It's official! The next Drupal Camp Colorado is happening the weekend of July 26th and 27th in Denver. Come join us in the mountains for two full days of Drupal wisdom and knowledge. We are going to host a mix of sessions and BOF's geared towards both the new Drupalers out there as well as the experienced veterans. Come join companies such as pingVision, Growing Venture Solutions, Aten Design Group, Blue Tent Marketing, Deproduction, and Civic Pixel among others.
Location:
Deproduction (Map)
700 Kalamath
Denver, CO 80204
We are finalizing t-shirt and sponsor information but expect to charge a nominal fee for admission to include refreshments, t-shirts, etc.
http://drupalcampcolorado.org for registration and additional information as we will be updating it in the coming days ... You still have time to influence the sessions so make sure to post your session proposals
Comments
Sounds Great!
I plan on attending as does a majority of our development group =].
www.newmediadenver.com
great news
That will be great to have you there.
Please be sure to create an account on http://drupalcampcolorado.org/user/register and then click the button to indicate that you are "registered" for the event (for you and everyone else on the team).
It's always dangerous to predict the future, but I expect this event to sell out. People are quicly registering on the site and there are lots of people I've heard from who have said "oh yeah, we're coming and will bring X people" even though they haven't signed up on the site yet.
Within 1 day of announcing the sponsor packages we've already got three sponsors lined up. There's definitely a lot of interest in this event.
--
Open Prediction Markets | Drupal Dashboard
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
Disappointed
Let me be the first one to say how disappointed I am that this event is sold out. Especially in light of the Boston event selling out, it would seem that drupal conference organizers have a knack for underestimating the popularity of drupal and the community interest. I've been checking in on the drupalcamp web site and this group now and again in the weeks leading up to this event and the first indication that I've had that this event was approaching capacity was the glib remark "btw, we're sold out". Some indication to folks that the event was approaching capacity would have been very helpful. At this point, would it even be possible to attend with a sponsorship, or are all sponsorships closed as well? What can be done about the next event? Would it be better to secure a venue with expandable capacity, such as a hotel? Do I need to volunteer to be on the organizing committee? Thanks for hearing me,
Alex
Disappointment understood
Hi, Alex,
I don't think we've met yet, so I don't know if you're new to the Denver/Boulder Drupal community. If you're relatively new, let me invite you to get involved as actively as you can -- even if you can't get to the Camp, and all frustration notwithstanding.
I was peripherally involved in identifying venues, and there was a very high level of uncertainty as to how many people might attend (estimates ranging from 30 to "who knows?"). As with any first-time event, without any historical data, it's hard to know how many people to expect. You might be interested to know that as part of this year's planning, we've opened up relationships that should let us reach larger venues in future years, as the need arises.
And, as with anything new, we're defining and building processes as we go. Your feedback helps a lot in this regard ... thanks! This is a pretty quick learning group, so you can count on each year getting progressively better and better.
Of course, if you're a long-time member of the community, I've just stuck my foot in my mouth pretty badly ... but in either case, I hope to meet you in person at one of the meetings.
Actually, this is the third DrupalCamp in this area
We had two other DrupalCamps over the past two years (one DrupalCamp in Westminster at DeVry and another more word-of-mouth organized DrupalCamp in early 2007 here at our offices in Boulder, and both had attendance of around 25, so the response to this year's event is a big surprise, and bodes very well for Drupal.
Laura
pingVision, LLC (we're hiring)
PINGV | Strategy • Design • Drupal Development
Drupalcon Szeged
I know that it's a bit further for you, but have you considered coming to Drupalcon Szeged? We haven't sold out yet ;)
Haven't signed up for Drupalcon Szeged yet? What are you waiting for? Registration until the end of July is 120 EUR!
http://szeged2008.drupalcon.org/register
--
Check out more of my writing on our blog and my Twitter account.
Understood, but not bitter
Greeting all,
As a newb with limited ability to contribute at my current Drupal level, I have been spending my time as an interested observer, but I did want to comment on this post.
I think that we need to remember that for most posts, as with many of these open source community adventures, it is a volunteer gig. Just as we should never DEMAND that this item be included in the next release, we should be respectful of those who are putting there time and energy into these programs in large part for the benefit of the rest of us. Though I would have liked to attend this event, my schedule wouldn't allow it, and now neither will capacity ;-) I hope to make it up from the Springs to one of the monthly get togethers or maybe to CC4 (Camp Colorado 4) eventually.
Offer constructive criticism? Definitely, but don't grump and moan because the event is a raging success and YOU didn't sign up early enough to take advantage of it. Instead congratulate the team who is putting this together for EXCEEDING attendance expectations (particularly in light of the fact that DrupalCon isn't)
To the hosts, I want to personally thank you for your work and your willingness to dedicate time and energy in our behalf and congrats on the tremendous outcome.
