Let's plan a bad-ass Drupal event

Here's the official Idaho Drupal Event (IDE?) wiki page: http://groups.drupal.org/node/24977

After our August BDUG meeting I'm even more excited about doing some kind of Idaho-based Drupal event. We did some minor brainstorming and some potential local resources were identified. Let me list out what we talked about, and add some ideas to the mix:

• Andy's wife is in a position to give us some good information on hotel venues
• Jeff's wife organized a geek fest a few years back, and mentioned her as a resource. I was also inspired by the structure he described, in particular:
  • The venue was one big room with an open bar, so there were always drinks (not just of the alcoholic variety). The idea of a single big room seemed kind of cool, especially for a first event. It would mean a single track, but maybe we could make that track just really interesting and stellar
  • The single room would also become the party once it got late enough. Jeff mentioned that at earlier defcons they would do games between the last sessions and the party.
• I put out the idea of doing some sessions that were Ignite-style, where people do 5-minute, 20-slide presentations in rapid succession. Jeff suggested maybe breaking this up into a few parts, to break up the longer sessions. I think this could be a lot of fun, expose lots of sides of interesting sides of Drupal, and give many people the opportunity to present. If we one-track it, then it means that fewer people will have the opportunity to present. I really like this idea.
• If we were able to cater, we could basically allow people to maximize the time they have to hang out / network. In reading through write-ups of other Drupalcamps, this was highly suggested.
• Michael has put together some material for a multi-day Intro to Drupal class. He suggested that doing this locally might make a good primer for this event.
• Jeff mentioned that if it's fun and people want to come back, then it's a success. I like this as a general mission statement.

I say let's do this thing.

A couple questions that will help with the rest of the planning process:

• How does sometime in November sound for a target date? That would give us a couple months to plan, and would be before it gets too awfully cold around here. I also didn't see much in g.d.o in November, which means we could be flexible to plan around a venue.
• One or two days? I personally like the 2-day model, because it gives people a better chance to get to know one another, and the second day is always more relaxed. The second day could also be more geared towards socializing with more breaks and perhaps sprints, and fewer sessions. Doing a second day would add to the expense, but probably not too much more to the planning.

I have this gut feeling like it would be good to find some good angles for this event to make it stand out a bit from a standard Drupalcamp. Some kind of groovy niche. What could that be? I like the idea of really keeping it high-energy, at least the first day. Having a single room and mini-presentations might be good start for that.

Let's keep some discussion here and make changes to the wiki as we come up with ideas. I'll add some additional thoughts to it tomorrow.