Posted by dwees on November 9, 2007 at 3:24pm
Well what would it take to organize a Drupal camp here in Thailand?
Certainly Thailand is cheap enough that anyone who comes can easily afford accommodation, I think the hardest part would be finding the location to hold the event.
I propose that we Drupal users in Thailand do some research on the feasibility of a Drupal-camp here in Thailand.
Dave
Comments
Great Idea !
Nattawoot P.
I agree that but we need to talk about what activities should be in the event, target group, and what we want from the camp, then I / we can find sponsors and location as what we want. The amount of people will set up the scale of location which we can know how large of place we'll find.
The following are some ideas of what I said:
Target:
1. Those who located in Thailand, this is we already know.
2. Neighbor Country such as mianmar, vietnam, and etc. to make our event support more target group.
Activities:
1. Describe the drupal potential against other's CMS to create new drupal user.
2. Exchange the knowledge of drupal
3. Discuss on what we want in drupal such as module, themes, and etc., and create some project which we can work together.
Location:
If large, we can find sponsor such as IT & Tech Company, Academic Institution, theme & module service provider, and etc.,
If normal, we can use some place of university.
The above just my ideas, need some participation to make it occur.
Nattawoot P.
How about Hat Yai
International Buddhist College (Hat Yai) can provide space and food for the meeting.
South of Thailand
Is that located in the far south of Thailand? If so, it's my impression that we won't be able to get as many International users to attend.
Maybe we need to create a Poll of which part of Thailand this should be held, and then work toward whichever area people are most interested in?
I'm excited that people found my post and are responding so quickly though, that's encouraging. We'd definitely like to build up interest in Drupal in Thailand, and I think an event like this would help.
I propose we split the camp into 3 parts.
Someone gives a short presentation on how to accomplish a particular task in Drupal.
Tutorial session where 'experts' help out 'beginners'.
Depending on the number of people, we break into mixed ability groups to work on a task. Maybe we decide on a website we want to build for a charity and we build it? The practice would be good enough and we could feel good about what we end up with. This would require some work to get set up though so that we could all work simultaneously on the same website without problems. The advantage is, we could all focus on a different task.
Before we do too much more planning, we need to get an idea of the numbers of people who would be interested, and like what was suggested before, we should advertise to the neighbouring countries.
Dave
Either Bangkok, Bangkok, or Bangkok.
Here are my suggestions:
Location:
Bangkok makes the most sense. Bangkok is the geographic, technology (and everything else) center of Thailand. It's the first one we will hold so let's raise the odds of success by hosting it where it's most accessible to the largest pool of potential attendees.
It will also be a lot easier to organize as there are more of us here to help out.
Audience:
My take on the target audience is that we should focus on finding and attracting as many experienced Drupallers from Thailand as we can. Until we can put on a camp that can bring out a good crowd from our own country, let's not focus on drawing people from outside the country. For a first-time camp, 50 people would be huge, 20 would be awesome, 10 would be great, five would be OK.
The focus (at least for the first one) should be on building a core community of experienced users. Of course people who are new to Drupal are welcome--but real purpose is to build that core of dedicated people meeting and exchanging ideas--from there we can expand into evangelizing Drupal to more and more people. If 95% of the people know very little about Drupal, the event will not be participatory, it will be a lecture--not a Bar Camp. It will not have the critical intellectual mass, the excitement, the energy that will make the event a smashing success.
Sponsorships:
A sponsor would be great--but the value proposition we can show them (for a first time event where we can't even guess the numbers) would be very small; the time and effort we would spend trying to find a sponsor would exceed the value of any contribution they would be willing to make. (If somebody knows a sponsor who is ready to jump in--great--we will take them, of course.) But I think it's better if we find a free space, bring our own equipment and pay for our own food and drinks. The less we have to worry about money and the less effort we have to put into organization, the higher the probability we pull it off the first time--I have been through this process many times before.
Agenda:
Let’s make is a one-day event to start off with. Pack all the excitement we can into one day.
Case-studies, how-to’s tutorials all have powerful impact and should lead the camp. A participatory project would be good for the end-of-the-day or as an optional second-day.
