Hi all,
Last night was my first night back to the group for a while (after living in South Wales for a couple of years, I'm back living in Bristol now) - was good to catch up with some people I haven't seen in a while and meet some new ones.
I was wondering how people felt about changing the format of the meetups a bit, to have a couple of short talks (or maybe a longer one), and then a social bit after?
This might require a new venue, so we can have a room and a projector, but I'm hoping we can keep it in a pub still.
From my experiences running the meetups we had in Cardiff over the last few years, having some talks tends to draw more people into the group, which keeps it alive and keeps things interesting for the regulars. It's also a great way to learn things from each other.
So what do you think? Good idea? Bad idea? Are there any particular topics you'd like to see a talk covering? Is there a talk you'd like to give?
(I've cross posted this to the Wales Group, as I know some people might fancy coming over the border, but just to be clear, I'm talking Bristol here.)
Cheers,
-Ru
Comments
Very good idea, we've been
Very good idea, we've been talking about this for a few months but never organised.
Yeah, I definitely think that
Yeah, I definitely think that it helped for the Cardiff meetups. Hoping to attend the next meetup once the workload is a little less demanding.
https://www.oliverdavies.uk
On the cards for a while
Hi Ru,
This is something that's been discussed for a while, but I think due to varying commitments no-one's been willing to corral people together for this.
The Golden Guinea's been floated as a possible place to go - I went to some PHPSW events there and it seemed to fit the bill. What they did was pre-drinks, a couple of presentations and some post-game drinks too.
good idea
Hi guys,
Sorry I missed last night but was Drupalled out from Drupal camp.
It sounds like a great idea, we could have a few pints and learn something at the same time :)
As to a structure we could bounce some ideas around and see what everyone thinks.
+1
Yep, I'm on board with this. Personally I'm more likely to make the effort for something structured.
Rich was talking about this recently and Joe and I have had chats on g.d.o before too.
Stefan in Somerset has guest speakers online sometimes. Not sure if this is something that could be factored in too.
Pervasive Media Studio / Leadworks: some years back...
I organised knowledge cafes in Bristol for some years a few years ago, and some of the early skillswaps some time back as well. I'll have a think about venues if I can. We did the early skillswaps in Joe's (Leadworks) office when it was pervasive media studio - don't know if Simitive would offer the space, or watershed might be able to help? Happy to ask Watershed Pervasive Studio people if that would be helpful?
Interesting - What's the
Interesting - What's the space like? How big is it, etc? Does it have a bar? (Not that I want to come across like a total alcoholic, but I was hoping we could get someone to be a drinks sponsor.) I quite like the sound of the Golden Guinea that Chris mentioned above, given how PHPSW's been using it for tech meetups.
Cool, so there's been a lot
Cool, so there's been a lot of agreement so far :) If Joe or Rich are reading this, I wouldn't mind knowing what they think though.
As for topics, I've had one volunteer for a talk on doing continuous integration with Drupal effectively - anyone interested? (I am...). If you've got another topic you'd like to see covered, or want to talk about something, do speak up :)
I'd like to hear about
I'd like to hear about people's approaches for making the best possible content editor experience. What areas of site admin do people find clients most commonly struggle with and what are your solutions?
Up for more learning and sharing
I'd be up for a more structured, knowledge sharing format.
Perhaps we simply identify a topic or theme for each month and people can volunteer to share their expertise or experience with a talk/demo or presentation.
I can share what we do to provide an improved content editor experience and I'd like to learn more about the impact of the Symfony changes in D8 on day to day development.
A lot of meetups are using the Drupal Ladder stuff to skill up towards core contributions, is this something people are interested in too?
http://drupalladder.org/ladder/ee503327-50be-1904-8d04-9499098cad64
+1 for Golden Guinea
Cheers
Rich
I'd be up for doing the
I'd be up for doing the Drupal ladder sessions or other skill swaps..
+1 for somewhere that isn't my office (leadworks), that would make for a very long day in one place..
I was just having a quick
I was just having a quick read back through this board to see how many times the topic of wanting something more practically useful to us than pints had come up, and it's quite a lot. So very well done Rupert for sorting it all out!
I'd also +1 the Guinea - unless I've overlooked some obvious more central place - I really like it, and would go there of an evening anyway (which is probably a good benchmark of somewhere genuinely being nice)
Scanning back on the board, I didn't realise it was as far back as the 1st September that Derek posted saying we hadn't met up in a while (following some less regular more name-badgey-type-stuff in various companies offices) and Rich booked something in for the Elephant, then I nagged a group of drink/chatters together every month.
That's quite a long time (getting towards one and a half years) to drink without organising anything useful - almost impressive you might say ;o)
Anyway, I'll wind this ramble up and say it all sounds great!
+1 for a talk night. I like
+1 for a talk night.
I like the idea of the Drupal Ladder stuff, but would be interested in anything Drupal-related really.