Hosting meetups, camps, and virtual classes: building the community that builds Drupal

Getting involved in the Drupal community by getting your community involved in Drupal!

After looking through all the proposed sessions for the summer 2009 conference and not seeing any focused on building community (please bring to my attention if I am wrong), at approximately the last moment i submitted a panel session for this. My only claim to knowledge is minor supporting roles in New York City and Boston camps and hosting meetups with others in my web dev shop in the suburban town of Natick, Mass., so I ask all of you to help define this session and help put together a presentation (I would like to strive for a coherent presentation as well as a panel+audience discussion) and there is no shortage of you in these groups who could make this one of the most valuable sessions at the 'con.

Please, if you can be there edit and add to this session proposal... and add yourself as a presenter! I haven't thought this through well, so everything is up for fixing, including the title. See it on the conference site here: Community Building session proposal, I'll update with changes below regularly.

Introduction

Drupal has a fantastic tradition of involving newcomers, from all sorts of backgrounds, in the project. From IRC help and banter to mentored/sponsored projects to a vibrant local meetup scene, "the community" this helps build is a major reason people stay with Drupal and how it keeps getting more awesomer.

None of this happens by itself, however, and we can always use more. There's a session on how to contribute to Drupal; in comparison, this session will cover just one way to contribute to Drupal: helping more people contribute to Drupal.

We will have a panel presentation followed by a brainstorming session and discussion. We'll be sharing a lot of what's going on and what's working, and how to get involved in Dojo et. al., but the goal is for everyone to share what they're doing and what's working, and to figure out how we can keep building the community that makes super-Drupalers out of ordinary human beings.

Agenda

Why and how to host Drupal meetups and help build community with camps!

• You can host your own user group. It's easy!
• How to contribute to camps.
• Interfacing complimentary industry groups (project management, graphic design, other open source communities)
• Working with local non-profits and educational orgs
• Starting local Drupal Dojo sessions and workshops
  • Design and Usability
  • Drupal Media
  • Education and Training
  • Business and Marketing
• Leverage the Drupal Kata program
  • develop and fund projects important to your community
  • learn from participating on real projects
  • match designers, themers, developers, project managers, media, promotion, and marketing types

How to help build the community online

• Existing infrastructure: IRC, E-mail, Forums, Groups, Documentation
• How to get remote presenters
• Drupal Dojo - There is a lot of work being done on to revive this great service, and we'll be reporting on how to get involved.
• The Drupal Kata is a new project learning program that provides hands on training in a wide range of areas ranging from site planning, drafting proposals, project management, information architecture, development, design, infrastructure, to business and community.
• How to manage a volunteer project that benefits Drupal

Presenters

• Stella Power
• Amye Scavarda
• Susan MacPhee
• Kathleen Murtaugh (ceardach)
• Benjamin Melançon (an agaric)

Resources

• Organizing events
• Drupal Organizer Kit for Conferences, Camps, Meetups and Unconferences
• Notes from DrupalCon Boston Event Organizer BOF
• Drupal Meetup Organizing Guide
• Drupal Camp Organizing Guide
• Notes from DrupalCon Barcelona Organizer Session
• Drupal User Group Best Practices
• DrupalCon Organizers Guidelines
• How to get remote presenters
• Building a Conference Website and Giving It All Away: How It Was Done at DrupalCampLA 2009
• Drupal Camp San Francisco: A Case study
• DrupalCon vs DrupalCamp vs DrupalSummit(?) - Issues for international drupal events

Drupal Groups

• Community group
• Drupal Event Organizing
• Local User Group Organizers group
• Drupal Dojo group
• Drupal Kata group
• Open Learning and Collaboration Portal group

**** end proposal ****

^{[Originally posted by ben, agaric.]}