Considering notes from the BOF and many comments from Drupalcon Paris, why I thought Lisbon could be an interesting choice:
- International Airport.
- Number of conference venues (including University of Lisbon1).
- Small city, easily possible to walk everywhere.
- Beautiful architecture and history, not a tourist trap however.
- Extremely friendly people.
- Inexpensive accommodation & living.
- Bairo Alto: 4 blocks of just bars, easy social meetup point!
- Beaches for those that want.
However, I don't know if there is a Drupal Community out there, as I am not from Lisbon, have been there and know people out there.
If any drupal people from Portugal could add their thoughts or comments about this, I'd be grateful.
Tom
1. http://www.ul.pt/portal/page?_pageid=173,169057&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL
Comments
We (the Portuguese Drupal
We (the Portuguese Drupal community) have discussed this possibility a couple of times and even talked about organizing smaller Drupal Camps before proposing to go for a Drupalcon. Unfortunately, we failed at all of them. I'm not sure why, there sure was a lot of interest but apparently, it faded very quickly. Perhaps now that other people from outside the community are showing interest in this, we will see a renewed interest. I sure hope so! I'd certainly help organizing the conference.
What is needed from us?
Hi, for sure the city has conditions for the event, and we have a (small) community in Portugal that could help. But, what exactly would be expected from the local community in terms of work and money?
Regards,
Miguel
The Drupal Association will be doing most of the work
Hi Miguel, thanks for responding!
According to Johan's notes from the BOF http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ATgECFpHWbvRZGNiNzM1ZzZfMmtjemt6aGNy&h... the Drupal Association will be organising most of the future Drupalcons, leaving the local community to organise smaller, local, sponsors and planning the conference programme.
So there shouldn't be as much work or money required from the local community as there has been in past Drupalcons.
Tom
Great!
Lisbon (and Cascais, nearby) has a lot of good places for meetings and I believe the costs of the event will be lower (from my experience organizing other events) than the cities I saw on the document you gave.
If is decided Lisbon is an option, I can make a meeting with other Portuguese team members to check what size is the team we will have locally to help the event. I can also give you the approximate budget for meeting places/meals if you give me the typical needs of a Drupalcon (how many meeting rooms, how many people per meeting rooms, how big the auditorium, how many days).
Miguel
I would strongly suggest that
I would strongly suggest that local communities gets their hands dirty by doing local meetup first before trying to tackle an evnent that is as big as a Drupalcon.
The last 2 drupalcamps here in copenhagen have been a very good learning experience for the local community. Which is why we now try to plan ahead at least 6 months to get everything right -and were still working with a camp the size of 150-200 people (just getting tshirts printed can be a pain in the ass, getting programs, coffee etc... ).
/morten.dk king of rock
morten.dk | geek Royale
Hi again
I got a group of 5 volunteers for the job. If there is still interest in Lisbon, please tell me, and I'll try to schedule a meeting with everybody.
Miguel
Try a DrupalCamp first
Morten's advice is very good. Get your hands dirty with a national Camp. There are lots of successful models to look to, and it has a great effect on the local community. DrupalCon is still hard work.
Hi Robert, Our issue is not
Hi Robert,
Our issue is not putting this up. I, for instance, have some experience [1][2] on this subject, being it large with less community envolved or smaller but with many community volunteers.
Our issue is, will we have to grasp the funds to make it possible or not
Our issue is, at what level and how is the Association help in.
We had this almost ready to go some years ago but quit mainly due to lack of funding to rent the planned space, etc.
DA assumes all financial risk
For DrupalCons, the Drupal Association enters all the contracts (with venues, caterers, events management companies) directly, and assumes all financial risk (and potential profit) from the event. The DA also manages the sponsors and sets the ticket price. These are big changes to the models of the past, and DrupalCon Europe 2010 will be the first real test of the new system.
Read your scorecard and must
Read your scorecard and must say that we miss some crucial points on this:
Although I'm not speaking in name of the Drupal Portuguese Community I would like to make a few considerations. If something seems rudness or poorly writen please bare in mind that I'm not a english native speaker.
This could be considered a very welcomed move but instead I look to it more like a total takeover on Drupal Events by the Drupal Association and not as an helping hand on teams.
I also disagree on "The DA also manages the sponsors and sets the ticket price" because:
This event would be needed to boost the community and the business associated with it in Portugal... also for the portuguese developers and companies or, in my view, it makes as much sense to make it here or in Dubai. It is just a venue. And just for organizing events I usually charge or have other ways of earning my money.
So, IMHO, we shouldn't do it in Portugal.
I second this
our local interest is to have local people attending too -- both developers and companies -- and not just offering a neat space for travellers to meet. If your price tags continue to be similar to previous events I must say many portuguese will not attend it.
(I like the neat space thing ... so I put it in bold)
With paid organisers prices will probably go up. I know, we do need the companies because they will be the future customers for the developers. But if less and less developers are attending a Con and thus no more meeting each other, the open source idea might also break down one day. Meetings are importnt, not everything can be done via phone and internet. I already heard the first voices saying they are not going to London if it is selected because of prices. This is strange, people vote for Cambridge and then others decide against it in a following discussion that no one else can follow because there is no script. If Cambridge is not fit it would never have been on the list I think.
