Drupal at Open Cebit

[Update, theneemies] We just emailed the DrupalCon proposal to the Drupal Association. For any Sydneysider's interested in participating, we'll probably have a 20 - 30 min status update after the Feb meetup.

Yesterday's Sydney Drupal meetup was at Hannover Fairs office, courtesy of Gilad (Green_Man, he is with CeBIT Australia), who has suggested organising a Drupal day during CeBIT (http://www.opencebit.com.au, http://www.cebit.com.au) 20 - 22 May 2008. Let's use this wiki to brainstorm ideas for:

• speakers
  [rcross]
  -- Ryan Cross - I'll speak if needed, not sure on what yet.
  -- Gordon Heydon? on ecommerce?
  -- Dries Buytaert? can't hurt to invite him
  -- Laurel Papworth http://drupal.org/user/61863 (I'll contact her) [theneemies]
  [/rcross]
  -- If a North American training firm (Lullabots/Rain City-Bryght) is interested in participating in the workshops, they might also be interested in presenting.[theneemies]
  -- Tony Mobily http://drupal.org/user/51849 (I think he's based in Perth, so it may be a big ask) [Matthew Davidson]
• topics
  -- I'd like to see something on project* - possibly on converting it to cck/views [rcross]
  -- It would be great if we could cover each of the 'tracks' as per DrupalCon (i.e. Business and marketing track , Design and user experience track , Site building track , Community and core). [theneemies]
• workshops
  [rcross]
  -- Maybe invite the lullabots to do a training session around the same time?
  -- Would make sense to have some sort of Code Sprint or "Birds of Feather" areas
  -- There was also the thought of doing something like the Full Code Press event (http://drupal.org/node/168355)
  [/rcross]
• building an organisation team
  -- I'm willing to help organize, though not sure I can commit to championing this. [rcross]
  -- I can assist, but can't commit to more. [theneemies]
• Sponsorship
  -- I think its important to also discuss getting some sponsors for this event. Maybe approaching Lonely Planet since they seem supportive of Melbourne. I know that google also has a relatively new presence here in sydney, so maybe we could approach them. Does Yahoo have a good presence here? Any other tech company contacts? [rcross]
  -- Another idea from DrupalCon, allow for different sponsorship packages (i.e. http://boston2008.drupalcon.org/drupalcon-boston-sponsorships). [theneemies]

--Ryan :
With the size of CeBIT, I think its quite feasible to market this as the 1st annual Austral-Asian Drupal Conference, which would match up nicely with the annual North American and European Conferences. We might even get some people coming from china, new zealand or soemthing if its big enough.

-- from [green_man] via email, learnings from team-Joomla:

They are looking on 100 people event, they think it will be easy to pull together and bring the top Joomla guys from overseas to speak. We have a room to give them at cost price, it is a picket money, an amount that easily can be covered by charging $50 or so for rego ( important as people will actual attend, not just register and be a no-show) and sponsorships. we can also give them a booth at cost price, where Joomla pros can man it an menotise the leads after the show.

Sponsorships - won't be hard to find - hosting companies and Wireless access etc..I can give you some tips on that.

It will be there responsibility to run the event and set the content. CeBIT contribution is on HR, organizing and providing the platform and providing CeBIT prices from the SCEC. The Joomla group will have 4 month to promote the event and we will help them with links to rego. I think it will be easy to set up something similar for Drupal. the proposed date is Wed the 21st, a day after Open CeBIT ( May 20th by the look of it, not may 22nd). I think we can arrange a room a Day before Open CeBIT - the 19th - for Drupal, but I need a quick response on that. We will need a champion to pull it together, I believe it won't be hard to find one and the benefit for Drupal community will be huge. Let me know what do you think,