Marketing:
Ahhh. Now the big question: how many people? That variable is still undefined! I think that is the biggest piece of work in organizing a Drupal Camp here will be finding those people in Thailand that are using Drupal. It will take a lot of research and some creativity to figure out where and how to find them. Not only is it the most work, it will also be the most critical factor in our success. (More minds = more good ideas = more energy = more value for attendees.)
How do we reach those people?
Next Steps:
John F.X. Berns
Travel Guide.com
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John F.X. Berns
Travel Guide.com
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Good Points
Date:
January 19th of those dates seems the best for me. I'm currently writing a textbook so exact middle of the month and end of the month as usually bad for me as I have deadlines.
Location:
Okay so if we are looking for a location we have two very important requirements I see.
I'm new to Bangkok so I'm not sure where a good location would be. I'd suggest my school but there is NO technical support on the weekends so if the wifi crashes we're done. However it has ample space, it's comfortable enough, and I'm sure I could convince them not to charge us. Maybe it's a good last resort location.
Topics:
Okay so most successful conference type events have this structure:
In order to make the right decision, we'll need to know what background our participants have. So far I know that John and I both have a programmer's perspective on Drupal, but are comfortable using the built in modules for our purposes.
Any other suggestions?
Dave
combine camp
is it possible to combine drupal camp and barcamp bangkok together? http://barcamp.org/BarCampBangkok
Pretty obvious combo
Yeah that seems like a good idea. No reason to duplicate work. We were unaware that there was a "Bar camp" for Drupal in session in Bangkok. Can we plan it for January so we can have multiple sessions? I'm not totally sure how much time I have in January, but earlier is better than later.
Dave
january sounds good
It seems we have at least the month to have this event. Next step is to fix the date and location.
We, sugree and me, think
We, sugree and me, think that the BarCamp Bangkok is gonna held on Jan 26th, 2008. Is that good for you?
FYI: BarCamp Thailand mailing list is at http://groups.google.com/group/barcamp-thailand
re: sounds fine
Yeah that sounds fine. I'll be in Bangkok then and eager to be there. The only issue I have is that I am writing a textbook and so I may not have as much spare time as I'd like.
Dave
Drupal Camp - Bar Camp... Call It Anything, Let's Just Do It!
All I want is to get us Drupal nerds meeting and sharing ideas.
As Shakespeare said "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." (That means the name does not matter--it's what the thing is that is important.)
Let's call it Bar Camp, have a Drupal track and let's do it on January 26th. It works for me.
Can I suggest that we have a meeting on a Sunday in the very near future (December 2 or 9 are my suggestions) for people that want to volunteer to get this Camp going? (We would like to have the plans firmly in place a month before the Bar Camp so we need to plan early.) At the meeting we can discuss what we want to do at the Camp, how we plan to do it and we can assign tasks to people so we can get the project moving forward.
Please post and tell us what date is best for you to join the volunteer meeting. if you cannot make the volunteer meeting, you can still help--we will communicate by email.
Locations: the list on the Bar Camp page http://barcamp.org/BarCampBangkok is a great starting point. Cheap is important, we don't have any funds to work with so free is probably best.
I think that we will have mostly people from Bangkok at the first camp and they will not need accommodations. In any case, there are many cheap places to stay in Bangkok and I can find a place that is less than B1000 a night (and even under B500) and that is less than B100 taxi ride from any of the locations that is listed on the page. So let's choose the best location based upon 1) cost 2) does it have wifi and a projection monitor and 3) is it comfortable and have space where people can meet in small groups. We can find rooms for people that do come from out of town near to the location we pick--it does not have to be in the same building.
Whoever knows those locations can suggest the best one--or make some more suggestions for other places.
Are you excited? I am!
John F.X. Berns
Travel Guide.com
Travel Photographer.com
John F.X. Berns
Travel Guide.com
Travel Photographer.com
Join the Google Groups for Barcamp Thailand
Join the Google Groups for Barcamp Thailand.
Register at: http://groups.google.com/group/barcamp-thailand
John F.X. Berns
Travel Guide.com
Travel Photographer.com
John F.X. Berns
Travel Guide.com
Travel Photographer.com