. . .
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Bettina
Don't Follow Trends: Set Them!
https://drupal-training.de
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Bottom-up vs. Topdown: the thin red line
Robert,
On one hand I can see the benefits of having a centralized event management for Drupalcons. But OTOH, we're treading dangerous ground.
Drupal is a free software project. Free as in freedom, having Druplacons being run by a central entity goes against the spirit of that freedom IMHO. If Drupalcons are to be some sort of fly-by-wire event franchised to the local team, in which it has very little decision power, in which things like ticket prices are set from "above" without consideration for the local economic realities, then what's the incentive to get involved in organizing such an event? Apart from providing a nice meetup point in a more or less exotic location for the Drupalcon "regulars"?
There must be a way such that the bottom-up grassroots efforts of the local community has the leading part and the DA has the secondary role. Not the other way around. IMHO, there's the danger of alienating the local communities by imposing a topdown model in organizing an event about a software project that evolved largely through bottom-up dynamics.
This being said. I think that the proposed model, with the guidelines summarized in the scorecard you wrote, should be tried. But careful attention must be paid to the effects on the local community and how this topdown approach might harm the spirit of the community.
Furthermore there's that elusive but always essential quality of authenticity: topdown approaches are at odds with such a quality.
authenticity
I like to think of the DA as a grassroots organization. It was started by and for the community. Anybody in the community can set themselves candidate for permanent membership. True, not everybody gets in, but even now several people are involved in DA projects without being a permanent member.
The DA takes the fiscal responsibility for Drupalcons, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to be personally responsible for a >100k EUR event. If the DA takes fiscal responsibility it's only natural the DA can set the prices for tickets and sponsorship. Rest assured, we know that pricing is really important and we do our best to keep Drupalcon accessible to as many people as possible.
Then finally: the production team has plenty of leeway in the things that really make the flavor of a Drupalcon: the athmosphere, the marketing, etc. So I really don't see any danger for authenticity, just check out the proposals, you'll see several really innovative ideas. To the contrary, not having to worry about financials too much will give the production team time to focus on the important things.
But really, organize a Drupalcamp. You'll have all the freedom you want and it will bring you a lot closer to being able to organize a Drupalcon in your region.
--
Check out more of my writing on our blog and my Twitter account.
Ok. Points taken.
I misunderstood Robert's comment. I got the notion that it was much more of a topdown thing.
Ok. So I see, the idea is to let the DA worry with the financial details while providing an assurance of a good experience for the Drupalcon.
Basically it's outsourcing the financial details to the DA and let the local team handle the remaining. Also the ticket price takes in consideration the local purchasing power.
Hopefully this will bring us the best of both worlds: the organizational structure of the DA together with the enthusiasm of the local team.
I'm trying to get a Drupalcamp to happen here in Lisbon. I'm reaching out to the portuguese Drupal community.
Hopefully Lisbon will be a prime contender for Drupalcon Europe 2012.
Thank you for the clarifications,
António
@wakoo
Aula Magna used to host mega events, like concerts and international events. Price should be huge.
FIL (http://smsh.me/7m1b) is another expensive space but one pavillion can host everything. Places to eat, boots for sponsors, auditorium, spaces for smaller reunions and presentations.
There are another cheaper places for this, like, for instance, places connected with the IPJ:
But we have a lot more possibilities in Lisbon at IST and other University spaces.
We think that the meeting must be real inexpensive hence travelling to Portugal from outside EU (and even from some Eu countries) would take a toll on developers and we think that this events should keep focused in the community.
So, for start, we need to know what would be the support and from that we could real start planning spaces and so on.
Drupalcon Lisbon can wait, first we must grow organically
I think that is to say the least, premature, to get involved in a Drupalcon in Portugal. I've never heard of any Drupal related event in Portugal before. Perhaps I'm misinformed. But I think that we the portuguese Drupalers should start small and grow organically. So that hopefully in a not very far away future we can host a Drupalcon Europe.
I propose that we start by organizing a small Drupalcamp in Lisbon, using preferably the space of a University. I'm thinking of IST campus in Lisbon. Schedule this event for this year: shall we say somewhere around the 2nd week of December? This event should be as inclusive as possible, i.e., should be free of charge.
We should try to get some corporate sponsors, e.g., ISPs, telcos, and software companies.
Also I think that we should try to get some sort of emulation with the spanish Drupal community. Try to get an Iberian (in)formal structure of some sort.
I volunteer for helping organizing the above mentioned Drupalcamp and for doing a presentation on asset management/publishing workflows in Drupal.
Drupalcamp first
I think it's a great idea to first organize a Drupalcamp, when we did Szeged, Gabor's experience from organizing events in Budapest was an invaluable asset.
I'm sure a lot of people would love to come to a Drupalcamp in Lisabon...
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Check out more of my writing on our blog and my Twitter account.