meetups / etc. and would love to volunteer to get this going and ensure that it's a great event to promote Drupal to interested parties, and not just a sales tool.
Our thoughts would be that all interested firms / individuals would collaborate to provide a structured "how Drupal is better than X" one day event that doesn't promote just one shop, but shows the power of the application and it's collaborative local partners in promotion.
We'd like to setup a quick Google Hangout or conf. call with anyone interested in collaborating on the efforts and putting a solid plan together to make this happen.
Anyone interested in joining up please let me know and I'll setup a conference call in the next week or so.
-- Kevin Wall
Comments
Sure, count me in. A few of
Sure, count me in. A few of us have been planning a Drupal Business Summit to coincide with DDCLA in October, 2012. I'd love to hear what others would want to get out of it so that we can produce the best event possible.
Organizing a conference in Downtown Los Angeles has been rather challenging and we've been putting a large amount of our efforts into securing a venue and keeping costs down. We'll be posting dates as soon as we have the venue worked out.
As an aside, we haven't envisioned the Business Summit or DDCLA events as for-profit events. We're open to as many companies, individuals and organizations getting involved in the planning of it as well as attending on the day of.
Sure thing Christefano, I'll
Sure thing Christefano, I'll setup a gotomeeting for a 15 min flash collaboration effort later in the month. If we do one, two, or ten summits, it will be great to put a plan and goals in action so that the focus is there. I'd love to hear about the summit planning so far, and we're committed to making it happen and can definitely help that with sponsorships and volunteers.
If there can be economies of scale on a space to do multiple events around Drupal too, that would be awesome.
We'd love to help
We have been talking about this inside of Stauffer New Media Development as well. We'd love to collaborate on a Drupal Biz Summit. I think it would be a good idea to involve Acquia given their previous effort on the last Drupal Biz Summit Hollywood. I think given the audience of a business summit, we have to make sure that we have a good venue so that we can attract a wider audience; chances are, we'll need some sponsors. Having a title like "LA Drupal Business Summit" doesn't really make a venue want to donate their space for free.
To Kevin's point, I'd love to see more than just case studies (which seems to be the emphasis on what I've seen in the two I've been to). We will all benefit from comparing Drupal to X... That seems to be one of the largest sticking point on talking CTO type clients with pre-existing dogma. Engineers that are in love with Ruby and .NET seem to be the types that push back on Drupal the most.
CEO Stauffer
www.stauffer.com
Great to hear the interest!
Great to hear the interest! Many of us have been working since DrupalCamp Phoenix ... and originally was going to cooincide with DCLA ... but thus far, are leaning towards making it it's own event. I'll be on the call.
--
mike stewart { twitter: @MediaDoneRight | IRC nick: mike stewart }
Agreed Chris, We've talked
Agreed Chris,
We've talked with Acquia, the Drupal Association, and a handful of the usuals on sponsorship so I think we'll be well covered there.
With the compare Drupal from X to X. We've got a couple converts from proprietary solutions to proprietary .NET which went to Drupal and love it that I can bring in. I think it would be great to have some non-drupal people talk about open source benefits to get people interested too.
Cool!
Great idea! We've been talking about having a different kind of business summit here at Droplabs - one for folks who have already drunk the kool-aid and invested heavily in Drupal. We'd like to take the temperature and discuss the business trends that we're seeing locally, without anyone giving away their secret sauce.
How does pressure from the big companies like Zynga, Google and Riot hiring up engineers have an impact on the abilities of small to mid-sized companies to find and hire great devs, and what are some strategies that we, as smaller shops can use to attract the awesome without poaching from one another?
What are the skills that are generally accepted for a Junior / Intermediate / Senior Developer? What kinds of training programs can Droplabs and Larks put together to grow the skills of people so they have the best chance of getting hired? If we can get a better idea of what you're looking for, we can tailor our programs, and maybe even find funding for these programs.
What would we like to see the Los Angeles Drupal landscape to look like and how can we get it there?
Would y'all like to come for dinner some evening and discuss these things, as well as plan a bigger summit to promote Drupal? If you'd rather meet in some virtual location that's okay too, but we've got a great space, and can order out and have a full half acre of whiteboard. If we're lucky there might be robots, or Mutaytor!
Float all boats!
Founder
http://www.larks.la
Robot Coordinator
http://droplabs.net
Organizer, Dragonslayer
http://drupal.la &n
Happy to Help!
I'm happy to help in any way.
Susan | Better modules through revenue-share: Crafted, Curated, Contributed
For anyone who's got the time
For anyone who's got the time tomorrow, let's either meet at KWALL office 2nd floor if you're south-end or possibly Drop Labs? @ 5:30 Wednesday the 16th or the Goto Meeting below:
We'll do a quick agenda prior to ensuring a short kickoff but giving room for all to meet / voice quick ideas and keep this moving forward!
Please join my meeting, May 16, 2012 at 5:30 PM PDT.
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/join/826555889
Use your microphone and speakers (VoIP) - a headset is recommended. Or, call in using your telephone.
Dial +1 (213) 289-0015
Access Code: 826-555-889
Audio PIN: Shown after joining the meeting
Meeting ID: 826-555-889
Thanks again for the
Thanks again for the initiative and call to action.
It goes without saying, the time for this has come. There are a lot of great people involved at this point and I hope we can keep this group happy, busy and moving forward.
Looking forward to collaborating in Google Docs.
Just Missed It.
Unfortunately I missed the kick-off meeting. However I am interested in any future events.
I am looking for easy-to-digest features and benefits that would appeal to company owners, content creators, and internal IT.
I also think that case studies of people that moved to Drupal from other systems would be great. In particular it would be interesting to get feedback from people who tried Wordpress and found themselves boxed in from further growth. I'd also like to try and get feedback from users of closed, proprietary systems. What were the costs were like and what drove them to switch?
I recognize that all of this is to promote LA Drupal business, but I would point out that producing an informational short video along these lines would benefit the entire community.
Reminder that it's this
Reminder that it's this FRIDAY! Excited to see everyone there -- Kevin