Best wishes from Camp Colorado Southern Command,
PS Maybe we should start a thread after Camp and start to compile the lessons learned, good and bad.
To be clear, I'm trying to help, not complain
It seems that some are mischaracterizing my post as "grumping and moaning", perhaps even "bitter". This compels me to clarify my post to avoid misunderstanding. I do not post to vent, rather I post to get answers and find solutions through communication. Indeed, this is my attempt to become more involved in the drupal community. Yes, I was disappointed, but truly in this case, I was trying to:
(a) Determine if there is any way to still attend despite the event being sold out, such as purchasing a sponsorship (still no answer on this point, I am guessing "no")
(b) Given the rapidly growing popularity of drupal (http://buytaert.net/drupal-download-statistics-2008), encourage all future drupal event organizers to plan for many times more people than they expect.
(c) Encourage event organizers to provide better feedback to the community. I propose that functionality be added to drupalcampcolorado.org to track event registrations, indicate event capacity and report on remaining spots. Currently on drupalcampcolorado.org this appears to be a manual process, which is probably not good enough. I don't know who is currently maintaining drupalcampcolorado.org, but as a drupal developer myself who has implemented an extensive custom event registration module in drupal, I have experience in this area and I'd be happy to help with this, and better sooner than later.
(d) Offer some suggestions on how to deal with growing capacity needs. Moreover, considering the apparent unknowns surrounding future attendance, I want to recommend against selecting venues which cannot expand to accomodate a surge in event interest. It seems to me that hotels, which specialize in providing meeting space, would be a good choice. Again, if help is needed in this area, I'd be willing to help the committee planning the next such event.
Oh yeah, and applauds and kudos do go out to all the folks who put this together. :) I do appreciate your effort, even though it looks as though I won't be personally witnessing the fruits of your labors this time :(
Definitely not taking it as
Definitely not taking it as a complaint ... make sure everyone takes a look at/edit the wiki page at http://groups.drupal.org/node/10437 as this is the guide we used and the one that is referenced by many other camp organizers.
Looking forward to camp
Thanks for that reminder of what a DrupalCamp is, Kevin (cyberswat). Reading the "unconference" philosophy of camps, I do think that the original intention of this one was to be a "natural extension of meetups," but grew so big with sponsorships and such that it found itself strangely between a Camp and a Conference in scope and numbers. That's cool. Let's us all know the Denver area is primed for the Big Time, baby, aka Drupalcon Denver 2009. Two of my team members are a bit down that they won't be coming because of registration, etc, but I think that's because we viewed this as a conference more than a camp. Next year it's definitely time for a conference.
I'd love to be in the planning of that beast and think we could also expect 200 or more to attend from around the region.
In the mean time, I'm really looking forward to meeting everyone and having some good old human interaction and learning.
Peace,
T.J.
T.J. Cook
HiDef Web Solutions, LLC.
www.hidefweb.com
T.J. Cook
HiDef Web Solutions, LLC.
www.hidefweb.com
To be fair
Unlike DrupalCon, which is a conference, this is a totally ad hoc DrupalCamp, not officially sponsored or managed by or affiliated in any way with the Drupal Association. We had no reason to assume we would sell out 100 places, when Meet-Up attendances have been not even close to that. But here we have people flying in from out of state to attend. It speaks volumes about the interest in Drupal, which is great in itself.
Obviously next time we will all I think make an effort to find a bigger venue and take this on as a more professional event project. However, I'm totally cheered and grateful for the fabulous sponsors who have stepped up with cash to help make this event happen. There are also quite a number of volunteers who have put a ton of work into this production.
As for this weekend, I'm not sure what to suggest. There has been some talk of admitting walk-up registrants, with the understanding that availability is on an as-possible basis (fire regulations, for example, have to be considered) and that meals and swag will first go to the people already registered in advance. You could check the forums at http://drupalcampcolorado.org or create a new post if you don't see a thread. I don't think anyone wants to turn anybody away, but those realities just mentioned do come in to play at some point, I think.
Laura
pingVision, LLC (we're hiring)
PINGV | Strategy • Design • Drupal Development
Please make sure to take a
Please make sure to take a look at http://drupalcampcolorado.org/content/bof-drupalcampcoloarado-and-drupal... ... it is an effort to make this event a regular occurrence and help alleviate some of the issues already identified.
NP Conversation Evolution
The conversation has turned to exploring the possibility of creating a nonprofit entity. If you're interested in being involved, please visit
http://drupalcampcolorado.org/content/nonprofit-organization and chime in.
slides for my presentation
I posted my slides at http://www.slideshare.net/ccharlton/flex-flash-air-interfaces-for-custom...
Chris Charlton, Author & Drupal Community Leader, Enterprise Level Consultant
I teach you how to build Drupal Themes http://tinyurl.com/theme-drupal and provide add-on software at http://xtnd.us