Let's Talk About Outreach

The enthusiasm for outreach and support of people new to Drupal from our UG is encouraging, and I wanted to offer some thoughts I had after reading the PNWDS thread.

I think getting more involved with what's already going on locally would be a good start towards expanding our community/local Drupal ecosystem if outreach and education is important to us. I don't necessarily see that this has to take the form of putting on a specific 101 event like a Camp, but could begin as rather more targeted involvement within existing communities and events in smaller pieces.

I'm talking about things like
- Drupal workshop or demo at the local Nonprofit Technology Network monthly meetup
- class or workshop at FreeGeek
- presentation/participation at Open Source Bridge
- session on mapping in Drupal at WhereCamp or one of the many geo user groups in the area

Or even things like
- working with a local high school technology class and doing a bit of a longer hands-on training
- participating in a school technology day (women in tech, etc)
- etc, etc. The possibilities are endless.

All of the above are encapsulated, smaller workshops/presentations/trainings that could be put on by one or more interested people individually. Intro/101 presentations or workshops given at non-Drupal-specific events would eventually provide a reusable set of sessions that could then be organized into a bigger event such as a camp if it became apparent that having a more formal beginner-centric event would be supported.

Currently, there exists a google group for group and event organizers in Portland, started by the fine folks who put on Open Source Bridge. Most of the heavy-hitters as far as tech community organizers here in PDX are in it, and it serves as a central place for discussion on how to best coordinate together. I think we'd benefit by participating, both as we plan the PNWDS and as we think about broader outreach and involvement in general.
The pdxgroups google group is here: https://groups.google.com/group/pdxgroups

That said, there's also nothing like working on an actual project in order to learn. My first real experience with Drupal was working with the DUG on rosecityresource.org, the volunteer project our user group did over the winter of 2008-2009. I feel a little like I was raised in Drupal by the PDX DUG; I know our community is capable of providing support to someone new, because it did for me.

The opportunity to host the PNWDS 2011 is an honor, but it is a separate thing from outreach. Expanding our community by making Drupal more accessible to the new and/or curious is something I think we could be quite good at if we wanted to. I think it's possible get a decent and less overwhelming start by taking advantage of opportunities we already have to work within and strengthen the larger community and see how it goes from there. </0.02>

PS: I know that many people in our group already do things like this, and much can be learned from within our own community. I'm talking about this as one fairly easy way to get involved in outreach since that's the specific purpose of this thread, or something that could be organized within the group by interested individuals.

It seems as though there are at least two types of target audiences for an outreach-style event: web professionals new to Drupal, and people at businesses and non-profits who would benefit from using Drupal. Would both types of populations benefit from the same event? Or would it be more effective to have separate events?

I am more familiar with people in the "web professionals new to Drupal" group, particularly designers and beginner-level coders. I think there would definitely be a place for an event that caters to people who could use Drupal professionally, but are only just beginning to learn code. I'm not sure if people at businesses and not-for-profit organizations would also like to learn the same things, or if they would be more interested in seeing examples of what Drupal could do for them and focus on high-level stuff like module selection and administration of their sites.

I would definitely be interested in helping with an event, but I'd like to avoid burnout this time around so ideas and shared volunteer effort from others would certainly be great!

Dan

I have a lot of material out of the two Drupal 7 books that I wrote this year. Always willing to present to the group including the release party.