GLADCamp Site Visit #2 to USC at 3pm on February 15, 2013

Mo and I can carpool with up to 3 passengers in our respective vehicles. If it's just the 4 of us, though, we'll likely carpool in Mo's Prius. Either way, just be sure to be at Droplabs at or before 2:30pm. See you and yours tomorrow!

I actually can't imagine the site visit being any better than it was. Our site visit had 9 participants — that's more than some meetups I've been to! Kaitlyn and Carina, our venue coordinators at USC, were expert and friendly guides and answered a number of questions we had around campus policies.

We took another look at THH, the venue we evaluated at our first site visit, and then walked over to the Marshal School of Business to see one of its larger auditorium, the Hoffman Hall. That one space can accommodate roughly 250 people, which would increase our conference capacity to around 450 people, and is perfect for larger sessions, a Saturday keynote, closing ceremony, etc.

Surprisingly, during our visit we were offered the opportunity to move camp to the 3rd floor of the business school, which we practically jumped at. We're waiting for confirmation of this "preferred" venue, as Miguel called it, after which we'll finalize a number of details, including printed signs, maps on the website, number of tracks, sponsor booths, etc.

The business school isn't that far from THH but it's much closer to nearby attractions including the California Science Center, pubs, hotels and restaurants that are off-campus. Even better, the spaces in the building are much easier for us to use for sponsor areas, registration, etc. and the train drops off directly outside the building.

As excited as we are with the new developments, we still have rooms reserved for us at THH, which will hold up to 250 campers, even if we don't move camp to the business school.

What did I miss? Who has photos so that we can upload them to the album at http://www.meetup.com/DowntownDrupal/events/104641332/ on Meetup.com?

In short, April 26, 27 & 28, 2013, is the only weekend USC is available to us between February (a month after SANDCamp) and April (a month before DrupalCon); is when the ACM student group is also on campus to help us host and coordinate the event; and is several months from now, giving us time to plan and promote the event.

We originally tried to secure USC as a venue for Drupal Design Camp LA 2012, but as we've seen with other conferences there, including SoCal Code Camp, everything takes its own time with USC. This was discussed a few months ago at http://groups.drupal.org/node/266733#comment-852643

When looking for a venue for Drupal Design Camp LA, the DDCLA organizing team heard from USC that they were interested in hosting a DrupalCamp but not within the time frame we were looking for. Although last month's Drupal Design Camp LA was at a different venue, we don't see a good reason to pass up a good venue!

By the way, the session proposals for DrupalCon Portland just closed late last week, so anything you'd be seeing a presentation on at DrupalCon Portland has already been proposed. In my experience, while many presentations at DrupalCon introduce new concepts and trends to the larger community, very little that's presented is actually on the cutting edge. That kind of stuff usually happens at the larger camps, like BADCamp and DrupalCamp Colorado.